Let me put it this way: people outside Asian culture can operate in the ambiguity between tribute and exploitation. Maybe he sat in the grindhouses just like the rest of us. Maybe he only thinks in terms of those images. Or maybe he's using them to achieve something else that he wants—just like people have exploited Asians for their labor, their food, taken their art, taken their lands. The idea that people can just take parts of another culture for their own amusement—or to promote their careers—is an age-old problem.
Thank you. I wish I had more time to say more in this article but hopefully I can clarify next week. There's something about Asian "inscrutability" that makes it virtually impossible for people outside Asian culture to see them as victims, which in turn makes it seem okay not just to exploit them, but to demonize them as well.
For example, can you imagine if Tarantino had given the same treatment to any of his other "tribute" movies? A big-budget blaxploitation movie starring a white woman destroying legions of powerful black men? Indians and cowboys? Uzi-toting mobsters? Liberating slaves of the American South? There's something so wrong with the whole concept of Kill Bill, and yet, because it's Asians, it has gone largely unnoticed.
I’ll look for the next installment. “Because it’s Asian:” people feel free to take pieces of Asian culture and mix them up. It’s modern day Chinoiserie. It’s going to take the upcoming generation of Asian creatives to change that.
Everything you write is true, however, I think it's necessary to define what a racist is before applying that label to Tarantino. A Merriam-Webster definition of racism is as follows:
: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race Ladino elites used racism to justify the displacement and enslavement of the indigenous population, and these beliefs, along with the resentment created by the continued exploitation of indigenous land and labor, culminated in the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996).— Mariana Calvo
In other words, "race" (which is a synthetic term created to justify colonialism and racism) requires that one believe that there are inherent differences between one ethnic group and another. And that one "race" is better or worse than another at a particular job or skillset. For example, if you think Asians are better at math than other ethnic groups, you are technically a racist. Whereas if a filmmaker depicts Asians as having an inherent superiority over Whites in martial arts, they are equally a racist. Why? Because it shows one ethnic group having superiority over another.
It's true that Tarantino does show Whites defeating Asians in martial arts. But does that mean he's a racist or is it an inversion of the racist stereotype that Asians are good at martial arts? I think by depicting Bruce Lee as a good, but not great, martial artist, it actually breaks the stereotype and therefore promotes anti-racists values.
Thank you for raising this point. I hope to address it more fully in part 3 but, work and holidays being what they are, I wasn't able to this past weekend.
I mostly agree with what you say, although I don't fully agree with your conclusions. There's a greater frame going on here that is so all-encompassing it doesn't much get talked about anymore, but it's a device Tarantino makes full use of. How it works is: A character's innate expertise is demonstrated through their besting of people who are typically thought of as being masters of that domain. This doesn't have to be racist, for example if you want to show a character is a master chef, he might out-cook a bunch of chefs.
Oftentimes, though, it ends up being a play on stereotypes. This creates a double-slap. For example, Uma Thurman slicing up 88 Asian martial artists isn't subverting the stereotype that Asians are good at martial arts, it's merely bolstering the idea that her character is naturally better at martial arts than all Asians. As for Bruce Lee, he isn't portrayed as a "not-great" martial artist, he's portrayed as an arrogant martial arts expert. The point here isn't to break stereotype, but to show how much more badass the white protagonist is than the Asian martial arts legend. Bruce himself broke the stereotypical expectations of Asians as obsequious weaklings, something Tarantino decided to caricature and then have Cliff "put him in his place".
For whatever reason, this kind of racism is harder to spot when applied to Asians, perhaps because fighting is common to all cultures and integral to theatrical performance. Perhaps also because racism against Asians doesn't fit neatly into the black-white American narrative. But this form of cinema racism has been going on a long time. For example, does Tarzan, the white king of the jungle, "break the stereotype" that Africans are savages and rapists when he uses his superior jungle bushcraft to defeat them and foil their attempts to rape Jane?
Sorry for the late response and thank you for your intelligent and thoughtful reply.
