It seems there has been a bit of a misunderstanding about the word “misogyny” as it relates to Quentin Tarantino’s polarizing new winter western, The Hateful Eight. Some criticisms of the film have stopped just short of labeling the film misogynist.
A recent article by Kris Tapley in Variety seeks to defend Tarantino against charges of misogyny.
Claims of ‘Hateful Eight’ Misogyny ‘Fishing for Stupidity,’ Harvey Weinstein Says.
I wasn’t planning on writing my (negative) thoughts about the film because why bother trashing something when part of the idea behind what we do is to help movies do well. But this piece about whether The Hateful Eight is misogynist, with Weinstein and others defending against that accusation, has driven me out of my hole to confront it. Actually, no one I know has charged the film with misogyny, or Tarantino either, for that matter. After all, who would? It’s easy to debunk such an accusation. It’s much harder to look more deeply at why AO Scott would have written this:
Unfortunately, it knows just what to do with Ms. Leigh’s Daisy, who enters the film with a black eye and exits it — well, I guess I’d better not reveal much more. Suffice it to say that she is the film’s scapegoat and punching bag and, above all, its excuse for its own imaginative failures. At a certain point, the n-word gives way to the b-word as the dominant hateful epithet, and “The Hateful Eight” mutates from an exploration of racial animus into an orgy of elaborately justified misogyny. The final scenes wrap up this shaggy-dog story with a nasty punch line, delivering on the promise of the film’s title. I won’t spoil it. See for yourself.
Misogyny is defined as hating women. Tarantino clearly does not hate women — in fact, he’s far on the other end of spectrum. I’ve grown up with his movies and I know he is one of the few directors who — until Django Unchained and now, Hateful Eight — has always offered up great female roles for women in his movies. Think: Inglourious Basterds. Think: Kill Bill. Think: Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. But once you throw around a word like that, it invites people to oversimplify and say “the director is a misogynist” which then can be used as a blunt instrument when deconstructing his work. One can, on the other hand, say the end result of what comes of Daisy’s character looks like an “elaborately justified misogyny.” There is a clear difference.
Tapley quotes another Variety piece where Tarantino explains his treatment of Daisy here:
According to Tarantino, that’s by design. “When John Ruth [played by Kurt Russell] cracks her over the head that very first time, you feel this ripple going through the audience — because it almost does seem like one of the last taboos left,” the two-time Oscar winner told Variety in a recent interview. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh my God. John Ruth is a brutal bastard!’ That is what you’re supposed to say. I want your allegiances, to one degree or the other, to shift slightly as the movie goes on, and frankly, depending on where you’re coming from.”
Basically Tarantino is saying that he wants the audience to feel sympathy for Daisy until, at some point, they’re supposed to shift that sympathy and conclude that she “got what she deserved.” Yeah, I don’t think it quite worked that way because, unlike in Django Unchained, there isn’t the build-up of hatred for Big Daddy and Calvin Candie, the characters played by Don Johnson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Instead, Daisy is hiding in the shadows, a tiny meek mouse that everyone is afraid of. Why? She can’t do squat to anyone. Why would they fear her and seek to destroy her? What explanation does the film offer up? Matt Zoller Seitz says:
The problem isn’t how Tarantino tells his story, but the deficiencies in the story itself—or maybe we should put “story” in quotes, because, more so than any Tarantino film, and this is saying a lot, what’s onscreen doesn’t feel like an intricately interconnected series of events, all of which feed into and build upon one another, but rather a succession of set pieces, most of which are tediously repetitive. Talk talk talk talk talk talk kill; talk talk talk talk talk talk kill, and so on, and so on. The N-world is sprinkled throughout; Tarantino loves the slur nearly as much he loves bare feet. But its use in “The Hateful Eight” is more problematic than in “Django,” where the term had a whiplash sting; even if you suspected Tarantino of trying to get away with something, the film’s righteous ire (presenting the Confederate South as a little Nazi Germany right here in the good old USA) made you pause before writing him off as an opportunist.
Tarantino movies have almost always shown prolonged and sustained violence against women, and perhaps this has escalated in his recent historical revenge films. Usually, though, there is a reason. And that reason becomes clear, whenever the narrative is more focused throughout. For instance, in Inglourious Basterds one of the most memorable scenes has Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) being stabbed in her wounded leg until she screams and screams in agony. She’s already been established as a sympathetic character and these are bad people inflicting her pain — but they get “paid back.” Clear lines of good and evil, the violence bears this out.
In Django Unchained, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) is whipped until she screams, left naked and shivering in a box for days until she is rescued. Django takes out his revenge not only against those who done his beloved wife wrong, but against the entire institution of plantation slavery, with a climatic scene of blood spatter that seemed to evoke the hidden bloodshed, the horrors of what Spike Lee called a Holocaust. Those fountains of blood, and the third-rail electricity throughout the thrilling, brilliant Django Unchained was next level Tarantino. It was thought out, carefully planned and perfectly executed. It deserved its Oscar nominations. Even in True Romance, which wasn’t directed by Tarantino, but was written by and bears his unmistakable imprint, the massive beating endured by Patricia Arquette comes with a reason attached, and ultimately she triumphs. The Hateful Eight marks a stark change from Tarantino’s previous work, in his treatment of Daisy, and I guess I’m surprised no one else has noticed or remarked on it.
Though very well-played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, we have, for one of the first and certainly the most memorable time, an irredeemable female character whose sole purpose seems to be to serve as a punching bag, as AO Scott calls it. And worse: to represent, somehow, all of the evil of the South, all of the racism, all of the injustice. She’s a tiny thing. There is no point in the film, or maybe one just barely, when Daisy inflicts any violence upon anyone — and by then it could be argued that she is only desperately trying to defend herself. She is handcuffed to Kurt Russell, needing his permission to speak and eat, and then punched brutally in the face whenever she says anything.
If Tarantino is playing us by trying to unearth a taboo, what is the point other than titillation? And if titillation is the point, wouldn’t a more accomplished work have thrown that back on the audience at some point and said, See how much you’re enjoying this? Which would only apply to those who want to see torture porn visited upon the white racists of the South, and that, of course, is for viewers and their conscience to decide. Tarantino, however, has said outright that The Hateful Eight is a comedy — not a condemnation of his violence addicted fans.
Tapley points out this quote by Tarantino:
“Violence is hanging over every one of those characters like a cloak of night,” he said. “So I’m not going to go, ‘OK, that’s the case for seven of the characters, but because one is a woman, I have to treat her differently.’ I’m not going to do that.”
Anne Thompson said the same thing to me on Twitter. The problem though? Daisy’s character is the only one who is disallowed from perpetrating any violence except verbal slurs. Her only crime we get to see? She’s got a sassy mouth. Everyone else (all the men) in the film are allowed to use violence as means to whatever goals they have. Daisy is not. So no, Daisy’s position isn’t equal. And it isn’t remotely “feminist,” as some have even argued. We can wonder what it was Daisy did that made her worse than everyone else and deserving of the worst violence the film represents. But to me, there needs to be a bigger reason to single her out. And we’re never given one.
[Spoilers]
This is trickery, says Tarantino, and many critics have backed him up on this, because it is all part of Daisy’s evil plan. Thing is, for starters, the plan, as such, is absurdly illogical. What amounts to a complex setup to get a bunch of characters inside a room to kill each other is a convoluted scheme that could have been solved much earlier in the film with a simple stagecoach holdup, but that’s a different story. The trickery Tarantino apparently means to pull is all in the name of Daisy escaping, or being freed by her gang.
Perhaps it’s this trickery that ultimately visits upon her the film’s worst and most unseeable scene of violence — a bloody hanging that holds on her face as she twitches and dies. It doesn’t really work on a narrative level because we have never once seen any evidence of Daisy’s crimes, other than her repeated use of the “n” word. If Tarantino is saying any white character who uses the “n” word deserves that kind of punishment he only really delivers it so personally upon Daisy. The rest of them receive your standard run-of- the-mill deaths — a quick bullet between the eyes.
For the first time, really, Tarantino has flipped his usual moral balance for no apparent reason other than to watch a woman suffer. There is no previous scene, as in Django, where we see what Daisy has done to make her so hateful, or more to the point: to make us hate her. She may be rotten to the core, as they all are (except Samuel L. Jackson and Walter Goggins who are the film’s clear protagonists, working out the rewrite of our unforgivable past) but we have to take the word of a disreputable bounty hunter to believe it. Daisy is the film’s biggest problem, and the reason The Hateful Eight is his most disappointing film. Tarantino is usually not this sloppy with his character’s elaborate background development, especially when it comes to his female characters.
When AO Scott says the film devolves into misogyny, he is not labeling Tarantino or the film “misogynist.” He’s saying that without better writing and execution, it’s deliberately cruel impact comes off that way. Seitz addresses both the egging on of those potential accusations:
Leigh’s outlaw, the only woman, gets the worst of it, entering the film with a black eye, taking multiple fists to the face, and spending the final third of the film drenched in blood and missing a tooth. She doesn’t wipe the blood off; this is presented as proof of her indomitability, but it plays like sheer provocation: Oh, I’m a misogynist, am I? Tough. Watch me leave the blood on her face, because I can. Like the nonstop barrage of racial slurs, the film’s relentless and often comical violence against Daisy never feels truly earned. Saying, “Well, they’re all outlaws, including her, and that’s just how women were treated back then” feels like an awfully thin defense when you hear audiences whooping it up each time Russell punches Leigh in the face, and it dissipates during the final scene, which lingers on Daisy’s death with near-pornographic fascination. In a movie filled with selfish, deceptive and murderous characters, hers is the only demise that is not just observed, but celebrated.
And David Edelstein writes:
But when the violence comes, it’s more graphic and nausea-inducing than even a hardened Tarantino viewer could have reason to expect. In an extended flashback, Tarantino crosses into Rob Zombie snuff territory, a description he might well regard as a badge of honor (the bastard) but one I see as emblematic of his descent into a kind of shock-jock territory that dishonors his early work. Consider his last one-set bloodbath, Reservoir Dogs, nowhere near as accomplished a piece of moviemaking but full of psychological cross-currents and emotional quandaries. Tarantino has left emotional quandaries behind. He’s in the grindhouse revenge ether now, high on his own silly, can-you-top-this gross-out carnage. You wonder what he has up his sleeve in The Hateful Eight, but gorgeous at that sleeve might be, what’s up it is crap. The movie is a lot of gore over a lot of nothing. I hope that won’t be Tarantino’s epitaph.
And Ann Hornaday writes:
The climactic bloodletting may make for merry times for fanboys and fetishists, but it’s difficult to reconcile Tarantino’s infectious joie de vivre with the scorched-earth nihilism he uses it to celebrate. He’s compared “The Hateful Eight” to an Agatha Christie mystery, suggesting a cozy world being temporarily upended but finally set to rights. No such reassurance is forthcoming in what is finally a tiresome, self-indulgent burlesque of grindhouse gore-mongering, albeit one festooned with pseudo-deep ideas about America’s toxic racial legacy. Even Professor Plum, with an entire armamentarium of candlesticks and lead pipes at his disposal, couldn’t dream up a game this airless, there-less and, finally, clueless.
How Jennifer Jason Leigh described it:
“She’s a leader. And she’s tough. And she’s hateful and a survivor and scrappy. I thought it was funny, but I didn’t think it was misogynistic for a second. [Tarantino] doesn’t have an ounce of misogyny in him. It’s not in his writing. It’s not in his being.”
The description of Daisy probably works better on the page than it does on screen. Cast a tall, imposing, truly frightening woman in the role and perhaps the end result would be different. But as The Hateful Eight chooses to introduce her from the first shot, Daisy appears more like a victim of domestic violence who has come to accept her continual treatment, believes she deserves it, and tries to be “scrappy” within that mode. See, that’s not the Tarantino I know. He would have given Daisy the final word, had her shoot everyone dead and be the last woman standing. Instead she goes down like the worst villain in the film yet the film provides us nothing back this up, at least not by what is up on screen.
Somehow, between Django and now, in his struggles to exercise the haunting legacy of racism and slavery in this country, Tarantino forgot about writing good female characters. Aside from a few weak wisecracks she gets to make, Daisy is not even allowed to be an interesting character, and neither are any of the other innocent one-dimensional women in the film.
So accusing the film of being “misogynist” is, in fact, a smokescreen because it’s easier to defend against that than the fact that he wrote something that doesn’t work. Tarantino depends on himself as the sole writer on all his films, which can work sometimes, but when a director goes back to the same well, that well will eventually run dry.Even Woody Allen has started to sound repetitive for decades now. The Coens won Best Picture for one of the rare times they directed a film carefully and faithfully adapted from a novel written by someone else.
Will any of this matter? No. Men always fail upwards in Hollywood. They are given chance after chance after chance. By now Tarantino, like Star Wars, is a brand. And if there’s one thing we can be certain of about human beings in 2015 — they are brand loyal. They would rather do anything else than turn away from their brand, which they wear proudly, letting the brand define who they are and on what team they reside. Star Wars, for instance, couldn’t fail. Once you brand a consumer, you imprint them for life — unless they figure out that they’ve been cynically branded and they pull away. Tarantino fans haven’t been branded for commercial or cynical reasons. They’re branded because being a Tarantino fan defines who they are. There is certainly nothing wrong with that. Brand loyalty is what fandom is all about. Fans love their idols or their brand no matter what.
