Scream, 1996

In what ways can Inglourious Basterds be considered postmodern?

In what ways can Inglourious Basterds be considered postmodern?

Within Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino incorporates many features that could be considered as postmodern, all interlinking together and making it hard to place the film within a specific genre. Tarantino also takes measures to ensure that the film doesn’t look realistic; this is supported by the use of ‘Once upon a time…’ at the very beginning of the film because it links in with fairy tales, which are stereotypically known for beginning with that phrase. The theme of fairy tales is continued throughout the film, such as when Hans Landa slips the shoe onto Bridget von Hammersmark’s foot, an action lifted from the fairy tale Cinderella. The continued cleanliness of the characters, despite whatever happens to them like Aldo’s kidnapping, also enforces the unrealistic element showing that the film is just fiction and not a proper representation of the Second World War. This technique also enforces the feeling of hyperreality, as the characters don’t look or act like stereotypical characters in war films and the deaths that occur within the film don’t seem to have any importance to the characters, whereas in a stereotypical war film death is used heavily to make the film emotional and highlight the importance of the soldiers.

Talcott Parsons created the non-postmodernist theory through his observations of society taking a structural functionalist viewpoint, which suggests that society needs structures to keep it together, like literature and film. Therefore, postmodern texts would reject expected structures and defined roles, an aspect which is present within Inglourious Basterds, as the film is split into five chapters, a literary element that usually isn’t used in films. Each chapter within the film shows part of the characters story, switching between Shosanna and the Inglourious Basterds, but the short length of each chapter doesn’t allow any character development. Although the plot follows a linear timeline, the use of chapters’ breaks up the film and creates a disjointed sensation, rather than following the chronological order which is expected within films. Inglourious Basterds could be considered postmodern due to the chapters which break up the film, because it doesn’t follow the expected structure for films and instead uses a literary structure.

Postmodernism reassesses the roles and constructions of gender, especially through the characters of Shosanna and Bridget von Hammersmark who portray strong, independent women within a male dominated society. Shosanna breaks the convention of war-time women by owning her own business and taking action against the Nazi’s on her own, as during the Second World War women were expected to follow the orders of society to help the war effort, something Shosanna isn’t willing to do when she is asked to show the propaganda film, Nation’s Pride, for the Nazi’s. The fact that she also burns down her cinema whilst all the high ranking Nazi’s are trapped inside portrays Shosanna as a powerful figure because she is responsible for the destruction. Bridget von Hammersmark is also a powerful female character because of her position within the war, as a secret British spy she has authority over the British troops and as a well known actress in France she has secret information from the Nazi’s. She uses both of these powers to help to bring down the Reich, by smuggling in the Bear Jew and Omar to the Nation’s Pride premiere, so that they can blow up the cinema.

Tarantino includes music from other films, such as the music from ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ as well as mimicked shots that can be seen in many spaghetti western films. Using Levi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage, this element would fall under the category of addition. There are links to other films within Inglourious Basterds, such as the first couple of shots at the beginning of the film reflect the opening shots from ‘The Sound of Music’ as they both include the scenic shots of the Alps. Tarantino also uses subtle references to other films to hint at the actions that are about to occur, like when the barman in Chapter 4: Operation Kino touches his gun underneath the bar. The action relates to Mexican standoffs/shoot outs, a Western film convention, that indicates that there will be a fight within the basement, possibly in a similar style to Western films.

In the first scene of the film, when Hans Landa is looking at the floor boards from a bird’s eyes view, Tarantino uses set reflective camera shots to implement that Inglourious Basterds is just a film and not to be taken seriously. This can also be seen later on in the film when the set is shown through an over head shot, showing Shosanna running out of the room, but still including the door frame in the shot. Hans Landa is then shown to be standing in the doorway from behind at the end of the scene, an intertexual reference from ‘The Searches’.

Another element of Levi-Strauss’ theory is deletion, which could be considered present due to the deaths of the characters. The members of the basterds who are killed in the tavern scene reject the stereotypical war film death and survival rules, as it is expected that the basterds would survive because they are the ‘good guys’ but instead they die like the other characters in the scene. However, this brings a sense of realism to the film, because the fact that all the heroes within war films usually survive isn’t very realistic, so the deaths of the basterds could reflect the real deaths that happened in the war. In some ways the deaths are similar to those in films like ‘Dirty Dozen’ and ‘The Magnificent Seven’ indicating that Tarantino could have found inspiration for the character deaths from those films.

Music in Inglourious Basterds is used often by Tarantino to create certain atmospheres and emotions. The music used in the projection box scene is a good example of this, as when Fredrick is climbing the stairs to see Shosanna, there is dramatic music playing in the background. The music implies that there is going to be some sort of action taking place shortly, as it has connotations to war films, but when Shosanna opens the door to Fredrick the music stops abruptly, making it seem as though there is only going to be a conversation between the two characters. When Tarantino cuts the music it decreases the anticipation and dramatic impact, instead of letting the impact increase by continuing with the music which is a normal convention of films. However, when Shosanna and Fredrick’s conversation ends with Shosanna shooting Fredrick, music starts up again as Fredrick reveals himself to still be alive. The music has a romantic feel to it, indicating that Shosanna may be regretting her actions, which could also be supported when she goes toward Fredrick to check on him. Therefore when Fredrick rolls over and shoots Shosanna in revenge it is quite unexpected because the music doesn’t fit in with the characters actions and the slow motion shooting and death of Shosanna also indicates a romantic element. The use of the romantic music could make both the characters’ deaths seem more tragic, which is a typical element to accompany a characters’ death within a film. Fredrick doesn’t survive long enough to see his revenge finish, a factor that is usually present within typical war films, again showing how Tarantino is almost pushing the boundaries of stereotypical war films.