I've been reading your insightful series on Tarantino and pretty much everything you've written is gold, particularly this article (and your comment). While I mostly agree with what you've communicated, there's one point of concern for me:
If we use an overly broad brush to paint the contours of racism, we risk blotting out the finer details of what make a racist a racist. In other words, if everything is racism, nothing is racism. Therefore, we have to get back to basics: racism is depicting a hierarchical world in which whites dominate. Because we still see that kind of tripe infesting our pop culture; my argument is that while Tarantino has distasteful elements in his movies, he's not a racist in the classical colonialist sense.
As you've written, depicting a Caucasian female as having superior fighting skill to Asian men looks like Tarzan because it has much of the same motifs: one skin-color group dominating another. But I feel that is missing the thrust of Kill Bill's theme of female empowerment. All of the high-level martial arts scenes are female led. In other words, it's not primarily about a white woman dominating Asian men, it's about a woman becoming empowered through mastery of violence and a belief that murder solves problems that the legal system should have been able to easily manage. Distasteful but not designed to silo Asian males into any particular profession.
I can't give any reasonable analysis of Tarzan as I haven't read many Burroughs texts. but I can tell you Burroughs very much supported the colonialist definition of racism, a view many harbor today. In that viewpoint, society should be structured according to "ability. The lower that one ethnic group inhabits in the pyramid, the more suitable one would be for hard labor. In the view of Burroughs, Asians were essentially destined to provide coolie labor for Whites as house servants and cooks. His view toward sub-Saharan Africans was that they should be miners and provide the raw materials which Whites would use in their products. What's so abhorrent about this narrative is that it still exists to some extent in modern literature and films. Whenever any ethnic group essentially provides support to White characters in the shape of a cook, butler, or other servile role. For example, the most racist film I can think of in modern cinema is Shang-Chi, which depicts an Asian-American male who is essentially a foreigner in his own culture, while providing eunuch-like service to Whites during his day job. Few would call out its neo-colonialist tones, though, because no one recognizes what true racism is anymore. (I'm referencing Professor Darrell Hamamoto of UCD, who once wrote that "Jackie Chan can kick @ss but he's not allowed to get the girl.")
In my opinion, we have to identify what true racism is and call it out whenever it tries to silo any ethnic group into a particular category of labor or social strata. While it's true that depicting a woman beating up Asian (and White) men is hardly a good take, it's also not as racist as it appears at first glance, primarily that's not what the film was about in the first place. You could easily say it's equally as racist against White males as it is against Asian males (although it's also true that 87 Asian men get chopped to pieces as opposed to just handful of White men).
Again, if everything is racist, nothing is racist. We have to identify what racism is before we can adequately neutralize it. And if Tarantino's depiction of Asian males is racist, then everything is bound to be racist in some way.
Thank you for your comment, as always. It's lit a fire to get on with the next article.
I left academia a long time ago, and cannot really argue with your textbook definition of racism. Perhaps the semantics are very important, and god knows many instances of what would pass for racism amongst the twitterati/general public are hardly that, but I believe whatever this is goes beyond mere taste and encapsulates a psychologically racist attitude that is more sophisticated and should probably be given another name.
You might say Tarantino's treatment of Asians isn't racist in these films, but I believe that's only because Hollywood and American culture in general has long indoctrinated us into not noticing it. If you swapped the race/stereotypes, this movie couldn't be made. If Tarantino had made Jackie Brown with all its blaxpoitation overtones but replaced Pam Grier with Uma Thurman, there would be no Kill Bill. But Tarantino is a very savvy manipulator who is hyper-aware of where the line is, which is why his movies do so well. He gets just close enough to that third rail to catch sparks, but keeps himself grounded so as not to totally fry his career. America loves that tension, we love that kind of decadence. To like the things we, deep down, know we're not supposed to like under the guise that it's got enough merit to be 'high art'. Tarantino's work is technically brilliant, the dialogue sings with wit, the suspense and horror and gore and casualness towards violence is delicious. He's so masterfully elevating grind house to "serious cinema" that we overlook how he is simultaneously stamping down the modern Asian man. Old Asian stereotypes are just fine by him, conform to his fetish objectification and you're safe. Penitent samurai swordsmith turned sushi chef? Arigato! Kooky ancient mystical savant? Accept this humble blonde as your student! But defy tradition and present yourself as a confident Asian or Asian-American? Strangely, there's no place in his film for such a character, best he can do is have Bruce Lee/Kato sliced open or spanked by the female lead.