For all of the negative reviews Tarantino has received for this film, there are plenty praising him. Several prominent women — LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson, Indiewire’s Anne Thompson and Daily Beast’s Jen Yamato — have claimed they have no problem with the violence or the treatment of Daisy, and they do not see this as one of Tarantino’s worst films. Quite the contrary.
But domestic violence and violence against women worldwide is no laughing matter. It might be a giggly taboo as the butt of a joke for the privileged among us, but women are dehumanized every second of every day all over the world. The image of Jennifer Jason Leigh with a black eye, ostensibly looking all cool and shit, sadly echoes so many images put forth in PSA ads against domestic violence, like these:
It’s just a movie. Yeah, I know. Real violence exists everywhere; why complain about art? Yeah, I know. It doesn’t mean I have to enjoy it or get off on it. The truth is, I wish I’d never seen it. As beautiful as some of the film in parts, in the end it was like watching someone pull the wings off flies. Maybe that means I’m out of touch? Maybe that means I’m not cool? Maybe that means I’m stupid? Or maybe it is, simply, the truth of the thing. I know it’s my own truth.
Many Oscar voters will likely not see anything wrong here either. After all, who’s to say what’s right and wrong in art? It is a matter of interpretation. Tarantino is likely looking at multiple nominations, including screenplay, cinematography, score, and supporting actress, at the very least. If Hateful Eight is the “Frenzy zone” of a director’s canon, Frenzy is still Hitchcock and Hateful Eight is still Tarantino.
Many people have claimed that ‘we don’t se what Daisy did to deserve such brutal treatment.’
Those people haven’t paid attention.
John Ruth is taking Daisy to Red Rock to stand trial, even though it would have been much easier (and safer) to have killed her.
He is giving her a chance to show a court that she is innocent.
She repays that kindness with a plot to kill him. She hums the song ‘Jim Jones at Botany Bay’ during the stagecoach ride and sings it at Minnie’s.
The song is about a convict planning an escape and his murderous revenge.
Daisy’s warrant is for murder. We are told this in the film, but some people say they have to ‘see’ her crime onscreen in order for them to feel that her treatment is justified.
Even though we know ‘Daisy’s Secret’. She saw the poisoning of the coffee, and she smiles while she watches innocent people drink it – as well as the man who gave her the option to face real justice instead of the ‘frontier justice’ she ends up experiencing at the hands of her victims.
They didn’t hang her for using the N word lol they hanged her as she was a viscous murderer who spent the whole movie also trying to kill them. And as they themselves were dying, they dispensed justice in the best possible way; hanging the monster.
As for your photo montage of women with black eyes: men all through the movie where shot to hell, why no montage of men in domestic violence?
If it was a man hanged you wouldn’t be commenting on the film in the way you did. How very social justice warrior of you.
Well said, Sasha. I took off my indignation hat the first time Daisy was struck, because it happened so early on, she ALREADY had a black eye, and because I sort of knew I had to in order to get through the next 2+ hours of this movie. Having removed the filter that normally would have had me walking out of the theatre, I was willing to see where the story and other characters went. The answer? Nowhere (literally and figuratively).
There’s SPOILERS ahead so..I’ve only just seen it but I’d say if you’re looking for decency don’t go see The Hateful Eight, part of the craziness is that when the end comes there’s absolutely no morality to hold onto for any fittingly virtuous conclusion, and no one dies well, it’s an equal opportunity hell, let’s not forget Jackson gets his balls blown off (anyone else notice the symbolic angel wings framing Daisy’s death?). I think it would have been tragic to have used tastefulness as an excuse not to include a woman within the ensemble, they could easily have made this, like Reservoir Dogs, with all male characters, but Tarantino doesn’t patronize, if a woman’s going to get involved it’s still going to be as nasty, and far from weak, the woman he writes is tougher and more ruthless than any of the men, some could see that as progress.
This is a tricky argument as I didn’t perceive Daisy as described by the author of the article, I saw her as emanating from a hell, that had its roots in abuse, but she, in the same way as Jackson’s character, who also evolved from abuse, learned how to play the game, they both understood the unavoidably abusive path life had handed to them and as can happen to survivors of extreme & relentless abuse they gained their power and self worth through psychopathic means, with the righteous caveat that they knew what the decent folk didn’t, that life could be a cruel, horror show undeserving of morality.
I also strongly disagree that Daisy is an uninteresting character, though you’re possibly right in that she is as written, but you can’t remove the character from the work that’s bought her to the screen, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off Jason Leigh, she never stopped telling a story that began way, way before the film began. I loved this movie, it’s a whole bunch of strange, a wild west No Exit, it’s also the only film of late to blow the brains out of bourgeois political complacency.
It reminds of when Inherent Vice came out and everyone insisted that PTA is a misogynist. I mean the film sucks but i don;t think you can call him that.
This is an incredibly disingenuous article. In order to make your argument, you ignore many key traits and scenes related to the character of Daisy. For instance, she does kill someone on screen, and she allows other characters to die under the most horrific of conditions. In addition, she attempts to use racism, and other forms of hatred, during the film’s climax in order to manipulate another character into killing a black man. This is the character you want to defend, and the character that is somehow a symbol for all of womanhood? Also, using the pictures of domestic violence victims to comment on a fictional character (a murderer at that) is just as toxic, offensive, and opportunistic as anything in The Hateful Eight. Now, I am not celebrating the violence against Daisy, but the abuse fit right in to the nasty fabric of the overall film. Do you truly believe the hanging was the most violent and brutal scene? Did you forget about the graphic castration? The hanging lasts all of one minute, while the castration victim suffers for about thirty minutes as he bleeds out! In addition, there were at least two exploding heads; both incidents portrayed in a truly sickening manner. So, the entire film is quite sick, and singling out Daisy’s abuse is not an accurate portrayal of the abuse endured by everyone in the movie. Hell, the only truly innocent character vomits his guts out!
I’ve never read your stuff before and didn’t know whether a male.or female wrote this until I was into the first few paragraphs. By the end it was a pathetic piece of writing and ridiculous review and had nothjng to do with domestic violence. Heck, it was a bounty hunter abusing his powers and prisoner.
You left out that that your little princess character was a murderer, sentenced to die and part of a murderous gang. Yes, smacking her around was over the top but comparing this situation and totslly fictitous movie to domestic violence is a total insult to domestic violence victims. Where did the “domestic” padt of the word come into play all? If anythjng, QT use of the word ni gg er is was ridiculous. Used 50+ times. This film was a violent comedy. You should of gone with your original thought and not write anything.
In all fairness, you need to dive a little deeper on who this woman really was. They hung her up because she was attempting to get the gun to kill the Ni g g er Major, the same one she called ni gg er troughout the entire movie. Oh yeah, and her brother shot his balls off and be was dying and she was sentenced to die and that was mentiined like 10x.
Bottomline is the movie sucked, slow and way too long. Great cast but a waste of 3 hours. It couldn’t have been more obvious this was nothing but a comedy with violence. Let us know if you really expected something different. Inserting pictures of women from real domestic violence is absurd too! This was NOT real lady…
say what you want but the fact is that Tarantino gave the role of a post civil war Manson girl that could have easily gone to a 25 year old like Jennifer Lawrence (who was considered) to a 53 year old woman who most of us thought didn’t have a chance to ever have a leading role again due to the fact that Hollywood thinks women over 50 who aren’t Moore, StreeporMirren even exist.
I didn’t find Daisy to be timid or meek or even much a victim. She was actually the character I was most afraid of; those looks and sinister smiles of Leigh in the first third were incredibly unnerving, I thought. The vibe I got from her was that she was the one really in control, she didn’t give a damn how many times dude hit her, and pretty soon she was going to set the sky on fire and watch everything burn.
it was, I think, her lack of dialogue and lack of information about her that gave her an Iago-like presence for me. The first time I started to feel safe around her was when she gave her untrue monologue at the end. When she did she was suddenly just like the rest of them for me. No longer the unknowable evil incarnate.
Just interesting to me that one person’s timid and meek is another person’s Keyzer Soze.
I just saw this movie yesterday and I have to say that the hype is not only misguided but truly a prime example of fan worship just gone amuck. There is no doubt in my mind if someone other than Tarantino directed this then the love would be far muted from the nerd press than it is now. I’m a fan of the dude’s work but I have to be honest in my assessment, although I was never bored, but when the credits rolled I had one thought hitting my head: In short this quite simply SUCKS!!! REAL DEAL SUCKAGE!!!
Production design, photography, all top notch. But the performances and the story…wow…talk about dropping the ball…this dude really needed an intervention. Forget the political implications and subtexts, what’s really offensive about this movie is that its just so poorly told and lazy which I can’t believe I’m saying about a Tarantino movie. Everyone is acting like they’re in a school play directed by Max Fisher from Rushmore or something. This just gets a big ole capital F.
Tarantino is brilliant. He just made you choose which hill to die on. Are you going to rag on him for the N word and Jacksons treatment in the film, or are you going to defend Daisy, the prisoner, the racist gang leader. I didn’t realize it at the time but H8teful may be as much about Internet outrage culture as it was about race.
Can Tarantino return to the present?
I’d like him to go to the future actually. 🙂
Same.
I completely agree.
Maybe a 70’s stile distopian future, something in the vein of Logan’s Run, or maybe something with a Philip K Dick sensibility.
I haven’t read all the comments, but am I the only one who just treats the fact that Daisy is a woman to be coincidental? If the prisoner character were a man we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And I think that makes it silly that everyone is so up in arms.
That said, she is the only woman prominently in the film, and the violence upon her is deeply felt. I didn’t think it was funny, but it didn’t bother me either. I think there must be a point to it, perhaps what JH said below, that a racist and a black man were only brought together in the end by their hatred of a woman. That sounds like a plausible and provocative feminist statement to me. Or perhaps it could mean many other things that we haven’t yet figured out. Or perhaps it is just circumstantial after all that the prisoner is a woman. I don’t doubt that’s the case.
Thanks for this. I really had to look for women reviewers. I found a male reviewer discomfited by the violence against Daisy so I decided to look for a female perspective. Then I found another male reviewer, and then another, and then another. Then I found you. It made me realize that the movie business is male dominated in just about every aspect. No wonder punching bag female characters get through the filter.
To those who are upset by the film, you’re certainly entitled to be, but it’s clear to me that Tarantino is doing a lot of complex work here, so it’s a disservice to the film to argue that it’s using a sledgehammer approach or that it’s mindless. Just because you can’t see beyond your own sensitivities doesn’t mean there aren’t nuances and contradictions in Tarantino’s approach.
Violence can be simultaneously revolting and funny and pleasurable. Racism can be played for laughs, even if it’s being satirized at the same time. The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified. We contain multitudes, as does HATEFUL’s script.
Tarantino has crafted a work that, like many great exploitation films (FUNNY GAMES, PSYCHO, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, etc…) and many of his own (certainly these aren’t his first characters with bloodlust) toys with our identification figures, making us question our supposed moral authority.
I laughed at the Dogs and Mexicans anecdote (as everyone in the theater when I saw the film), but that doesn’t mean that I hate Mexicans. Tarantino is a provocateur, but he’s absolutely hitting us where it hurts to reveal an inherent strand of American antagonism.
The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.
The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.
The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.
The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.
The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.
The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.
This is brilliant. You should sell T-shirts with that slogan.
This is brilliant.
Please teach us some more facts about movies and society.
You’re better than this level of ignorance… I think. Maybe not.
go ahead and explain to us when the abuse of women is “justified”
after that, explain to us when the abuse of women is merely “unfortunate”
then we’ll see who’s ignorant.
know what, JH. Let’s just distill this to its essence:
1. tell me when the abuse of ANY human is justified.
and this is maybe really relevant:
2. what do you think of the theory that some of the people who like this kind of movie might be the kind of people who think the abuse of women is sometimes justified?
You’re trying to distort my statement, and I won’t be baited, Obviously I don’t support violence against women, broadly. Don’t be stupid.
Daisy is an alleged murder who has been given the death penalty. There is some gray line about how much force is excessive in bringing her to justice.
I’m not distorting your statement. I am quoting you verbatim.
“The abuse of women can both be unfortunate and justified.”
Where is the place that I distorted what you wrote?
“There is some gray line about how much force is excessive in bringing her to justice.”
In the first two and half hours of the movie do we EVER see Daisy resist being brought to justice? Is there ANY way you can see that she even COULD resist, since she is surrounded by men with guns and she is handcuffed to one of the men who has a gun?
Where is this “grey line”? How much “excessive force” does it take for a half dozen grown men to subdue a handcuffed woman who doesn’t even try to wiggle around?
I’m out of this line of conversation. There’s no point arguing ambivalence with someone who insists an issue is black and white.
Let’s agree to disagree. Or just disagree.
That’s alright. I’ve learned something that I didn’t really want to face. I think there are people who have no problem with Daisy being abused by an officer of the law (dubious as he may be).
I think there are probably millions of men who think it’s perfectly alright to knock a woman’s teeth down her throat if she dares to open her mouth. As long as those men can tell themselves: She deserves any abuse she gets.
These are the kind of men who will love The Hateful Eight and defend the abuse that it plays for laughs.
