The Stakes in Holocaust Representation: On Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds

• Published in: Romanic review Vol. 105; no. 1-2; pp. 69 - 86
• Main Author: Suleiman, Susan Rubin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Durham Duke University Press 01.01.2014
• Subjects: Critics; Ethics; Holocaust; Humor; Jewish people; Literature and Literary Studies; Motion pictures; Tarantino, Quentin; Tone
• ISSN: 0035-8118; 2688-5220
• DOI: 10.1215/26885220-105.1-2.69

First shown at Cannes in May 2009, where it received a mixed reception, Inglourious Basterds was released three months later, after Tarantino had made a few changes. Why not put Hitler up in EuroDisney while we're at it, welcomed by Mickey and Donald?"4 An American critic, Frederic Raphael, writing in Commentary, adopted a similarly sarcastic tone: "Tarantino's only use for the past is to make pasta out of it.\n Kligerman sees this as Tarantino's way of eliciting a "specular affect between pleasure and unease" that disrupts any easy equilibrium in the spectator.30 If the cutting of the swastika into Landa's forehead provoked moral outrage on the part of many viewers, it was also (as we saw earlier) defended by at least one critic on the moral grounds that the swastika was a "mark of Cain" that would prevent the Nazi officer from blending into anonymity after the war.