Maybe it's not racist because he's only hating on one specific subset of a race, and it isn't even an ethnic group. But it's the equivalent of a white guy saying, "I don't hate black people, I just hate the n*ggers".
There is something cynically chauvinist about Tarantino's whole approach to filmmaking, which is why I chose the title "White Savior with a Camera". He might pretend his movie is all about feminist empowerment, but even the co-creator of Kill Bill didn't feel that way. Thurman was vocal about being dehumanized on set and sustained serious injuries after being pressured into attempting an unsafe driving stunt. The man doesn't care about empowering anyone, these are all just trappings to get one over on the moviegoing public so he can continue to make gory fanboy fetish objects. I'd hesitate to call it art, but in an era when art critics fill galleries with giant steel balloon animals and a painting of popular cartoon characters with Xed out eyes can go for millions, the best I can say is it is highly effective propaganda at degrading the human spirit.
And yet, I'll probably end up watching his next release...
I think this discussion brings up a very important question: Is Tarantino's depiction of Asians universally negative? From what I can tell, the various male Asian characters are fairly despicable. Pai Mei, Johnny Mo, and Bruce Lee are all basically villains or have villainous characteristics. And "Toby the Jap" (who is of Chinese descent) is barely even mentioned. Only one of the characters (in all of Tarantino's films) is a good guy. Is it the lack of Asian heroes that we consider "racist"? Or the fact that his depictions are universally negative?
All but two of the Asians portrayed in Tarantino films are in the Kill Bill series. If we look at Kill Bill, almost all of the characters are villainous, Asian or White. Is it possible that the negative depictions of Asians are the result of the subject material, rather than any hidden agenda on Tarantino's part?
I think we have to treat Tarantino's depiction of Bruce Lee as separate from his treatment of Asians in Kill Bill since he clearly doesn't think much of Lee. I can attribute part of his depiction of Bruce Lee to Gung Fu coming into conflict with other martial arts, like Judo, and not coming out ahead. I think in Tarantino's mind, Gung Fu was an inferior art form to other disciplines. But much of his characterization seems to have ignored the very real video of Lee's elite-tier abilities:
On another level, Tarantino's exposure to Asian culture seems to be largely a result of him watching violent Chinese and Japanese action films. He clearly loves the mindless violence. But he loves it for the wrong reasons. It's like watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the Karate Kid and coming away with an only an appreciation for its depictions of violence rather than its more esoteric analysis of Eastern philosophies.
Again, thanks for your response. I particularly enjoy your comment that there's no place for a fully-fleshed out Asian male character in Tarantino's film (and there won't ever be, let's be honest about that). But whether that's racist or simply callous is perhaps something we all must interpret on our own. IMO, that omission is a sign of a callous filmmaker who fetishes violence while pushing his actors into car wrecks. He's brilliant but he's also not concerned about his portrayals of Asian men (and not concerned about such depictions either). If he's ever allowed to make a Star Trek episode, I'm hoping he can give Sulu a proper screen treatment, though.
Thanks again for your detailed analysis and discussion on this topic. Apologies for not responding sooner as I made a note to write you back and then other projects got in the way. You are likely correct in your assessments of Tarantino's thoughts on Asian culture and action cinema.
I've also had some more time to think about Tarantino as an auteur here and there (and as I re-watched the films of earlier popular and also acclaimed directors like Kubrick, Stone, and Scorsese) and can see where my claims of conscious racism were possibly misplaced.
There's an ironical overlap between Lee and Tarantino in that both were kind of alone in their fields during the peaks of their success/notoriety. In the boxing world, many rank Ali higher than Mike Tyson because Ali faced much stiffer competition against other hall of famers in their prime, whereas Mike mostly fought nobodies or former champions returning from or near retirement (e.g. Larry Holmes).
The reason why nobody can really say how good Bruce Lee is is because he never actually fought anybody noteworthy. Had he hit his prime at the advent of the UFC and modern MMA, and had he access to the fight science that we had even 10 years after his death, who knows where he would actually be ranked amongst martial artists and fighters.