Not saying you’re one of those men, JH. But you have said a very strange* thing that those kind of men would say.
*(strange to me, anyway)
Not strange at all to a feminist and usual Tarantino fan like myself!
Really?! Cause you’re sounding pretty stupid and COMPLETELY SEXIST while you’re at it, no matter how unintentionally.
And how can he be “distorting” your statement if he’s quoting EXACTLY what you’ve said?!?!
I feel genuine pity for JH’s racial ignorance and cluelessness. Can’t help wondering how Trayvon Martin or Tamir Rice might have reacted to all the racial slurs in this….. THING.
“I laughed at the Dogs and Mexicans anecdote (as everyone in the theater when I saw the film), but that doesn’t mean that I hate Mexicans. Tarantino is a provocateur, but he’s absolutely hitting us where it hurts to reveal an inherent strand of American antagonism.”
Not only it that joke as old as the hills, I don’t understand what’s funny about a joke that boasts about Americans who think Mexicans are lower than dogs.
I’m an American, but I don’t have this “inherent strand of antagonism” in me. Just in case anyone from another country is taking you seriously, JH — I would just like to speak up and say: No. Not all of “us” Americans are “hurt” by being told that we have an inherent strand of antagonism toward Mexicans. Because millions of us don’t.
— Nope, many Americans do not have that antagonism, and so we can’t be hurt by Tarantino telling us we do. We just think he’s a idiot for telling antique jokes comparing Mexicans to dogs — a joke that I’m sure would be funny at a Trump rally, but not very funny at all to anyone at a Hillary or Bernie rally.
Just because you don’t understand what is funny about a joke, doesn’t mean countless others also don’t, even if one is to include the “we think he’s an idiot for telling antique jokes” crowd along with you (G-d forbid antique jokes are used in a period reconstruction era Western). Regardless of the content, the real joke is how Major Marquis uses those words to provoke Mexican Bob and reveal his ruse. As a narrative plot point, it does exactly what it needs to do to move these characters along the tracks of the story. And it’s funny to finally see the antagonism between Marquis and Bob come to a head after building up for nearly two hours.
Also, your comment reads like you didn’t actually take the time to read JH’s comment. Specifically, “…an inherent strand of American antagonism.”, has nothing to do with you or anyone personally Ryan, it is a comment about America’s inherently antagonistic past in terms of gender and race based on an inherent mistrust of those different from ourselves (or for that time and most of time, white males). Tarantino takes this idea and twists it to provoke audiences to react to it, whether that is through catharsis, disgust, laughter or outrage is up to the individual audience member and the baggage they bring to the table. Your baggage is read loud and clear Ryan, and even though I disagree with your opinion I understand it.
All that said, The Hateful Eight is not Tarantino’s best work by far, but it’s technical aspects are wonderful (especially the photography and score) and it features great performances. It’s a better film than many of 2015’s releases.
Tarantino takes this idea and twists it to provoke audiences to react to it, whether that is through catharsis, disgust, laughter or outrage is up to the individual.. and the baggage they bring to the table.
yah, ok. Then that’s what I’m doing in the comments here too. It’s not exactly genius, the knack for stirring up shit.
Everybody on this page has been doing it for the past 3 days. Does that make us all capable of directing a movie? Of course not.
Does it make Tarantino a cinematic troll? In my opinion, yes it does.
Nice reply though, Cinescape. Good read. Thanks.
It’s a better film than many of 2015’s releases.
Of course it is. Undeniably. It’s in my top 40 — at #40.
methos
Just because you don’t understand what is funny about a joke, doesn’t mean countless others also don’t,
Watch The Hateful Eight on a date with a Mexican friend and see how funny it is to laugh out loud in your friend’s face when Mexicans are compared unfavorably to mangy dogs.
Just because YOU don’t want to understand why a racist joke and its inclusion in a major film is stupidly offensive in this day and age doesn’t mean countless others are not going to think, “oh, nice. let’s all laugh at the expense of our Mexican friends.”
And no, not everybody who laughs at that joke is a racist. But you must surely know that it will have special giddy appeal to the millions of racists in thousands of theaters.
That’s called pandering. It’s cheap pandering to the basest elements in America. That’s why it’s value as plot device is diminished for many of us. It’s a crude lazy thing for a writer to do.
It’s not a clever method of moving “characters along the tracks of the story.” It’s the laziest way imaginable. And it’s reckless because it FEEDS the racism in America that you say Tarantino wants to examine.
It feeds racists with a spoon; it’s just what they want to hear. It’s lazy and irresponsible.
The movie feeds misogynists with a spoon in the very same way. It’s lazy and irresponsible in that regard too.
And if you want your date with your Mexican friend to go smoothly, you don’t laugh at 150-year-old, lazy, racist, reckless, socially irresponsible jokes. Unless you want to look like a lunatic to your new friend.
This screenplay is sophomoric in 1000 other ways. If you think it’s hilarious, then you’re not the sort of person I’d want to be friends with. Vice versa, I’m sure.
I agree with everything you said here, Mr. Adams. Also, props for having the balls to bring Trump into this. I’m sure H8ful Eight would give him quite an erection! ;(
I’m enjoying this Hateful 8 discussion 20x more than I enjoyed the Hateful 8 movie. There’s more wit and and intelligence on this page than there is in the entire bigscreen thing.
There’s almost as much violence on this page too, but the violence here is more palatable because nobody is cashing in and getting rich off it. Plus, the flareups are organic and not just a lot of calculated formulaic pandering.
I nominate this discussion for Best Original Screenplay. Let’s all get together someplace and do a live reading. Colorado. Where we can all be legally stoned af, and instead of ending up in absurd piles of gore we can pair off in some interesting hookups, probably.
You know, Tarantino made this film to start conversations about race and gender; and here we all are having a discussion about those very things.
You didn’t even like the movie, but the discussion it sparked is a different story.
I’m glad Tarantino made his film, and I think you are too.
Very…interesting discussion going on in these comments. I’ll try to check out the movie soon and add my thoughts.
I’m glad to find I wasn’t the only one who thought that the Violence against Daisy was just a little bit too much. None of the other hateful bastard got it as bad as she did through out the film. I really was hoping that Daisy would have gotten the last laugh, or maybe she did in death. Because we are talking about her more than any other character in the film. Her character is the most polarizing character he has ever written. She’s suppose to be dangerous, but we never get to see it. She is sassy and clever, but she get’s punched, pistol whipped, teeth knocked out, hot stew thrown in the face for it. No other character gets this type of treatment. Not even the men who kill innocent woman are given the brutal treatment that Daisy is given in the film. And if I’m to take what QT says this film is a comedy, well I don’t find it funny Men beating on a poor, defenseless woman. IF you didn’t want to hear her gag her mouth. No need for the extreme violence against her when the only thing we do know is she was part of a gang of outlaws. Probably because all she had was her brother. Maybe if we got to see Daisy’s POV it might make things different but sadly it just wasn’t what I would call a good QT film.
While I think this is QT’s most beautifully shot film, That intro is just… Amazing, even the violence was beautiful, yes there was beauty in it, but it was sadly his worst film because the characters were all just so Gawd darn awful! And that is saying a lot because he writes such good characters. And that whole ‘OUI’ think seriously QT you had to go there with that.
But I’m holding out hope that you made this film to get people off guard on how you treat your female characters and will be back to form with Kill Bill 2… err…. Kill Bill 3… err Kill the Bride…. Err ‘Kill that bitch that killed my mom in front of me, and plucked out my master’s eyeball!’ Oh yeah, Elle Driver and Nikkia Bell deserve their revenge and the Bride deserves to die!
Oh jees. The Oui scene. That may have been the biggest attempt at being “Tarantino” that I’ve ever seen. And he wrote it.
Tarantino is trying to disguise his misogyny by making all the characters including the women hateful, that way when people complain about the treatment of the only women character in the film, he can just say she was hateful woman. The defence people are using for the violence against Daisy is that she’s hateful thinking as if there cannot be misogyny even between hateful people. It’s like when the issue wage disparity between Female and Male Hollywood stars is raised, some people point how the female star are paid a already paid a lot and dismiss their claims of unfair treatment. Tarantino’s defence might be that the men were hateful so they acted like misogynists. If it was the characters not Tarantino who were misogynists, then it was his job the make that obvious so there wasn’t any confusion. I didn’t think the two issues were connected, but then I have heard that JLaw was considered to star in this film. As we all know Jlaw is at the forefront of the battle for equal pay for equal work. Could this be the reason why Tarantino considered her to be in this film which demonise a woman who stays the entire film captive and getting beat like a punch bag. The women he finally cast has the same first name, It’s seems just to weird! It’s convenient get out to say Daisy deserved he punishment because she was hateful. You can be beat up a woman like a punch bag as long as she’s believed to be hateful.
I just think Daisy is obviously symbolic when she’s the only woman. And I haven’t seen the film, but I find that curious. I’m not sure I want to see it, because Tarantino likes to have it both ways by luring his audience into enjoying something and then making it near vomit-inducing. I’ve read enough reviews to see that it’s obvious the character is accused without evidence and she’s awful, but all the men are, too?
Tarantino does love violence, but I’m wondering if he is actually suggesting the misogyny of his characters using Daisy as a scapegoat? Not that she deserved it more, but because she was always the target. It seems like a reversal of von Trier’s Dogville set as a Western.
I wonder if the suggestion is that Daisy is the scapegoat? I haven’t seen the film. And though even though there is a racial component, she is still the only one who is not a man. Which is why she’s muted and gets no backstory, just the wrath.
Well, she becomes the lynchpin that finally unites the black man and the racist Southerner, which is essentially the film’s ultimate feminist statement.
This jaundiced view of the abuse of identity politics is too blunt and unpleasant for many, however.
Full disclosure, I don’t like Tarantino at all, because I don’t like how he uses shock value and violence, and it seems like exploitation on top of exploitation to me at this point? And I don’t really buy that he just loves women and minorities: he just likes to identify with their suffering and anger (he co-opts it) as a justifiable reason to write his bloody revenge movies that he always identified with when he was younger.
But this kind of makes sense for me in an historical context with a white woman acting out the Angry Black Woman stereotype (black women would never have had that kind of voice at all during that period), which is very racially charged for a lot of reasons, while the male characters violently tear each other (and the woman) apart?
I think he’s quite intelligent, I just wonder if he could ever make a movie that’s not about acting out revenge fantasies on behalf of others.
I don’t wanna talk about the violence against Daisy anymore. It’s getting too defensive in here. Anybody like Walton Goggins? He was my favorite one. && what was up with that SLJ monologue about his “big black dingus”. Ugh I couldn’t stomach that scene at all. Could’ve done without it.
He was getting the general (or whatever he was) riled up. There’s no evidence his story was true – there’s some circumstantial evidence that the fact he killed his son IS true, but that’s about it. The rest could easily have been him going over the top (he is a proven skilled liar – see Lincoln letter) because the general (or, again, whatever) wasn’t responding to his initial provocation and still hadn’t tried to shoot first, so that he could then kill him in ‘self-defense’. There’s no actual evidence to the contrary in the movie, unless I’m forgetting something. (This is not my theory – I got it off IMDb, and added some slight personal touches -, but I like it very much.)
Hmmm you bring up a good point. He was a skillfull liar. If memory serves me correctly though the thing that made Derns character reach for the gun was when SLJ said the worst thing his son dead was mention Derns character was his dad. I think the whole oral rape just made his skin crawl and had him seeing pictures as SLJ put it. If you notice Derns reaction to that nasty story he seems appalled, taken aback, he even grab his blanket and pulls it closer to him. I didn’t see rage bubbling at least not until that last sentence.
Of course – but that doesn’t prove SLJ’s character is telling the truth. 🙂
I believe he probably was lying, we’ll never know. Knowing QT and I love him but he does have a twisted mind it could very well be true though. Lol. What I’m saying is that I don’t think that’s what made Smithers go for the gun.
Yup, the rape story didn’t work for SLJ’s character either, in the end, but that sentence was the clincher. You’re probably right about that. (By the way, I loved Bruce Dern in this movie!) But, yeah, either way, we can’t really know whether he was lying or not, I agree. I’m leaning towards the former, but I only have half-formed ideas to support it – there’s no clear evidence pointing in either direction.
Thanks but you bring up a lot of good points as well. I agree Dern was great, I felt he was underused though. && I think he was telling the truth, we all know QT is brilliant but he does have a twisted mind. SLJ lied about the Lincoln letter to disarm white folk, as he put it. It seems to me he lies when he needs to. He had a motive for that lie and that was to protect him, it got him in that stagecoach. His oral rape story wasn’t disarming anyone but making Smithers writhe in disgust, I think he couldn’t help but wait to tell him what he did but we both agree we’ll never know.
He might have felt he did need to lie to get the old man riled up – but, anyway, there’s no hard evidence for either interpretation. We’re both mostly just speculating on this particular point. 🙂
And you’re right, I definitely also would have liked Dern’s character to have gotten more of a backstory and been more involved in things than he was. But that’s not a major complaint, of course…
You’re right. We are. Lol. All in good fun
&& Maybe just a tad bit more, I’m glad they gave us a reason to dislike him i.e the killing of the black troops. I just wish he had more lines and got in on the action more. He didn’t even pull the trigger, did he? But yeah not a big deal, I still loved the film.