Overall Inglourious Basterds shows both the stereotypical elements of a war film whilst also pushing the boundaries by using hyperreality and detached characters. Tarantino also changes the actual facts of the Second World War, such as Hitler’s death by the basterds rather than showing his actual death by suicide. Because the facts of the actual war are not presented within the film also relates to the idea of hyperreality and therefore into postmodernism. Tarantino’s influences from other films, unrealistic elements and other medias from different eras all come together within Inglourious Basterds to make the film postmodern.

Creativity

AS Coursework:

• inspiration - my magazine was inspired by many other indie genre music magazines, as I used similar conventions and styles to theirs to convey my own genre.
• inventiveness - I had to invent my own artist to feature in my magazine, creating a back story and products in order to make the magazine more realistic.

A2 Coursework:

• resourcefulness - we used the resources around our location to get the props we needed for our video, meaning we could get everything we needed from one place.
• originality - our idea and artist for our video was original.

What has prevented you from being more creative?

• Task choice being made beforehand: we were given the task to complete and couldn't choose what project we wanted to undertake.
• Project deadline: we had to have certain parts of our project done for certain dates meaning we couldn't go back and improve or change parts we may have wanted to, or spent more time on tasks.
• Difficulty in gaining the preferred location: it was difficult to find the right location we wanted
• Technology used: we didn't have access to professional technologies that are used in the media industry.
• The actors used: we didn't use professional actors/models for our projects, instead using friends who weren't used to being in similar situations.

Ideas & Theories
"A process needed for problem solving...not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability possessed by most people" (Jones 1993) - agree

"The making of the new and the re arranging of the old" (Bentley 1997) - agree

 

"Creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognise and valid ate the innovation." (Csikszentmihalyi 1996) - disagree

"There is no absolute judgement [on creativity] All judgements arecomparisons of one thing with another." (Donald Larning) - agree

"Technology has taken all the creativity out of media production" - disagree

"A project that is too well planned lacks opportunities for spontaneity and creativity." - disagree

"Media producers can learn nothing from studying the conventions of old texts." - disagree

The creation of bringing something new into existence - "this particular understanding of creativity involves the physical making of something, leading to some form of communication, expression or revelation" (David Gauntlett) - disagree

"If creativity is not inherent in human mental power and is, in fact, social and situational, the technological developments may well be linked to advances in the creativity of individual users." (Banji, Burn and Buckingham 2006) - agree


Outline to what extent you were creative in your AS and A2 coursework tasks?

Within the AS and A2 coursework task there were 5 main problems which hindered how creative I could be overall: the task choice, the deadlines, the technology, the actors and the location. As our tasks were chosen beforehand by the school, it meant that we couldn't be as created as we wanted as we couldn't choose what coursework task we wanted to do being told that we were to make a music magazine for AS coursework and a music video for A2 coursework. Although this was unavoidable, it lowered the level of creativity because it wasn't possible to do anything we wanted, within reason. During the creation of my coursework, deadlines were set to make sure that everything was up to date and that the work was actually being done. However, the deadlines sometimes caused work to be rushed in order to be finished on time and at times didn't allow changes to be made to coursework once it was handed in. This made it harder to be creative when creating my coursework because everything had to be done for a certain time meaning less time was spent on the tasks and caused some parts to be more simplistic that originally desired. For both pieces of coursework, finding the right location and actors for the artists was difficult, as they had to be aesthetically pleasing but also quite confident in order to look as much like a professional artist as possible. Obviously, using professional actors/models was not realistic, hampering the creativity because the people used in the coursework were not used to doing the tasks asked of them and weren't comfortable some of the time. It was hard to find locations that would work with the theme of the coursework and in some cases this meant improvising, which meant that the creative freedom was lowered as I had to work around the location, rather than finding one that would have fit in well with the theme. The technology used in the coursework also prevented me from being more creative because it wasn't the newest technology on offer and this obstructed the creativity because the work wasn't the best quality and some edits couldn't be applied.
However, I was also quite creative within both the coursework tasks despite the problems that occurred. In my music magazine for my AS coursework I tried to keep the theme of having black and white images relating to my created artist. My double page spread used this effectively by having a grey scale background but my artist being in colour, making her stand out on the page. This also allowed me to have brightly coloured text as it could be read against the background and fulfilled my wish to have bright colours throughout my magazine. In contrast, for the A2 coursework created by Sarah and I, we chose to have darker colours, to fit in with the sombre mood of the song we were using for our video. Having this element in our music video extended to our individual tasks of creating a digipak and magazine advert, which connected everything together. For our video we went through 3 different actors to play our artist, allowing us to try different styles and looks, which I think made our video more creative because we tried so many different ideas. The images I used for my digipak were also quite creative as the photo shoot we had focused on having a wide variety of shots and poses to create a random look and because we used each other for our images we had no images of our artist, an element which is expected within the music industry and in my opinion made both our work creative and original.
Overall, I think that I was quite creative for both of my coursework tasks by using themes and originality to create the look and idea that I wanted. I do think that my A2 coursework was more creative than my AS task, most likely because of the experience I received from creating my AS coursework and because I worked with Sarah for the task, as working together culminated in more ideas and thoughts, giving us more creative ideas to work with.