With Tarantino, I would say much the same. He gained prominence because Hollywood found itself bereft of truly great directorial talent in the 90s. Coppola, Scorsese, Kubrick, and others were seen as a declining old guard and most of their outputs during the 90s no longer captured box office dollars or acclaim the way they did before (Goodfellas being the last one, hitting in 1990, Eyes Wide Shut wouldn't arrive until 1999 and was Kubrick's last).
But unlike those other directors mentioned above, Tarantino's movies don't seem to be about nearly as much, philosophically, other than perhaps 'man's unhumanity to man'. Instead, his appeal is in the craft itself, and the self-referencing, and here I think is why you can both make the argument that he is racist and also that he is not.
I knew a DVD rental clerk years ago who said the staff knew what Tarantino's next movie was going to be about because he and his staff would come in and check out every single piece of an entire genre. So when all the WWII stuff went out, they knew Inglorious Basterds was coming.
But because each of Tarantino's films are send-ups to an entire genre, you get a lot of the cultural attitudes of the time that are nearly impossible to separate due to their history. To make a blaxpoitation flick like Jackie Brown or Django and not have any of the characters say n*gger would be stranger than to have white characters say it in a movie made during our woke times.
Likewise, Tarantino can claim that he was only replicating the mainstream approach to Asian characters and kung fu men in 1970s cinema and TV when he has Bruce Lee bested by Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time... (he actually doesn't use this defense, and instead paints himself as the hero of the working class stunt crew, giving Lee his comeuppance onscreen for his mistreatment of stuntmen in real life).
So, you're right. He's not independently racist, more so just perpetuating it out of unconscious bias.
Case in point:
His defense for his n-word-ridden scripts and portrayals of black characters in negative lights was that he was only being authentic to the black friends and communities he grew up with.
His defense for taking an entire film genre largely by and about Asian men and replacing not only the lead but nearly every major part with non-Asians was that he and Uma Thurman couldn't come up with a more interesting way to make an action movie about a badass female.
In other words, there weren't enough all-women action flicks at the rental store to pastiche together, so he appropriated the martial arts movie shelf. This is how little he actually cares about the cultural output or racial concerns of the entire Asian continent.
Let me put it this way: people outside Asian culture can operate in the ambiguity between tribute and exploitation. Maybe he sat in the grindhouses just like the rest of us. Maybe he only thinks in terms of those images. Or maybe he's using them to achieve something else that he wants—just like people have exploited Asians for their labor, their food, taken their art, taken their lands. The idea that people can just take parts of another culture for their own amusement—or to promote their careers—is an age-old problem.
Thank you. I wish I had more time to say more in this article but hopefully I can clarify next week. There's something about Asian "inscrutability" that makes it virtually impossible for people outside Asian culture to see them as victims, which in turn makes it seem okay not just to exploit them, but to demonize them as well.
For example, can you imagine if Tarantino had given the same treatment to any of his other "tribute" movies? A big-budget blaxploitation movie starring a white woman destroying legions of powerful black men? Indians and cowboys? Uzi-toting mobsters? Liberating slaves of the American South? There's something so wrong with the whole concept of Kill Bill, and yet, because it's Asians, it has gone largely unnoticed.
I’ll look for the next installment. “Because it’s Asian:” people feel free to take pieces of Asian culture and mix them up. It’s modern day Chinoiserie. It’s going to take the upcoming generation of Asian creatives to change that.
Everything you write is true, however, I think it's necessary to define what a racist is before applying that label to Tarantino. A Merriam-Webster definition of racism is as follows:
: a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race Ladino elites used racism to justify the displacement and enslavement of the indigenous population, and these beliefs, along with the resentment created by the continued exploitation of indigenous land and labor, culminated in the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996).— Mariana Calvo
In other words, "race" (which is a synthetic term created to justify colonialism and racism) requires that one believe that there are inherent differences between one ethnic group and another. And that one "race" is better or worse than another at a particular job or skillset. For example, if you think Asians are better at math than other ethnic groups, you are technically a racist. Whereas if a filmmaker depicts Asians as having an inherent superiority over Whites in martial arts, they are equally a racist. Why? Because it shows one ethnic group having superiority over another.