I really enjoyed the movie, though I can’t say I loved it completely. But I rate it highly (just outside my current top 10), and I definitely don’t think it’s anywhere near Tarantino’s worst.
Def not his worst. I’d say that’s death proof and I still like that film. The Hateful Eight is my favorite film of the year. 10/10
That’s the thing about the whole film. All we know as an audience is what happened on screen. Otherwise, we either have to trust their stories or not. That’s what I love about one of my all-time favorite movies, THE USUAL SUSPECTS. You watch that film and you trust the “narrator” until the end. Then because of what is revealed you don’t know if every part of what he said was made up. The whole movie could be two hours of tall tales. I don’t see why this film should be expected to be any different. They’re hateful. You know that when you buy the ticket. Why trust anything a known villain says? Any of them. Just going by what we saw happen on screen, I saw eight hateful people who deserved to get theirs.
I agree with everything you said, including the The Usual Suspects love! 🙂
Race baiting. Pure and simple.
With a big dose of homosexual panic thrown in to really get the sickos in the audience fuming and squirming. And spotting their plaid boxers with pre-cum.
Can’t disagree.
Im sorry but anytime someone. .aka slj hits someone jjl…and both he and her fly out of the fucking cabin their intent is humor. Period.all yous are saying it wasn’t meant for comedy need to see the manner in which the beatings were potrayed….they were shocking and totally came from left field to give that. .wtf feeling. I mean think about it she’s sitting there laughing and then gets soup thrown in her face and still continues to laugh. Let’s not sit here and say qt did not know what he was doing. Lol. Let’s just all take it for what it is a movie. .you either like it or you don’t
Exactly. A movie.
It’s a movie that doesn’t work. Plan and simple no matter how you spin it off, comedy, action adventure, western, you can’t have a character be one of the “hateful” eight, and let’s take out her being female, and not know why this person is “hateful” but have the prolong violence thrown at them just doesn’t work. Maybe the character deserved to be beaten, punched, have hot stew thrown in their face (remember we are forgetting that she is a woman). But we are never given that opportunity, we are never given the ability to find out why the hangman loathes this character. And like the convoluted plan of hiding out at the haberdashery to rescue this character, it just doesn’t work and makes for a horrible movie. Unless, you enjoy seeing someone punched in the face, pistol whipped, elbowed, smacked, dragged, pummeled and all other manner to degraded someone who is weak and already in chains then by all fucking means this is the funniest movie since Mighty Python! See why I say it’s the character’s fault that this is such a horrible movie character wise, and lets face it QT is known for his characters, and even more so for how he writes his ‘FEMALE’ characters!
Hello Sasha, I just want to take this time to sincerely apologize for my bad conduct on the comments. I realized I got too defensive and should not have lashed out at these people who are movie lover like myself. I’d like to apologize to John Smith in particular. Sorry everyone, I didn’t want this to become a bloodbath. Hope I didn’t offend anyone or caused any distress.
I’ve stayed away from the comments on this post until this morning because I have my own strong opinions about The Hateful Eight, and frankly didn’t feel like brawling with anyone. But this is a really nive comment, Nixon, and I’m glad Disqus has it up top here, so this way I can see the apology before I even know what you’re apologizing for.
Apart from the comments he deleted because he came to agree with everyone else upon them – one in particular was way out of line. All evidence of them has conveniently disappeared…
I didn’t delete it?
The one where you replied to john? That’s the one I’m referring to, and below you claim that you deleted it.
Oh yeah that one. Yes I most def deleted it. I can’t believe I got like that though. Shameful
I was being very rude to John Smith in particular and Paddy. I deleted the more spiteful comments because I was very much embarrassed by them. I took things too far and I’m ashamed by it. You will only see me engage in friendly, healthy, debates about film from here on out. There was never any reason for me to spew poison.
I truly wish there was something for me to add, ever the devil’s advocate on anything, but since I haven’t seen the movie and must be ever so careful on the (justified) spoilers in this article and thread, I must remain silent. Oy.
Sorry, but I don’t buy any of this The Hateful Eight backlash. If you signed up to watch a Tarantino film set on the western frontier immediately after the Civil War with one black actor, one female actor and the rest a bunch of white actors who each play either an outlaw or a bounty hunter and don’t fully expect to hear awful language and see everyone get their ass kicked, women included, then you’re out of your mind. If you want to question the ethics of the screenplay then you can’t excuse Tarantino, Samuel L. Jackson or Jennifer Jason Leigh in their acceptance of the writing and roles–and none of those three people are racists or misogynists. Do you think you’re smarter than them when it comes to what roles & scripts they believe in? Honestly.
The fact is that The Hateful Eight is gloriously shot, entertaining as hell and meticulous in all of its crafts–the acting is especially top-notch.
Getting political about it is so boring.
The defence by people who say racist things is that they are not racist. If you want prove I’m not a racist or a misogynist, ask my friends Sam Jackson and JJL. Perhaps they didn’t mean to be racist but what they said was racist regardless and thus should be held to account for them. Nobody who has watched Tarantino films is shocked by the amount of swear and racial word. You might be shocked at first but after you see more of his films. I think now it’s more of a bafflement rather shock or disgust. I mean, there must be a point behind the excessive of swear/ racial words and violence. The problem here is more about bad filmmaking than anything else. He showed us violence against a helpless woman and expects to accept that she deserved without showing us why she’s so evil. If it was just a bullet to the head, we would just think the guys is evil, Instead we are expected to believe she’s the bad despite the fact she’s the one getting beat by the men. The beating were so casual and some people claim it was cartoonish so it didn’t seem like a big deal. I think that’s why I had big problem, the casual beating of a women as if it was acceptable behaviour. If it was horrible violence , we could say the men were just horrible basterds and she would earn our sympathy. I don’t get how we are expected to accept her beatings as a joke. Beating women is no laughing matter, it deserves to be treated as serious as it is.
what “why” do you need except that she’s a known outlaw in a world full of outlaws? she has as high of a price on her head as many of the men in her gang. are you f serious with this “why” bs?
The woman is tied and is still getting beat up. I don’t get what’ is so horrible about that she gets treated like that. Tarantino deliberately doesn’t say what Daisy did and he just puts us in the middle of her getting beat. She gets beat for slurs? Seriously ?
Hey John Smith I wanna apologize for my rude behavior. That was uncalled for and you did not deserve that.
I accept your apology. Let’s be more respectful in the future. Cheers to all the good guys on this board, especially Pete and Paddy.
I definitely will!! && yeah Pete made me realize I was being an asshole. Lol. I won’t bring anyone down anymore. Now let’s talk movies!
‘If you signed up to watch a Tarantino film set on the western frontier immediately after the Civil War with one black actor, one female actor and the rest a bunch of white actors who each play either an outlaw or a bounty hunter and don’t fully expect to hear awful language and see everyone get their ass kicked, women included, then you’re out of your mind.’
Since when did anyone say they didn’t fully expect to hear awful language? And what’s expectation got to do with it? So I expected to hear profanity flung around every two seconds or so, and what? That’s never gonna get to me, of all people. And I’m not going to avoid the films of any particular filmmaker just because I disagree with the sentiments I detect in their writing. That’s absolutely not even nearly the problem I have with this film. You’re massively missing the points people are making on this page, Benutty.
‘The fact is that The Hateful Eight is…’
Not a fact. Just your opinion. Stop trying to educate the rest of us in how we’re supposed to think about this film. Do you think you’re smarter than the rest of us?
And ftr, I completely do think I’m smarter than Quentin Tarantino on the issue of gender equality in film.
the “ftr” is probably true 🙂
“If you want to question the ethics of the screenplay then you can’t excuse Tarantino, Samuel L. Jackson or Jennifer Jason Leigh…”
yeah, here’s how I’m able to sort this out: I have less respect for Samuel L Jackson and Jennifer Jason Leigh now. I have less respect for everyone involved in this movie.
(Kurt Russell in particular has helpfully shown his ass recently to help me disregard him as anyone whose “ethics” I need to admire)
I don’t care if they’ve all made movies in the past that I enjoyed. I lost an enormous amount of respect for Jackson after he agreed to play that repulsive role in Django, and after The Hateful Eight I’m just about done feeling that I owe him any more benefit of the doubt.
He increasingly seems to me like the kind of guy who might do just about anything if the price is right.
see, I’m willing to consider the possibility that Jackson is aware that he’s a multimilliionaire thanks to Tarantino,
I believe that if somebody offers somebody else $5 million to do something gross and humiliating then there are plenty of somebodies who won’t think twice before saying “hell yes! just say when!”
I’m also well aware that Jackson has made 30 movies in the past 10 years and it’s hard for me think of any of those roles that are not whorish.
I’m not the kind of idiot who thinks, “hey, Samuel L Jackson is black, so if he’s ok with this shit, then who I am to judge?”
that’s like saying I should believe that crackpot ignoramus Dr Ben Carson is proof that the Republican Party gives a fuck about black people.
so yeah, here’s me with a bit of my own “Equal Opportunity” : I believe not every black actor or every black presidential candidate instantly deserves my obsequious respect just because they’re black.
clear enough? let me simplify it: I think there are plenty of greedy thoughtless reckless fools in every walk of life. a lot of them are white and a lot of them happen to be black.
being white doesn’t make anybody a moral authority and neither does being black.
FAIR.
the only people who hate this movie are; female police officers, male police officers, and/or people with a severe case of hemorrhoids—
I don’t care if it was racist, misogynist, homophobic, antisemitic.. I enjoyed it and I’ll see it again…
I’m none of the above. Should I have myself checked for haemorrhoids?
You might be a police officer and not know it…just sayin’
It’s more likely that I have haemorrhoids lbr
I wouldn’t delay
Just putting this out there Daisy did shoot Kurt Russell so the statement that “Daisy’s character is the only one who is disallowed from perpetrating any violence except verbal slurs.” is just not true. Also it is highly inaccurate to say that “Everyone else (all the men) in the film are allowed to use violence as means to whatever goals they have.” is also simply not true. Bruce Dern sat in his chair the entire movie until Samuel Jackson killed him. OB didnt use violence, neither did the men who were murdered in the Haberdashery before Kurt Russell and crew arrived. Also it was incredibly clear that Daisy was the second in command of a very feared gang and took the lead position of power when Channing Tatum died.
Don’t get me wrong I admire any effort to call to light misogyny where it exists but it simply doesnt exist in this film. I find it actually very interesting that you call Django a masterpiece seeing as I thought it was a highly flawed picture (not to mention poorly poorly written at times) that showed an understanding of slavery that was both highly juvenile and dangerously misleading. I did see Django three times in theatres so I found it entertaining, but there was nothing more to it than that. To me that movie was highly problematic, this one I think is Tarantino’s best film since Jackie Brown.
I will say this that I was very disgusted at the reaction of some of the audience in the beginning when Kurt Russell kept brutally smacking Daisy. I would say about 15% of the audience laughed hysterically, whereas I winced at the brutality. I dont see how this is the films fault, that would be like blaming Breaking Bad for the disgraceful reaction to Skylar White by a large number of fans. I also don’t think the violence in this film was over-the-top since in some ways I saw all the characters as being in a metaphorical hell (the blizzard reminded me of the deepest circle of hell from Dante’s Inferno). I did however think that Django was waaaayyyyy to violent to the point that it made the film significantly worse.
Just putting this out there Daisy did shoot Kurt Russell so the
statement that “Daisy’s character is the only one who is disallowed from
perpetrating any violence except verbal slurs.”
Here’s the difference. The brutality that Daisy has to endure for 2 and half hours is viciously inflicted with almost no provocation. She’s treated like a rabid dog every time she dares to crack a joke. She literally gets the shit beat out of her for trying to exhibit a sense of humor.
So yeah, you’re right Jason P, as soon as she can get her hands on a gun she does what ANY NORMAL HUMAN BEING would do. She tries to defend herself and put a stop to this insane dickhead who keeps smashing her in the face.
I feel just as sorry for ving rhames in pulp fiction, poor dude 🙁
Never understood why that scene was in there actually, controversy i guess. Gets people talking about your movie, bad press is good press i guess.
That scene always troubled me. It was needlessly offensive. Whereas the rape in The Hateful Eight didn’t strike me as such because it was exploiting the prejudices of a bigoted character and thereby demeaning him. It was intense, but didn’t make me as uncomfortable as the rape in Pulp Fiction. Still rather disturbing that the only manner in which Quentin Tarantino seems to be capable of understanding sex between two men is in a violent context.
The way i see it the guys a weirdo (probably a really nice guy in real life) the feet thing has always made me feel uncomfortable as well, i don’t know if you can objectify women by focusing on there feet? if the camera leered on there ass like it does in michael bay’s movie s then there would probably be comments, i don’t know. I just see tarantino movies as a bit off center or weird. Original i guess despite mashing up lots of different movies. I’ve never seen him as a feminist hero though.
Yeah I never understood that. Sex between two men doesn’t have to be violent. Lol
I’m not sure any normal human being would laugh while a person’s blood is spurting all over their face… I’d say she’s quite a bit more cold-blooded and nonchalant about it than most of us would be. (Unless I’m remembering the laughing part wrong but, even if that’s the case, there’s no evidence I can remember that she was particularly affected by the whole incident, if at all, right afterwards.)
