Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema

By: Robert Von Dassanowsky

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Synopsis: This provocative and unique anthology analyzes Quentin Tarantino's controversial Inglourious Basterds in the contexts of cinema, cultural, gender, and historical studies. The film and its ideology is dissected by a range of scholars and writers who take on the director's manipulation of metacinema, Nazisploitation, ethnic stereotyping, gender roles, allohistoricism, geopolitics, philosophy, language, and memory. In this collection, the eroticism of the club-swinging and avenging "Bear Jew," the dashed heroism of the "role-playing" French and German females, the patriotic fools and pawns, the amoral yokel, Lieutenant Aldo Raine, and the cosmopolitan, but psychopathic Colonel Landa, are understood for their true functions in what has become an iconoclastic pop-culture phenomenon and one of the classics of early twenty-first century American cinema. Additionally, the book examines the use of "foreign" languages (subverting English and image), the allegory of Austria's identity in the war, and the particularly French and German cinematic influences, such as R. W. Fassbinder's realignment of the German woman's film and the iconic image of the German film star in Inglourious Basterds.