Race on the QT: Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino

by Adilifu Nama

Winner, Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Reference/Primary Source Work in Popular and American Culture, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, 2016 Known for their violence and prolific profanity, including free use of the n-word, the films of Quentin Tarantino, like the director himself, chronically blurt out in polite company what is extremely problematic even when deliberated in private. Consequently, there is an uncomfortable and often awkward frankness associated with virtually all of Tarantino’s films, particularly when it comes to race and blackness. Yet beyond the debate over whether Tarantino is or is not racist is the fact that his films effectively articulate racial anxieties circulating in American society as they engage longstanding racial discourses and hint at emerging trends. This radical racial politics—always present in Tarantino’s films but kept very much on the quiet—is the subject of Race on the QT . Adilifu Nama concisely deconstructs and reassembles the racial dynamics woven into Reservoir Dogs , True Romance , Pulp Fiction , Jackie Brown , Kill Vol. 1 , Kill Vol. 2 , Death Proof , Inglourious Basterds , and Django Unchained , as they relate to historical and current racial issues in America. Nama’s eclectic fusion of cultural criticism and film analysis looks beyond the director’s personal racial attitudes and focuses on what Tarantino’s filmic body of work has said and is saying about race in America symbolically, metaphorically, literally, impolitely, cynically, sarcastically, crudely, controversially, and brilliantly.

Genres: Film

184 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2015

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most essential texts that I'd been waiting for years to find something like -- a volume that analyzes, as the title suggests, race in the works of Quentin Tarantino, and how the filmmaker has handled (and in many cases, mis-handled) Black characters. Examining Tarantino's most famous films from Pulp Fiction to Django Unchained, this text provided much more discourse and analysis to my knowledge of the way Tarantino has been criticized for portrayals of characters outside of his race. His misappropriation and stereotyping of Asian, particularly Chinese and Japanese, peoples and martial arts comes into great discussion in the parts of the book that discuss the Kill Bill films. Overall, it's a nuanced and very necessary look, taking a critical lens to review these works.