And I agree that the violence she’s subjected to, as a prisoner, is way too much, but, given the context and setting, I don’t find it unrealistic – ESPECIALLY since she was a woman. I could be wrong, of course, as I haven’t lived in or read extensively about that time in American’s history.
“I don’t find it unrealistic – ESPECIALLY since she was a woman. I could be wrong, of course, as I haven’t lived in or read extensively about that time in American’s history.”
Claudiu, For me, it’s not a matter of whether the violence or the even the language is historically accurate or not. No doubt worse things than we see in Hateful8 were done to women in the 1870s and even in 2015.
The problem for me is the way the movie does nothing to encourage us to feel any sympathy or concern about Daisy. (as proof I will point to thousands of people on the internet who want to remind us: “but Daisy was BAD too!”)
=I don’t care if she is guilty of killing 15 men and eating their dicks for breakfast with scrambled eggs — she is helpless and handcuffed and due to be executed.
Why are vicious bounty hunters given long charming weird eccentric stretches of dialogue so that we get to know these crazy rascals and why does Tarantino think its funny and cool to let them establish themselves as complex individuals — and have these cruel men portrayed by two actors who are iconic legends of cinema?
Imagine this. Imagine Tarantino makes a movie about Tamir Rice, God Bless His Soul, and we never get to know this child in the movie — but Tarantino gives us 3 hours of the cops who killed him, chatting and joking and saying “n*gger this and n*gger that” and the movie gives them long indulgent scenes where we have to sit and listen to a bunch of their aimless “witty”conversations
And say we have the Tamir Rice cop murderers played by Kurt Russell and Sam Jackson and they get to have a big ol’ time laughing and slapping one another on the backs, and meanwhile there’s a dead child on the ground in the park. For 3 hours. How fucking funny would that be?
Even if Tamir Rice was a grown adult criminal who had been sentenced to death, would it be a lot of fun to watch a movie that revolved around the cops who slaughtered him just for the sheer macho trigger-happy hell of it?
Christ almighty, have we learned NOTHING from watching news stories this year about law enforcement who lose control and abuse suspected criminals and kill prisoners with impunity? ‘
And is ANY of this relevance even remotely conveyed in ANYTHING Tarantino chooses to show us?
(and by the way, I’m sick of hearing “well, that’s how people talked back then.” No. Tarantino’s dialogue for lowlife cowboys in 1870 sounds exactly like his dialogue for lowlife thugs in 2015. His dialogue is thick with modern lingo and lathered up with obliviously anachronistic small-talk idioms.)
yeah, I get it. The Wild West was violent. Women were treated like shit. That’s a historically accurate fact. Hilarious.
I understand that the lack of character complexity and a backstory equal to those of (some of) her co-stars for JJL’s character is perhaps the main thing that bothers you (and Sasha, and others). I never argued against that. 🙂 That’s absolutely valid criticism, though it’s still very debatable, in my opinion, whether that’s ever a major problem with the writing, for anybody, unless the character in question is a woman/member of a minority. So, for that reason, I don’t think it’s necessarily an unquestionable flaw in the writing (unless there’s some rule for quality writing I’m not aware of, that states you need to be politically correct), and it still all depends on whether or not you find this aspect offensive on a personal level (which is why I’m not surprised that certain female critics – as per Sasha’s references – have already stated that they don’t).
“Tarantino’s dialogue for lowlife cowboys in 1870 sounds exactly like his dialogue for lowlife thugs in 2015. His dialogue is thick with modern lingo and lathered up with obliviously anachronistic small-talk idioms.”
You’re probably right about that… I had a feeling that might have been the case, hearing the way they talked in the movie sometimes, but I was engrossed enough in (what I thought were) the good parts of the movie and, thus, wasn’t bothered enough by it to form a clear thought. But you’re definitely right – it’s a problem. To me it still seems minor (far worse anachronisms are present in even the best period films, if I’m not mistaken), but I can definitely see how it could put someone off much more than it can me, and rightly so.
I agree with you, I am just saying that what Sasha said was inaccurate, I don’t think I ever defended Kurt Russel’s character (in fact I have said other times in this thread that I found him to be the most evil of all the characters). I hope if anything I say is inaccurate will be called out.
Seeing this tomorrow. I’ve got a lot of thoughts in my head going in. We’ll see what happens.
Hope you like it but from what’s been said on this board and if you’re against violence against murderous females then you might not. I loved it though.
I really don’t know what to make of it.
Hell of a movie, one of the most haunting I’ve seen in a while, but that ending really does confound me.
Yeah that ending was pretty idk powerful. The lingering on her face. The slow pan out, literally meaning they were all gonna die. It was a fantastic film and yeah the violence towards Daisy was over the top but that’s not something I want to discuss anymore. It started a lot of heated arguments. She was rotten as hell and it would’ve been just as messed up if it would’ve been a man who suffered her fate at the end of the film. My favorite movie the year, didn’t think anything would topple Inside Out but it happened.
It’s my 4th right now (behind Mad Max, Tangerine, and Inside Out). But it might go higher on a second viewing.
I LOVED tangerine. I saw The Hateful Eight again and it improved, it’s almost like a stage play the way the haberdashery is set up. Gotta keep your eye on every corner of the screen. My top 5 ranking would be…
The Hateful Eight
Inside Out
Mad Max:Fury Road
Tangerine
The Martian.
I’m going to watch The Big Short now, I wonder if it’ll be any good and impact my list. Hmmmm
More than just about any other screenwriter, Tarantino believes in the power of the spoken word and narration. He doesn’t deploy words like B— and N—– because he wants to titillate, but rather to instead draw our attention to the ways that these words function as manifestations of power imbalances.
Some examples:
– The Bride’s reclamation of the Pussy Wagon in KILL BILL (and the word along with it).
– The use of foreign languages in DJANGO, which enable the secret communication between Brumhilda and Schultz, but also expose Candie as a faux-French fraud.
– ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT? Jackson’s speeches in Pulp chart his path from empty rhetorical gestures to a form of persuasive verbal enlightenment.
– INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is entirely devoted to the power of cinema to rewrite history, both in its invocation of Goebbels and in its fantasy of killing Hitler.
I could clearly go on, but I think Tarantino’s own filmography offers plenty of evidence of his high-minded intentions in HATEFUL’s use of language. If it makes you feel uncomfortable, or if it inspires laughter, it’s precisely because these words are more than words. As much as Todd Haynes, Tarantino is a semiotician, in his way.
Again, Daisy’s backstory isn’t sketchy because Tarantino lacks imagination… it’s precisely so we question her treatment throughout the film and her ultimate fate. That she is mobilized against precisely because she’s a woman (and that Warren is attacked on the basis of his race) is part of Tarantino’s moral imperative here… not a flaw in his film’s moral structure. The deployment of cuss words is the inverse of the Lincoln letter… a shorthand toward building trust… against a perceived common enemy.
Extremely well written rebuttal.
Well, he’s fans don’t seem to get the message. If this is the message in the film, then he clearly failed to communicate it well enough for both his critics and fans to see it. Daisy is clearly singled out for the worst treatment in the film but it’s not clear why that is except that she was the only women. If it was about the imbalance of power, why is Warren very tough and can defend himself but Daisy is helpless and gets beat all the time? This has always been bullshit defence of Tarantino. Regardless what Tarantino is trying to say, it always ends in a bloodbath. What you see is what you get with Tarantino, so there’s no point trying to look for some deeper meaning in his films. He likes sadistic characters, swear words, using the N-word and ending all it in a bloodbath.
Gotta say, that was a great comment.
Most of the other Tarantino screenplays you cite and quote are various levels of genius — and the farther back in his filmography we go, the more genius we find.
The Hateful Eight contains nothing like the brilliant flourishes of wordplay that thrilled us in classic ’90s Tarantino writing.
He’s gotten lazy. Seems like he’s found a formula he can cash in on, and all he wants to to do now is is pander to the lowest common denominator. The scatological humor and shaggy-dog-story-schtick in Hateful Eight is just tiresome and mundane and sophomoric.
One thing I wish film aficionados and auteur stans would try to do is accept the fact that every time an Eastwood or a Tarantino farts it doesn’t automatically produce the scent of a masterpiece.
That last comment is utter truth. I agree 100%. Every director will make a dud but in this case The Hateful Eight is no dud. Not by a long shot but I agree with you Ryan.
“The Hateful Eight contains nothing like the brilliant flourishes of wordplay that thrilled us in classic ’90s Tarantino writing.”
It’s definitely not on that level, I agree, but it’s not that bad either. There is some good stuff in there…
Over 95 percent of what Hollywood puts out is mysognist in front of or behind the scenes in some way. Tarantino is one of the very few acclaimed directors who has created iconic female characters. Broomhillda in Django I would argue was just as strong if not stronger than the men. She had to find a way to survive without weapons and friendship.
I haven’t seen Hateful Eight, yet, but we are always saying we want to see not just likeable women in movies. Maybe the audience is meant to see Daisy as an evil person and not just an evil woman. Should treatment of a female villain be different than it would be for a male? I don’t particularly enjoy the N-word (Scorsese does this too) or violence against women in movies, but I try to put these things in context. If you look closely every movie/director is problematic in some way.
It’s not that there’s one particularly evil female character in the film. It’s that the film’s only female character of any note is particularly evil. Quentin Tarantino didn’t show the respect for women to even conceive of a redeeming feature to her, or to even conceive of an explanation for her evil. The only portrait of women that The Hateful Eight presents among its leading ensemble is one of pointless, baseless, practically innate evil.
I literally just got home from Boston, an hour away, to see this in 70mm.
I don’t really think I’m going to do too many spoilers but if you haven’t seen the film skip the rest of this comment…
Let’s get this out of the way. This was not the bloodiest bloodbath in a Tarantino film. I still think that’s DJANGO UNCHAINED. That film’s a masterpiece. This ain’t. It’s good don’t get me wrong. I’m a Tarantino fan through and through but perhaps it’s because of an idea I had going in but I was less than whelmed. But good Tarantino is still better than almost everyone else.
Here’s what the trailers made me think. (I never read the leaked script or looked up any of the plot. I wouldn’t do that to myself.) Something popped from the trailers making me think this was going to be akin to A PURE FORMALITY. Hoping to guess right, when that didn’t happen I was a little letdown. I think you could still make a case for the idea that I had, that Minnie’s Haberdashery was a weigh station to hell. That would allow for why these hateful people were there and what happened to them in the ways that it happened. I can’t say more about that without total spoilers but that’s what I was hoping it was. Then immediately after the film, I thought it wasn’t. Then on the bus ride home, I said ‘well… maybe’. But it’s probably not. It would solve some of that issue though.
Now about Daisy. I trusted John that she was as bad as he said. If you do, I think the movie is a different experience. But I can’t say that as she was being strung up I didn’t think ‘oh crap, here it comes’ and by “it” I meant the ‘Tarantino is a misogynist’ thing. He’s not. I think we agree on that. But even I disagree occasionally with what happened to a couple of female characters in his movies. I think there might be a type of female that he’s not as kind to. There was the dippy cheerleader girl in DEATH PROOF and Candie’s sister in DJANGO UNCHAINED. I’m more sympathetic to the former, than the latter but I don’t necessarily think either of them “deserved” what they got. I see it as a difference of opinion but again, this is why we don’t all wear the same pants.
Now in this case you’re right. We don’t see WHY Daisy deserves what she gets IF she deserves it. I have a funny feeling even if you knew what his reasoning is with her, you’d probably hate it. It could be implied. It could be something that was left out. But if we look at who she was and who they all were, they were pretty despicable people. What we know for sure, she was in a gang. A pretty bad one it seems. That a woman would go along with such vile behavior might be enough for some to say that she deserved it. Because many suppose that women shouldn’t be as evil as men. I think especially the characters in the film would think that way, given that time and what “lady-like behavior” should have been. Is that fair? Nope. Is it how someone back then would have been perceived? Probably. Or it could be that whatever Tarantino has in her secret backstory is enough for him to string her up even in the present day. He just didn’t tell us what that is. Which brings us back to trusting our Hangman.
If you don’t then I’d have to ask would there be any backstory for her that would make the way she was treated okay? Because if the answer is no, then it doesn’t matter does it?
The point is, though, that Quentin Tarantino didn’t even consider her worthy of a backstory. In his writing, he doesn’t even give her an opportunity to defend herself against the violence done to her, nor even explain it. Even if she was every bit as evil as she was written to be, he seems to feel that we’ll just accept that she is and not require any explanation. She’s a bitch, and just a bitch, and she exists only to be a bitch within this film.
Daisy does not strike me as the type of woman that would ever want “an opportunity to defend herself against the violence done to her” because she willingly LIVES IN a world of violence. She embraces it. Does she hate the pain that is inflicted on her? NO. She revels in it. She eggs it on.
The misogyny argument is a projection of a culture and group of viewers that is sensitive to the issue. That’s fine. But attempts to find evidence of it in the text and subtext are STRAAAAAAAAAAAINED.
She deserves to get beat because she loves to get hit? I rest my case.
And such is precisely the way Quentin Tarantino wrote her. My issue is not with her, it’s with him. He concocted a character who didn’t deserve any more than that so that he wouldn’t have to excuse his hatred for her.