It's true that Tarantino does show Whites defeating Asians in martial arts. But does that mean he's a racist or is it an inversion of the racist stereotype that Asians are good at martial arts? I think by depicting Bruce Lee as a good, but not great, martial artist, it actually breaks the stereotype and therefore promotes anti-racists values.
Thank you for raising this point. I hope to address it more fully in part 3 but, work and holidays being what they are, I wasn't able to this past weekend.
I mostly agree with what you say, although I don't fully agree with your conclusions. There's a greater frame going on here that is so all-encompassing it doesn't much get talked about anymore, but it's a device Tarantino makes full use of. How it works is: A character's innate expertise is demonstrated through their besting of people who are typically thought of as being masters of that domain. This doesn't have to be racist, for example if you want to show a character is a master chef, he might out-cook a bunch of chefs.
Oftentimes, though, it ends up being a play on stereotypes. This creates a double-slap. For example, Uma Thurman slicing up 88 Asian martial artists isn't subverting the stereotype that Asians are good at martial arts, it's merely bolstering the idea that her character is naturally better at martial arts than all Asians. As for Bruce Lee, he isn't portrayed as a "not-great" martial artist, he's portrayed as an arrogant martial arts expert. The point here isn't to break stereotype, but to show how much more badass the white protagonist is than the Asian martial arts legend. Bruce himself broke the stereotypical expectations of Asians as obsequious weaklings, something Tarantino decided to caricature and then have Cliff "put him in his place".
For whatever reason, this kind of racism is harder to spot when applied to Asians, perhaps because fighting is common to all cultures and integral to theatrical performance. Perhaps also because racism against Asians doesn't fit neatly into the black-white American narrative. But this form of cinema racism has been going on a long time. For example, does Tarzan, the white king of the jungle, "break the stereotype" that Africans are savages and rapists when he uses his superior jungle bushcraft to defeat them and foil their attempts to rape Jane?
Sorry for the late response and thank you for your intelligent and thoughtful reply.
I've been reading your insightful series on Tarantino and pretty much everything you've written is gold, particularly this article (and your comment). While I mostly agree with what you've communicated, there's one point of concern for me:
If we use an overly broad brush to paint the contours of racism, we risk blotting out the finer details of what make a racist a racist. In other words, if everything is racism, nothing is racism. Therefore, we have to get back to basics: racism is depicting a hierarchical world in which whites dominate. Because we still see that kind of tripe infesting our pop culture; my argument is that while Tarantino has distasteful elements in his movies, he's not a racist in the classical colonialist sense.
As you've written, depicting a Caucasian female as having superior fighting skill to Asian men looks like Tarzan because it has much of the same motifs: one skin-color group dominating another. But I feel that is missing the thrust of Kill Bill's theme of female empowerment. All of the high-level martial arts scenes are female led. In other words, it's not primarily about a white woman dominating Asian men, it's about a woman becoming empowered through mastery of violence and a belief that murder solves problems that the legal system should have been able to easily manage. Distasteful but not designed to silo Asian males into any particular profession.
I can't give any reasonable analysis of Tarzan as I haven't read many Burroughs texts. but I can tell you Burroughs very much supported the colonialist definition of racism, a view many harbor today. In that viewpoint, society should be structured according to "ability. The lower that one ethnic group inhabits in the pyramid, the more suitable one would be for hard labor. In the view of Burroughs, Asians were essentially destined to provide coolie labor for Whites as house servants and cooks. His view toward sub-Saharan Africans was that they should be miners and provide the raw materials which Whites would use in their products. What's so abhorrent about this narrative is that it still exists to some extent in modern literature and films. Whenever any ethnic group essentially provides support to White characters in the shape of a cook, butler, or other servile role. For example, the most racist film I can think of in modern cinema is Shang-Chi, which depicts an Asian-American male who is essentially a foreigner in his own culture, while providing eunuch-like service to Whites during his day job. Few would call out its neo-colonialist tones, though, because no one recognizes what true racism is anymore. (I'm referencing Professor Darrell Hamamoto of UCD, who once wrote that "Jackie Chan can kick @ss but he's not allowed to get the girl.")