Dismissing the validity of my argument as strained, when you have no idea of how little nor how much I may have had to strain to form that argument, is just rude. You may disagree with me, but that’s not to say that you’re right and I’m wrong.
I’ve noticed that many of the negative reviews, including those that bring up this aspect of it, call out the film for being nihilistic, gratuitously violent, and all that… but I’m like, name a Tarantino movie that isn’t at least a bit nihilistic. This isn’t a new aspect of his artistic identity at all. Maybe he’s crueler here – I have yet to see the film – but at the end of the day is that anything more than an issue of scale?
I’ll wait until I see the movie to say whether or not I think it’s misogynistic – the descriptions don’t sound good, but never trust mass outrage out the gate, right? I’d be careful in bringing up his prior female characters as some kind of bulletproof not-a-misogynist defense, though. Even putting aside the flimsiness of that kind of argument (misogynists don’t always express misogyny outwardly all the time, you know), the “strong female characters” that he writes frequently strike me as a sort of indirect fantasy fulfillment – you KNOW Tarantino wants to fuck the Bride, or Jackie Brown, or Mia Wallace, or Shosanna, or Abernathy, or whoever else. Why do you think he likes their feet so much?
Objectively, yes, this is probably his cruellest film. Nobody in the film emerges as particularly pleasant by the end. The violence is his most extreme yet – it’s proper torture porn territory stuff, and not with the relative lightness that Kill Bill provided.
‘misogynists don’t always express misogyny outwardly all the time, you know’
Thank fuck I’m not the only one who realises this.
‘the “strong female characters” that he writes frequently strike me as a sort of indirect fantasy fulfillment’
That thought had lingered in my mind ever since I saw my first Quentin Tarantino film. I just never gave it any credence because I had no hard evidence to back it up. But I can’t see how someone with genuine respect for women could write a character like Daisy in a film like The Hateful Eight and then defend it against accusations of misogyny, and not actually harbour some misogynistic sentiment.
Is this the same Sasha Stone defending Gone Girl last year against the accusation of being misogynist because of the way it portrays women?
Pike’s character uses the (US) public’s tendency to assume the missing wife – the beautiful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Midwestern, soon-to-be mother – was a victim of an abusive husband. She uses it to get away with her crime. That was the one of the main points for the book/film.
The movie also provides the audience with proof of Amazing Amy’s deplorable behavior.
Remember Memento? Carrie-Anne Moss’ character is aware of this tendency assume the beaten woman is the victim. She uses it to her advantage. And other films have, too.
Gone Girl and Memento provide proof that the “victim” is not what she seems.
It’s important for a film (or other material) to elucidate the facts, otherwise impressionable minds could get the wrong idea. If all the guy has to do is imply that the woman is to blame, well, every abusive husband has a valid point. Does the Hateful Eight show us proof that Daisy is as bad as they come? Does a credible source, i.e., not a scoundrel, say so?
Her bounty price says so.
EDIT: I don’t know exactly what year this movie takes place in, except that I know its several years after the Civil War. I used an inflation calculator to see what her bounty would be worth today. It’s about $200,000. Remember Sam Jackson’s 3 bounties from the beginning of the film didn’t even add up to one of her.
I’ll need to double-check but I think The Hateful Eight and Gone Girl are two different movies and there are probably lots of difference between them.
nobody likes a smart ass guys 🙂
yes, if I were Daisy, some asshole with a gun would have me immobilized in handcuffs and I’d be getting punched in the face hard enough to kill any normal human for the same ‘smart ass’ attitude that makes you giggle when you’re in a theater tanked on pepsi and milk duds
I was actually referring to your comment about two different movies not being comparable, it’s almost like you were calling the guy a smart ass whilst appearing like a smug smart ass yourself. Also where is the sympathy for any of the other characters in his movies?
Personally i’m not a huge tarantino fan but like i’ve said numerous times now it seems weird that people think his early work was genius despite peoples ears being sliced off, anal rape, women being shot at close point range (i think that’s the chick in reservoir who shoots tim roth if i can remember) etc etc there are loads of examples, and yet people are now getting bent out of shape, i guess because those movies were good it was acceptable? For me I thought the vaseline scene in the hospital with buck in kill bill was offensive but i guess because the bride kicked some ass that was okay, i guess i spit on your grave was a feminist masterpiece after all 🙂
By the way as somebody who used to get punched in the face (boxed when i was a teenager into my early twenties) i can tell you those punches although painful wouldn’t do you that much damage, in fact the person dishing them out would probably be at risk of breaking some bones, but i just see it as a rather stupid, very tedious, overlong movie. To me the guy showed potential with jackie brown and then went and took a left turn into the strange movies he does now. Like i said a load of hot air about a load of crap.
One punch, delivered to the wrong person in the wrong way, can kill that person.
Indeed, but the wrong punch delivered to the wrong part of that person results in a broken hand, and it’s more often then one would think, it’s why i had to stop boxing, fragile hands as the nomenclature goes. Hands are to pick things up with not to hit them basically.
fair enough, mostly
I can’t explain why the old ultra-violence in early Tarantino films was more acceptable to me.
Maybe because I convinced myself (and do honestly believe) that there was an underlying moral compass and a sense of real consequence or at least conscience that justified it in those films.
Or maybe the newness of all that visceral sickness to me at time was such a thrilling jolt that it triggered something inside of me that I might not be too proud to admit resides inside of me if I reexamined it now that I’m more mature.
Maybe when I saw the early Tarantino films it didn’t seem to me like his only goal was to outdo his grotesquery with ever-escalating levels of grotesquery.
I’m not interested in analyzing myself in blog comments to satisfy your curiosity about why I like one thing and don’t like another.
I think in this case the answer is simple. Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are amazingly brilliant and The Hateful Eight isn’t.
Fairdos buddy, like i said i’m not really a fan of his work, i watched this whilst at a loose end and some people i know said it was pretty good (i also like westerns). I didn’t like it, i agree with some of the thing’s in your post, but i put tarantinos early work down to him being young and full of new ideas and i guess he did reinvent (for a time at least) the way people were writing screenplays (similar movies came along ad nauseum)
But most directors do there best stuff early on, i think kubricks best period was 64 to 75 and then after that i don’t care for any of his films, ridley scott is always criticized that he didn’t do anything as good as alien and blade runner since those movies, so maybe there is something to that. I thin tarantino is tired, i’ve heard his whole i’ll only do ten movies shtick, at this rate i don’t see him having anything left for one more movie let alone two but he may surprise us.
At the end of the day i think people gravitate towards directors when they should gravitate towards films, my top ten list is made up of movies by about ten different directors but i think with this auteur shit people cling to a certain director (probably because they look up to them or live there lives vicariously through them in a sick way) defend everything they do and say everything they’ve ever done is great, christopher nolan springs to mind. Anyway cheers for the reply.
cheers back atcha.
We never see what she’s done wrong, but she still gets beaten up through out the film. Beating up a prisoner is bad but watching a men beating a women is very shocking. Or am I in the minority on this? Beating up a women for slurs even if some of them were racial. I mean, did I, Sasha and others imagine that? Is he trying to make a point that racial slurs are worse than beating up a women? I don’t care about what she did wrong, beating a defenceless women is wrong. I have never hated a film instantly as much as this film. I am so glad I didn’t pay to see this trash.
I’m glad you won’t be watching it then. A diabolical, savage, murderer deserves to be treated the way she was.
I have seen before it was released like millions of people around the world. It was leaked long ago. This film sucked big time. Do find beating up any defenceless women acceptable regardless the crimes she’s accused of? They were beating her for slurs, so that proved she was evil and deserved to get beat? You can’t defend the unnecessary violence against Daisy and the over sue of the N-word. This is diabolical and shameful film. I feel sorry for the women in your life if you enjoyed the violence against Daisy.
I saw this film the other day and was actually surprised by how much I hated it. Didn’t find it misogynistic though. She was a bad woman who deserved what she was getting just like all the men in the film. My problem was that for a Tarantino film and for a mystery I found The writing to be atrocious and predictable. For me this was one of the worst films I’ve seen this year. I actually started to fall asleep, Never a good sign at a movie. theres a lot of bloat in this one that needed an editor. Sad cause I was looking forward to it.
Also sam jackson does have his dick shot off in this movie, doesn’t the guy get a little bit of sympathy for losing his gonads? and for those who haven’t seen it, sorry spoilers and all that shit.
Why aren’t people praising quentin anyway for making the first film in a while that doesn’t have some weird foot fetish crap in it?
It’s a film by quentin tarantino, the guy has a dude butt raped in one of his movies, has another film where a cop is tortured to death (he must hate cops to). One where one black guy beats another black guy to death with a hammer and has of course made a feminist masterpiece in which a woman is raped multiple times whilst she’s in a coma. The guy makes trash, he always has done and always will, it maybe well written trash but it’s still trash all the same, think alex cox meets spaghetti westerns and you’ve pretty much got tarantino’s number. Now i’m off to watch some nazi’s get scalped because an eye for an eye in tarantino’s world is the way you do it.
Sasha, this is brilliantly written. I feel intellectually enriched as a result of reading it, and enjoyed every paragraph. Wasn’t bothered by the length either – if anything, I just wanted it to go on and on. Incisive, mature, measured, passionate, informed and stylish. One of your all-time best pieces.
ftr, I don’t think The Hateful Eight makes Quentin Tarantino a misogynist, I think it exposes him as one. It reconfigured my interpretation of his entire career. Having thought Django Unchained was as low as he could sink in his depiction of female characters, he went and did this. I don’t see the complex, powerful roles he wrote for women in Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds and Pulp Fiction as the feminist statements I once did – now, I see them as fetishistic portrayals of beautiful women. They almost feel exploitative to me.
Paddy I can’t argue with the way the film made you feel, and I do agree that the quality of the female characters have been going down in Tarantino’s recent films (Besides Hateful Eight I have been of the opinion Tarantino’s films in general have been going downhill since Jackie Brown). I would argue that very few characters in this film are really that well developed (I dont see that as a bad thing btw, great movies can have 1 dimensional characters). Really only Samuel L Jackson has a deep characterization. Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Demian Bichir, and Channing Tatum were less developed than Jennifer Jason Leigh(I actually think she was either the second or third most developed character Walton Goggins may be the second or third).
To me the point of the movie was an exercise in building tension through distorting and revealing information. I do agree that the violence against JJL was completely brutal and hard to watch. It wasnt funny at all and I was very disgusted at those in the audience that laughed every time Kurt Russell smacked her. I just dont see how this exposes Tarantino as a misogynist. He has had countless characters in his films suffer brutally by the hands of others. The ear scene in Reservoir Dogs is a good example, so is the rape scene in Pulp Fiction. I will admit I am a male so you are in all likelihood better educated on this subject than me so there is a decent chance I can be persuaded to your side. I just as of now am not convinced that this film exposes Tarantino as a misogynist. But I really am looking forward to hearing more about your point of view!
I also dont see how this retroactively diminishes the amazing role he wrote for Pam Grier in Jackie Brown. That was a character who was smart, independent, strong, funny, and charismatic. But again you have a different perspective on this issue that I am very much looking forward to hearing!
Paddy I apologize after reading a few more comments I realize your complaint about Daisy isnt that she wasnt developed its that there were no redeeming qualities for her. I think thats a fair point, I would argue though that she was no where near the worst character in this film (that in my opinion goes to Kurt Russell was far worse). I just dont think any of the characters besides those who were killed at the Haberdashery by Channing Tatum and crew were in any way redeeming. Maybe OB was a decent man, but so was the female driver (in fairness she was hardly in the film). As to your point elsewhere about JJL not being free, I am just throwing this out there and again would love to hear your thoughts is it possible that this may be a consequence of this film being set in the 1800s?
I do completely agree that there is an inherent lack of female representation in film across the board. Think about how many films (this one included I believe) cant pass the Bechdel Test.
Don’t apologise mate, I enjoyed reading your replies. As to how I feel the treatment of Daisy in The Hateful Eight exposes Quentin Tarantino as a misogynist: I simply can’t find any argument against this in any of his other films. To me, there’s a clear and strong woman-hating strain to how he wrote the character of Daisy, one that’s not at all mitigated by the simple fact that he’s written good roles for women in the past. And the reason I think it’s not is that all of those roles feel a little exploitative to me, like he’s only writing them because he gets off on working with attractive women playing parts where they commit crimes and exact revenge and look gorgeous. They don’t generally run any deeper than that, at least not from his contribution – Jackie Brown, Beatrix Kiddo, Shoshanna are all great characters, but I find their greatness stems more from what the performers provided than what Tarantino provided. And anyway, in the case of Jackie Brown, she’s Elmore Leonard’s character, not Tarantino’s.
The point about Daisy not being free: naturally, the time period of the film has consequences in the treatment of its characters. But all of the other women in The Hateful Eight are free – there’s even a black woman with her own business, the most upstanding part in the entire ensemble. Daisy is not free because she’s a bad person who’s done some awful things, but isn’t this true of all the other main characters? And every single one of them has their own freedom. Every single nasty man in the film can get up off their chair whenever they want to. Only Daisy cannot.
Perversely, I believe The Hateful Eight actually does pass the Bechdel Test, so excuse me while I vomit into my breakfast…
I’m rly loving this discussion we’re having, Jason. As I wrote earlier to Chris, it’s great to be able to have a measured, reasonable debate about this sensitive topic, regardless of whether I agree or disagree with whomever I’m conversing with.