In my opinion, we have to identify what true racism is and call it out whenever it tries to silo any ethnic group into a particular category of labor or social strata. While it's true that depicting a woman beating up Asian (and White) men is hardly a good take, it's also not as racist as it appears at first glance, primarily that's not what the film was about in the first place. You could easily say it's equally as racist against White males as it is against Asian males (although it's also true that 87 Asian men get chopped to pieces as opposed to just handful of White men).
Again, if everything is racist, nothing is racist. We have to identify what racism is before we can adequately neutralize it. And if Tarantino's depiction of Asian males is racist, then everything is bound to be racist in some way.
Thank you for your comment, as always. It's lit a fire to get on with the next article.
I left academia a long time ago, and cannot really argue with your textbook definition of racism. Perhaps the semantics are very important, and god knows many instances of what would pass for racism amongst the twitterati/general public are hardly that, but I believe whatever this is goes beyond mere taste and encapsulates a psychologically racist attitude that is more sophisticated and should probably be given another name.
You might say Tarantino's treatment of Asians isn't racist in these films, but I believe that's only because Hollywood and American culture in general has long indoctrinated us into not noticing it. If you swapped the race/stereotypes, this movie couldn't be made. If Tarantino had made Jackie Brown with all its blaxpoitation overtones but replaced Pam Grier with Uma Thurman, there would be no Kill Bill. But Tarantino is a very savvy manipulator who is hyper-aware of where the line is, which is why his movies do so well. He gets just close enough to that third rail to catch sparks, but keeps himself grounded so as not to totally fry his career. America loves that tension, we love that kind of decadence. To like the things we, deep down, know we're not supposed to like under the guise that it's got enough merit to be 'high art'. Tarantino's work is technically brilliant, the dialogue sings with wit, the suspense and horror and gore and casualness towards violence is delicious. He's so masterfully elevating grind house to "serious cinema" that we overlook how he is simultaneously stamping down the modern Asian man. Old Asian stereotypes are just fine by him, conform to his fetish objectification and you're safe. Penitent samurai swordsmith turned sushi chef? Arigato! Kooky ancient mystical savant? Accept this humble blonde as your student! But defy tradition and present yourself as a confident Asian or Asian-American? Strangely, there's no place in his film for such a character, best he can do is have Bruce Lee/Kato sliced open or spanked by the female lead.
Maybe it's not racist because he's only hating on one specific subset of a race, and it isn't even an ethnic group. But it's the equivalent of a white guy saying, "I don't hate black people, I just hate the n*ggers".
There is something cynically chauvinist about Tarantino's whole approach to filmmaking, which is why I chose the title "White Savior with a Camera". He might pretend his movie is all about feminist empowerment, but even the co-creator of Kill Bill didn't feel that way. Thurman was vocal about being dehumanized on set and sustained serious injuries after being pressured into attempting an unsafe driving stunt. The man doesn't care about empowering anyone, these are all just trappings to get one over on the moviegoing public so he can continue to make gory fanboy fetish objects. I'd hesitate to call it art, but in an era when art critics fill galleries with giant steel balloon animals and a painting of popular cartoon characters with Xed out eyes can go for millions, the best I can say is it is highly effective propaganda at degrading the human spirit.
And yet, I'll probably end up watching his next release...
I think this discussion brings up a very important question: Is Tarantino's depiction of Asians universally negative? From what I can tell, the various male Asian characters are fairly despicable. Pai Mei, Johnny Mo, and Bruce Lee are all basically villains or have villainous characteristics. And "Toby the Jap" (who is of Chinese descent) is barely even mentioned. Only one of the characters (in all of Tarantino's films) is a good guy. Is it the lack of Asian heroes that we consider "racist"? Or the fact that his depictions are universally negative?
All but two of the Asians portrayed in Tarantino films are in the Kill Bill series. If we look at Kill Bill, almost all of the characters are villainous, Asian or White. Is it possible that the negative depictions of Asians are the result of the subject material, rather than any hidden agenda on Tarantino's part?