Paddy thank you for the reply, I will wait to give my thoughts since I am actually seeing the film again tonight. I’ll make sure to try to watch it from your perspective and I’ll let you know my what I think!
I just came back from my second viewing of this movie and I tried my best to see it from your perspective (obviously since im not you this wasnt a perfect success lol), I have to say my opinion of the film changed. I now kinda see this film as sort of a cinematic Rorschach inkblot test. The beatings against Daisy aren’t filmed in a way that makes 100%(or close to it) of the audience immediately side with Daisy. I couldn’t help but think Tarantino could have made Channing Tatum’s character Jennifer Jason Leigh’s sister instead of brother (ideally twin sister since I love Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the whole argument about this being misogynistic would be put to rest. I also from this viewing found I hate Kurt Russell even more. Tje one thing I found redeemable about him in the first film is he takes in his bounties alive, my working theory on him is he does that not because it is honorable but cause he enjoys beating his prisoners (I dont think he would beat his male prisoners as bad though).
I do still disagree that this movie is misogynistic. I agree that if a misogynist were to see this film they would probably react with glee and laughter (as many did both showings about 15-20% by my estimate). However the question I kept asking myself is if Tarantino would be one of those laughing. I came to the conclusion that he would not. The reason for that is the way he added a close-up shot of Daisy each time Kurt Russell abused her in the beginning, the shot was always of her in pain and the 70mm cinematography let you see every bit of agony on Jennifer Jason Leigh’s face. I can’t see those shots being added by a filmmaker who is misogynistic.
I also have to disagree that Jennifer Jason Leigh was the only character who couldnt get up. Bruce Dern was in the same position (only without the beatings, I dont think the reason for that is misogyny I think Bruce Dern didnt get beat cause it would not have made the lie Channing Tatum and company were trying to sell as believable). Had Bruce Dern gotten up from his chair Channing Tatum told him he would die. So I don’t think the reason Jennifer Jason Leigh couldnt get up and walk freely wasn’t cause she was a woman, I think it was more because she was a prisoner, kinda like Bruce Dern. Only Bruce Dern was treated much much better.
Finally I also think it would be an interesting experiment if decades from now a filmmaker does a shot by shot remake of this film only replaces the hateful male characters with females and make Jennifer Jason Leigh a man. If that happened i’d be surprised if there aren’t widespread complaints of misandry. I wouldn’t agree with that assessment, but im sure the outcry would be exponentially worse than the misogynistic claims against this film.
I honestly can’t argue with your assessment, Sasha, as that is the way the movie hit you personally and you’re simply clarifying why it did. Totally fair. I will only say that there are several times in the film that her nastiness is on display. I’ll list them here and then we’ll agree to disagree on this one:
*SPOILERS* (and admittedly some of these things are worse than others)
1. She shoots John Ruth dead and later hacks off his arm like it’s no problem in an attempt to grab a gun in order to kill Sam Jackson’s character who can’t even move to defend himself.
2. As you mentioned, she is a vicious racist and directs countless slurs at Jackson throughout (as does basically everyone else in the film). I have to say it would be unfair to dismiss this as “not as big a deal” or somehow a lesser offense.
3. It is mentioned at one point in the film that she is to be hanged for “multiple murders”. That’s about as far as they dive into her past crimes.
4. She spits on the Lincoln letter (yes, this is minor but it is a shitty thing to do)
5. She tries to bargain with Goggins to get him to kill Jackson in exchange for his life and some bounty money. Now, this particular point seems to illustrate something about her character. She strikes me as the kind of crime boss that always gets other people to do the dirty work for her, rarely getting down in the trenches herself unless she absolutely has to. And it is a testament to her character that so many big bad guys gladly work at her side, even going so far as to die for her and offer up their own bodies as bounty to achieve her goals. She’s gotta be “somebody” if all these guys are willing to go that far for her.
Your points are valid, but don’t undermine the validity of Sasha’s points. The problem isn’t that Daisy didn’t deserve what she got, it’s that Quentin Tarantino didn’t even bother to consider that she could be capable of not deserving it. The flashback characters aside, she’s the film’s only female, and she’s written without a single redeeming characteristic. And the film seems to take glee in its depiction of her punishment, almost encouraging its audience to participate in cheering along the violence done to her. You walk into this film looking for role models, you’re watching the wrong film, but you’ll at least find some positive qualities in some of the other seven. But they’re all men. The one woman isn’t even permitted the suggestion of decency about her.
*MORE SPOILERS*
Tarantino didn’t bother to consider that ANYONE in the movie would be capable of not deserving what happens to them. That’s the thing. I’m very curious who you found to have “positive qualities” out of the men on screen. Sam Jackson’s character burned a hundred men alive and orally raped a dude in a sadistic game. Walton Goggins was a member of one of the lousiest gangs to ever roam the south, terrorizing South Carolina for years. Dern’s general is a bigot of the highest order. Madsen, Bichir and Roth are lackeys, but they gladly participate in the slaughter of the folks at Minnie’s before the stagecoach arrives, and the bounties on their head are significant enough to know they did some other REALLY bad things (again, consider how big JJL’s bounty is and that will also start to illuminate how rotten her character is meant to be). OB is the only one we know next to nothing about, and seems to be the most decent person. But he is the 9th person in that cabin, and the movie is called The Hateful Eight.
For the record, I never once undermined the validity of anyone’s point. I made a point to say that I couldn’t argue with Sasha’s assessment, and that we’ll agree to disagree about the movie.
The male characters were permitted, if only in small amounts, to be funnier, smarter and, crucially, freer than Jennifer’s. She’s a captive vessel for abuse throughout the film. And those horrible things that you mention the male characters did? By and large, at least they were provided reasons for doing them. Just about all we know about Daisy is that she’s a bitch, and nothing more. She’s not allowed any motivation. She’s barely even allowed to get up off her stool!
I’d have a serious problem with anyone who could write a 3-hour movie with just one leading female among eight roles, and refer to her as ‘bitch’ more often than by her real name, and infer that she deserves it too. If there was a sole gay character in a film who was mostly referred to as ‘faggot’ and was depicted as being a totally baseless, pointlessly evil character, it’d be plain old homophobia.
She definitely gets a few laughs in the movie for things she actually says and does (not just the ugly laughs some people spew out when she gets hit), so I can’t go with you on “funnier”. And in terms of “smarter”, again I have to point out that she has all these men working for her and laying their lives on the line for her so there’s definitely at least some intelligence there, no? “Freer” I can’t argue with.
I don’t think that’s correct. I thought they were working for her brother. He had the biggest bounty on him and hers was the same as the other guys.
The way I see it, her and her brother were running the gang, but I can also see an argument that he was top dog and she was number 2 (until of course his head got blown off, then she was in charge). But regardless of that, yes her bounty is absolutely WAY higher than the other members of the gang.
I’m pretty sure Samuel L Jackson’s character had a line about Daisy and Grouch being worth 10,000, which would make them the members with the least amount of bounty. My assumption watching it was that she was the next in line to be the gang leader simply because of her family connection, we didn’t see her do any act of physical violence that wasn’t in self defense, the movie doesn’t earn treating her like she deserves any of the violence she’s getting. I think it’s just terrible and lazy writing on Tarantino’s part.
Except her brother, whose bounty price is never named, although it is possible it would’ve been higher than hers.
Chris I agree with what you are saying but I thought that the brother had a $50,000 bounty and Bob has a $15,000 one (at least someone did, I remember numbers much better than names lol). But I do completely agree with your overall points.
You’re right that Jody had a 50k bounty but if I recall the other gang members were worth less than Daisy. I could be wrong. Still, even if her bounty is comparable it shows that she is on a level playing field of nastiness with the other guys in the movie.
I completely agree, even if I am right, Daisy still would have the third highest bounty in the film, much higher than the ones Samuel L Jackson killed in the beginning. For me the interesting thing with Daisy was how my opinion changed of her as the information about her character became more credible. I didnt quite buy she was a monster at the beginning, I figured there was a decent chance she may be innocent. But once Channing Tatum died, and she mentioned that she had 15 men ready to sack an entire town whether she was telling the truth or not I was convinced she was a monster.
I thought they did say his bounty and I thought it was way more. I forget the figure. Maybe they were talking about someone else.
Oh and as for “reasons”, none of the “reasons” for the things these guys did are acceptable reasons that justify anything, so if you’re suggesting that those things somehow let those characters more off the hook than her I’d have to disagree. And JJL has the largest bounty of anyone in the film, dead or alive, and since we know some of what they did we can easily infer what she did had to be worse. Her character is meant to be a monster, but I just don’t understand why people think that Tarantino wrote her as a monster because she’s a woman. That’s the same bullshit people pulled on Gone Girl last year.
I have not seen “Gone Girl” but I don’t think I would be as appalled as I was be this film. There’s no problem with a female character being called a bitch if that is how she acts. What do you call male characters who act as bad or worse than her? That’s why the films is a huge failure because it doesn’t establish the crimes she committed so it makes it hard for the audience to accept she is as bad the other character claim. The violence and the over use of the N-word isn’t justified. The defence is that this Tarantino film, so what did you expect.
“What do you call male characters who act as bad or worse than her?”
How about, as you mentioned, calling Jackson the N-word repeatedly? That’s pretty bad.
You make some good points, Chris. I can’t argue with your interpretation of the film. I suppose we just disagree with one another, but I’m glad to have a reasonable discussion with someone on this 🙂
I concur! None of this gets me worked up anyways. I’m perfectly understanding of the people who can’t abide this movie.
Not to mention there’s that big speech from Tim Roth about frontier justice… and the recurrent question of whether or not the various back stories we hear about the characters are true… I don’t think the film is designed to make us have a concrete back story about anyone. Throughout, we’re shifting in our figures of audience identification, which calls into question the very concepts of mob violence and justice eked out passionately.
It’s definitely a more interesting film that the quotes above imply… It’s quite clearly an allegory for hate-driven rhetoric in American politics and public life. The fact that racism and misogyny are held out (and clearly criticized!) as unlikely unifiers makes the film sober-minded and frankly moral.
I’m with you on the parallels to today’s social climate. I view it as commentary on the kind of world that produces GamerGate, the events in Ferguson, and Donald Trump as a viable political candidate.
Bravo!
I loved this piece, Sasha. Hoping you don’t read all the mainsplaining that the comments will surely bring.
so if I disagree with her take and I say why here then I’d be mansplaining?
Not unless you say it in a mansplaining manner. Stop being so defensive when you’ve nothing to defend yourself against… yet.
A man telling a woman what misogyny is and isn’t while also telling her that she never should have written a piece on it at all is nearly an SNL parody of mansplaining. But yet it happened.
Are you suggesting that’s what I’ve done?
Are you the one who did that? I don’t know. I’m viewing this out of thread right now, on my phone in Disqus. If you did that, you would know though. It was the person who did that who immediately made me pluck my eyes out and roll them across the hall here.
I absolutely did not do that, but your reply to me seemed to suggest you thought I did. I guess you must be referring to someone else.
Then I wasn’t talking about you. Not sure why you decided to reply on the defense.
Like I said, your direct reply to me seemed to suggest you were calling me out for something I didn’t do.
Just thank the men that are digging up the fossil fuels that are being burned up and used in order for you to share any kind of comment on the internet. There’s a bit of mansplaining for everybody.
I have yet to see the film, it isnt out in the UK yet. and i look forward to seeing it. Still, i respect this piece from Sasha. no one should tell a woman how to feel about witnessing violence against women on screen. so with all due respect to the glenn kennys, kris tapleys etc, they should fall back on that aspect. fine if they enjoy the film, but do not act like woman who was taken aback by the violence ennacted on Jennifer Jason Leigh is uncool, or crazy, or emotional or not cinema saavy or whatever.
i feel the same way sasha feels about this, as watching certain black representation on screen. even a film like 12 years a slave, directed by a black man, written by a black man, from a book by a black man. i still have a visceral reaction to seeing black lilves dehumanised like that on screen, and that was a film that was clearly on the side of right. so a film that takes a more provocative for provocatives sake approach is going to be offensive and obnoxious
i think tarantino’s problem is his presentation. he is so blase and obnoxious when describing his films and their controversial elements. if he was a little more sober minded, and came across as someone who took these things, slavery, holocaust, misogyny seriously, he might, i say might, be given the benefit of the doubt, bt his whole persona just seems like provocative for provocative sake.
i still want to see the film, but i just wanted to acknowledge that what sasha is describing, that visceral reaction to seeing someone like yourself dehumanised up on that screen, is very real and why people should not be dismissive of that reaction. cause it is a legitimate reaction. and i guarantee you, when you are part of a opressed group, women, minorities, you will be more aware of BS masquerading as art than people who have no tangible connection.
‘i guarantee you, when you are part of a opressed group, women, minorities, you will be more aware of BS masquerading as art than people who have no tangible connection.’
THIS. All of this. It’s easy for a compassionate, forward-thinking person to understand when material is offensive and to feel passionate that it has no place in society. But when that person is not a part of an oppressed group, understanding is just about all they’re capable of doing. And while I appreciate their sympathy and their support, I know they can never experience it the way I experience it. I don’t just understand it, I feel it. Watching Daisy get beaten up the way she was in this film made me turn red and start to shake a little. It was horrible.