I think we have to treat Tarantino's depiction of Bruce Lee as separate from his treatment of Asians in Kill Bill since he clearly doesn't think much of Lee. I can attribute part of his depiction of Bruce Lee to Gung Fu coming into conflict with other martial arts, like Judo, and not coming out ahead. I think in Tarantino's mind, Gung Fu was an inferior art form to other disciplines. But much of his characterization seems to have ignored the very real video of Lee's elite-tier abilities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqHqMdRcROQ
On another level, Tarantino's exposure to Asian culture seems to be largely a result of him watching violent Chinese and Japanese action films. He clearly loves the mindless violence. But he loves it for the wrong reasons. It's like watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the Karate Kid and coming away with an only an appreciation for its depictions of violence rather than its more esoteric analysis of Eastern philosophies.
Again, thanks for your response. I particularly enjoy your comment that there's no place for a fully-fleshed out Asian male character in Tarantino's film (and there won't ever be, let's be honest about that). But whether that's racist or simply callous is perhaps something we all must interpret on our own. IMO, that omission is a sign of a callous filmmaker who fetishes violence while pushing his actors into car wrecks. He's brilliant but he's also not concerned about his portrayals of Asian men (and not concerned about such depictions either). If he's ever allowed to make a Star Trek episode, I'm hoping he can give Sulu a proper screen treatment, though.
Thanks again for your detailed analysis and discussion on this topic. Apologies for not responding sooner as I made a note to write you back and then other projects got in the way. You are likely correct in your assessments of Tarantino's thoughts on Asian culture and action cinema.
I've also had some more time to think about Tarantino as an auteur here and there (and as I re-watched the films of earlier popular and also acclaimed directors like Kubrick, Stone, and Scorsese) and can see where my claims of conscious racism were possibly misplaced.
There's an ironical overlap between Lee and Tarantino in that both were kind of alone in their fields during the peaks of their success/notoriety. In the boxing world, many rank Ali higher than Mike Tyson because Ali faced much stiffer competition against other hall of famers in their prime, whereas Mike mostly fought nobodies or former champions returning from or near retirement (e.g. Larry Holmes).
The reason why nobody can really say how good Bruce Lee is is because he never actually fought anybody noteworthy. Had he hit his prime at the advent of the UFC and modern MMA, and had he access to the fight science that we had even 10 years after his death, who knows where he would actually be ranked amongst martial artists and fighters.
With Tarantino, I would say much the same. He gained prominence because Hollywood found itself bereft of truly great directorial talent in the 90s. Coppola, Scorsese, Kubrick, and others were seen as a declining old guard and most of their outputs during the 90s no longer captured box office dollars or acclaim the way they did before (Goodfellas being the last one, hitting in 1990, Eyes Wide Shut wouldn't arrive until 1999 and was Kubrick's last).
But unlike those other directors mentioned above, Tarantino's movies don't seem to be about nearly as much, philosophically, other than perhaps 'man's unhumanity to man'. Instead, his appeal is in the craft itself, and the self-referencing, and here I think is why you can both make the argument that he is racist and also that he is not.
I knew a DVD rental clerk years ago who said the staff knew what Tarantino's next movie was going to be about because he and his staff would come in and check out every single piece of an entire genre. So when all the WWII stuff went out, they knew Inglorious Basterds was coming.
But because each of Tarantino's films are send-ups to an entire genre, you get a lot of the cultural attitudes of the time that are nearly impossible to separate due to their history. To make a blaxpoitation flick like Jackie Brown or Django and not have any of the characters say n*gger would be stranger than to have white characters say it in a movie made during our woke times.
Likewise, Tarantino can claim that he was only replicating the mainstream approach to Asian characters and kung fu men in 1970s cinema and TV when he has Bruce Lee bested by Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time... (he actually doesn't use this defense, and instead paints himself as the hero of the working class stunt crew, giving Lee his comeuppance onscreen for his mistreatment of stuntmen in real life).
So, you're right. He's not independently racist, more so just perpetuating it out of unconscious bias.
Case in point:
His defense for his n-word-ridden scripts and portrayals of black characters in negative lights was that he was only being authentic to the black friends and communities he grew up with.
His defense for taking an entire film genre largely by and about Asian men and replacing not only the lead but nearly every major part with non-Asians was that he and Uma Thurman couldn't come up with a more interesting way to make an action movie about a badass female.
In other words, there weren't enough all-women action flicks at the rental store to pastiche together, so he appropriated the martial arts movie shelf. This is how little he actually cares about the cultural output or racial concerns of the entire Asian continent.