It was not that bad man. Jesus you act like she was a hostage, nice girl. The woman was savage, mean, spiteful, rageful, and full of poison and hate. But it made you red and shake a little. Please. Id understand if they did it a character who had good qualities but she had NONE! What part of The Hateful Eight are you people not understanding?
Well yeh it did. Maybe it wasn’t that bad for you, but you’re not me.
Anyway, my whole point is that Daisy had no good qualities. It’s plainly disrespectful to write a movie with just one female character of note, and to write her with nothing redeeming about herself. Other characters are smart, successful, funny. She’s just a rotten bitch. That’s it.
Harvey Weinstein: “Tarantino is the most pro-woman ever,” Weinstein said in an interview. “[Look at] Uma Thurman [in “Kill Bill”], Pam Grier [in “Jackie Brown”], Melanie Laurent and Diane Kruger [in “Inglourious Basterds”]. If there are cries of misogyny, we will sit down and make them watch ‘Jackie Brown,’ and at the end of the ‘Jackie Brown’ seminar, they will have to say, ‘Hey, we’re just fishing for stupidity.‘”
Clearly Harvey W. forgets Alabama being pummeled by Gandolfini in True Romance. Kill Bill also took perverse pleasure in messing up Uma Thurman(and Beatrix Kiddo, by the way, was not a great character at all– she was a non character, a blank nothing of a character, holding a sword and acting out Tarantino’s daddy revenge stuff.) But all this is besides the point. Tarantino has nothing to say. Tarantino is the new Wacko Jacko. A talented guy who lost his way and his mind and now one can really, in truth, only describe his movies as ghoulish and toxic. What is strange is that there aren’t more people stepping up to say– not only is this guy very ill, very disturbed, but he also has no idea how to write a script, he has no idea how to write metaphors, he has no idea how to tell a story, and he has no idea what he’s talking about.
If you go back to True Romance, what seemed wonderful and fresh then has now soured. Because he is still saying nigga nigga nigga, only now he’s over 50 and tries to attribute it all to political importance. Like he is shining an intelligent light on racism, going where no one else will go. Actually, no he’s not. He’s not a clear enough person to address the subject. He’s too full of anger and hatred to address the subject. And there is the added problem of him still trying to be black, still thinking he is so soulful that he passes. The Gary Oldman character in True Romance, Drexl Spivey, is Tarantino. A really confused white dude who thinks he’s black. But Tarantino would never write that character now. Because it would be too exposing.
Tarantino is not the only old white guy who is obsessed with being black. Keith Richards comes to mind. Michael Mann is another movie director who constantly is showing off how down he is with the brothers. He loves to drop Charlie Bird Parker’s name. Ali existed solely for Mann to show everyone how down he was(did anyone need to see Will Smith try to be as beautiful as the much filmed and documented real Muhammad Ali?) So, it’s not like QT’s confusion is unique. And in the case of Keith Richards, his obsession with black culture actually helped a lot of blues players make money in later life and it helped Keith create maybe the greatest rock n’ roll of all time. So, good. But still… After reading Keith’s book, and watching footage of him hanging out with only Jamaicans, I would caution Richards that obsessing over African Americans is a sort of racism unto itself. That is to say, look deeper than skin color, even if you are in adoration.
But back to QT. Tarantino’s confusion is not fostering good work. He hasn’t touched Pulp Fiction levels since Pulp Fiction. Django and Basterds were confused revenge cartoons where Tarantino used his hatred of his father and projected it onto slave owners and Hitler. As a Jew, I can say, no thanks. You wanna work out your daddy stuff, do it with your daddy. Don’t make dumb cartoons about Hitler. And if you do make dumb cartoons about killing Hitler, know that Jews did not get no catharsis out of watching you kill Hitler. It just felt like what it was. A simpleton teenager brain who thinks that more violence is the solution to violence. And a really big time messianic complex(of course it was cinema that killed Hitler, and we all know who the savior of film is, right QT?)
QT knows nothing of the way of Martin Luther King. QT knows nothing about what Marvin Gaye was saying when he sang– “War is not the answer, for only Love can conquer hate.” Guns are not the answer(like the gun Marvin’s father killed him with.) QT knows nothing about cartoonish gun violence on screen actually being a factor in the numbing of our society and a real influence on the deranged shooters who shoot up little kids. QT knows nothing of any of this. He just knows that violence is cool and fun and it’s his thing. And if you don’t get it, you’re uptight and not hip and you’re stupid. But I honestly can’t think of anything less hip in 2015 then having people shooting each other up in a movie. It’s so lame.
Sam Jackson has become a buffoonish actor and the Tarantino/Jackson partnership is dangerously close to Mammy Al Jolson Blackface territory. Jackson, using the same ridiculous voice as he does in commercial after commercial, is artificial, broad, and every line he utters is designed to impress, just as QT’s lines are designed to impress. Jackson is stepping and fetching and doesn’t even know it.
It’s sad that no one says to Tarantino, when they read The Hateful 8– hey, the dawdling interminable right after cocaine high fuzzy slow paced thing is wonderful. You have the clout and talent to have five minutes where people just get stew and have to negotiate their handcuffs. Great. But by the time you get to the end, even though you try to bring in Lincoln and racial history(and the history lessons feel as crude and stuck on here as they did in Django and Basterds)– the thing is, you ain’t sayin’ nothin’. These characters don’t work but on one cartoonish level. Your scripts are flat and don’t work on a symbolic level. And there is no point to the movie unless we buy the stuck on/forced American history stuff, and even then there is no point. And your understanding of symbolism, which is to announce stuff like– The Bar is Philadelphia!– that understanding of symbolism and metaphor is on a fifth grade level. That’s the truth. And your understanding of screenwriting is amateur too. No one noticed it because you had M Night tricks. Your gimmick was to switch up time, go from ends of stories to beginnings of stories and then double back. And also to write endless dialogue, which was so original and new and great that no one noticed your deficiencies as a storyteller. It worked. For a little while. But like with M Night, the gimmick wears thin after four or five times. And it becomes exposed as a gimmick. And like with M Night, it’s become clear that you can’t write a straight script, because you don’t know how. Because you lack fundamentals. You are not no Tim Duncan. You lack simple fundamentals. So that by the time you flashback to Channing Tatum and crew entering Minnie’s, it’s like– who cares? Do you think you are blowing our minds with this basic Law and Order stuff? It’s fifth grade stuff. And maybe with enough cocaine and enough people telling you you’re a genius, you actually think that it’s complex chess, and it’s really all about America, and it’s working on a bunch of levels. But it’s not. It’s a flat, one dimensional, unimaginative pernicious cartoon. Just like Django. Just like Basterds. And that you think it’s great, and that you are an egomaniac who thinks stepping into the proceedings to do a corny voiceover about Domergue’s Secret is cool and fun, only adds to the noxious air that almost suffocated the theater I was in.
True Romance had a lot of talk about guys fucking guys too, like Hateful Eight does. Guys sucking guys’ cocks. But in 2015, Sam Jackson talking about a white guy sucking his big black dick is not shocking or interesting or anything. I mean, in a world of internet porn, that ain’t nothing new or eye opening or mind blowing. And again, the political connotations Tarantino tries to foce onto the forced blowjob are pathetic. The whole thing just screams unhip and desperate and self-important. That’s the funny thing. Movies like John Carpenter’s The Thing did not take themseleves seriously, but were profound. The sense of humor they had about themselves was part of the profundity. And the depth kind of snuck up on you. But Tarantino’s work these days has no sense of humor about itself. It pretends to, but it does not. It’s deadly serious and deadly self-important. Even a guy chocking on another guy’s cock has to be about the antebellum south now. Nigga please.
Pulp Fiction, it becomes clearer and clearer, was a fluke masterpiece by a one hit wonder. One can still feel some movie magic in QT’s films. There’s still that special something for a second or two, here and there. A looseness, a recklessness, a wildness, a truth, a thick atmosphere, a heart. But years of cocaine abuse and people telling him his shit don’t stink has made him into his own worst enemy. Because he believed the hype. But underneath the fame and cocaine high, he knew better. So he got angrier. And instead of growing up, he became another Wacko Jacko. Another warning. Another horror story of arrested development. Another racially confused man child cutting himself off from reality while his bullshit festered and mutated into the lost artist that is now QT.
If it’s true Tarantino is thinking about going back to Elmore Leonard for material, that would be a smart move. Even though after Jackie Brown he said he regretted doing a non original QT movie, obviously there is a part of him that knows he has run out of good ideas and is dry. There is no shame in adapting the work of a writer who was much better at storytelling and also a much clearer artist. It may just be Tarantino’s last chance to get out of his own way.
What in the fuck was all this?
That was tldr
Right! Lmao
I read the first paragraph then realized you were gonna go on a tangent of nothingness.
I fell asleep scanning this.
hollis, this was a terrific comment. Great read. Thank you. More like this, please.
Ignore these doofs with short attention spans and weak reading comprehension skills.
How did I know this was going to be the EXACT reason you did not like the film? Lol. Honestly, you should have done what you were initially going to do and not write this. At first the article was fine, it wasn’t until the end when you started posting those quotes that I started detecting poison underneath. Oh and don’t get me started on those photos. You said it yourself, it’s just a film! There are far worse things occurring to women everyday but you choose THIS to cry about? Being male who grew up with females I’m very much a feminist but I not once cared for Daisy. I didn’t want her to be the one to walk away from everything like a badass. We’ve gotten that before with Kill Bill, Jackie Brown, and so and so forth. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. I didn’t need a backstory for Daisy, it’s all in the title The Hateful Eight. I didn’t like a single character in the film but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. I LOVED it, it took Inside Out’s place for my #1 film of the year. Your way of thinking is stuck in one place and I feel bad for you. As a movie lover turning off reality and enjoying things for what they are shouldn’t be difficult but I find you take it too seriously. Btw as a child of a mother who has suffered physical abuse at the hands of a man I had no difficulty at all watching this. She wasn’t a meek mouse as you so put her, she was savage and mean. There were no qualities there that made me feel bad for her, was I supposed too? Am I bad for liking this film so much? Honestly what you do with these one sided articles of yours is put people in uncomfortable positions. I don’t feel bad for loving this movie and by blow #3 you should’ve walked out of the theatre. I’m just sayin..
Being the child of an abused parent doesn’t make you any sort of “official” on the matter, so you shouldn’t trumpet it as so. If nothing else, I would think Sasha’s views on misogyny would elicit a bit of gratitude on your part. The world is short on people who speak against domestic abuse in an open forum. They are outnumbered by actual wife beaters and often overwhelmed by the indifferent.
By now, Tarantino’s movies are supposed to be built to withstand this sort of criticism, and considering the content, they should. If what he’s presenting produces such strong feedback, the quality of the film (if there is quality) should up to scrutiny.
I never once said being a son to a mother who was physically beaten by my father and I witnessed this shit at a very young age and still remember it, that it makes me an “official” in that matter. How dare you?! I clearly fucking said that witnessing all of that you’d think I’d be turned off by what was occurring onscreen and I wasn’t because Daisy wasnt sad, scared, or sympathetic. My mother sure was and I’ve seen films where females are beaten and break me cuz it reminded me of the hell my mom went through. So don’t you ever bring up the fact that because I said I came from a home of physical abuse that I’m an official on that topic. I don’t claim to be one and quite frankly you can go fuck yourself.
You brought up your past experience to support your viewpoint. Don’t get incensed because I imply that it’s tacky.
The article expresses an opinion about Tarantino’s flick, that it may be construed as misogynistic by the audience, and you got angry because you happen to like the movie.
The fact is, Tarantino is no stranger to this kind of controversy. He’s dealt with it for nearly all of his films. Perhaps this time, his movie isn’t easily defended against allegations of misogyny? If so, then that’s the bed he has made for himself. When you present such a touchy subject (violence against women), you had better be able to defend yourself. It helps if the offending product is quality enough to speak for itself… and maybe this time, it isn’t.
I plan on going to see this film for myself. I have enjoyed QT’s films since the beginning. Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown (Pam Grier should have been nominated for Best Actress that year) and the Kill Bill movies are some of my favorites. I realized a long time ago that his movies can easily be called names. His next movie will be too. If you happen to enjoy his films, then be prepared for recurring controversy they entail.
Well thank for being gracious in your response. You’re right, QT is a polarizing man, I just happen to love what he does. My apologies if I disrespected you.
I lose Sasha to death, she’s the person who got me invested in the Oscar back in 09′. I look up to her and we share a lot of the same views because I’m pro-female, feminist, whatever you wanna call it. & I love how fierce she is when it comes time to be a voice for the minorities and women who are so underrepresented in the academy awards.
“If what he’s presenting produces such strong feedback, the quality of the film (if there is quality) should up to scrutiny.”
Many would draw the exact opposite conclusion from that premise… Anyway, I think both are wrong – how fiery a debate a movie sparks has got nothing to do with how good or bad it is, and there are enough examples in movie history to easily prove this.
The dude didn’t mention he was a child of an abused parent. Did you see the movie? If not, then don’t contribute because her views are so off from what happened in the movie. No doubt it didn’t do anything to improve the following., but the entire movie couldn’t have been more unrealistic. Nkxon liked it but I did think it sucked..