Tarantino's Apache warfare fiction

'Inglourious Basterds'

Quentin Tarantino's World War II movie has blood, but its heart doesn't beat.

By Kenneth TuranHere are a few of my not-favorite things: scalps graphically removed, throats savagely slashed, heads brutally beaten by baseball bats, necks forcibly strangled, fingers sadistically twisted in open wounds. The ideal person to be reviewing Quentin Tarantino's violent World War II fantasia, "Inglourious Basterds," I am not, but as the Basterds knew all too well, sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do.As I noted before, I don't think the Apaches did much scalping. I think their most notorious form of torture was burying people alive to be eaten by ants. Which is horrific, to be sure, but I doubt the Apaches sat for days watching the victim's suffering. When they tortured people, they didn't necessarily take a sadistic pleasure in it.

I'm not even sure the Apaches believed the terrorist's usual excuse for killing and maiming people: to intimidate everyone else. The book Once They Moved Like the Wind suggests they tortured people for other reasons. To test people's courage through pain, to prevent enemy spirits from stalking them, even to "honor" their foes. You may not agree with their thinking, but it's different from torturing people because they enjoyed seeing them suffer.

Inglourious Basterds presumably doesn't show Aldo the "Apache" burying people alive for days. It wouldn't have been cinematic, but it also wouldn't have fit Tarantino's stereotypical notion of Indian warfare. To him, apparently, Indians are nothing but sadistic savages. They revel in killing viciously, brutally, and cruelly because they're not quite human.

What did most Indians do when the US forced them to give up their freedom? They forswore their warring ways, pledged to uphold the treaties they signed, and began working within the system. Far from being typical, Geronimo was notable as one of the tiny minority of Indians who refused to play by the rules.

So Tarantino has taken an extreme case and built his movie around it. It's as if he found one historically accurate story of a greedy Jew and created a "Jews control the world" fantasy. Or one historically accurate story of a black Uncle Tom and created a Song of the South-style fantasy. Apparently Geronimo is his excuse for a multimillion-dollar movie that exploits the worst Indian stereotypes.

Tarantino's childhood fantasyThe plot alternates among a group of bloodthirsty Jewish American GIs under the command of Lt. Aldo "The Apache" Raine (Brad Pitt), a fugitive Jewish woman named Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) who owns a movie theater in Paris and a German SS officer, Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who specializes in ferreting out Jews. (The Jewish element may sound strong, but it's just a plot construct: The characters might as well be renegade Benedictine monks for all the difference it makes).Some critics have called Inglourious Basterds a "Jewish revenge fantasy," but that seems to be misleading. Tarantino apparently didn't care about making some moral statement about Jews fighting back. He wanted an excuse to reenact his childhood daydream of Apache-like Cherokees vs. Klansmen.

So he made his "heroes" Jews, since you can't argue with the Jews' desire for vengeance. And he made his "villains" Nazis, because you can't argue with executing war criminals. He basically gave himself a pretext for presenting a couple of hours of gory, gratuitous violence. Watch Jews act like Apaches--i.e., homicidal maniacs--and kill everyone as sadistically as possible!Having just as much fun is Pitt, who seems more relaxed and comfortable in these comic character parts than in conventional leading man roles. His Aldo the Apache, a direct descendant of mountain man Jim Bridger, with an accent to match, does not mince words when he gives his squad of eight their behind-the-German-lines marching orders. The Nazis, he says, need to be "dee-stroyed." And the man himself personally requires 100 Nazi scalps from each of his men.I don't think Jim Bridger, who mainly operated in the Rockies, had anything to do with Apaches or Cherokees. But never mind. His descendants could have even if he didn't.

Again, we see Tarantino's falsification of Indian-style thought. Typically Indian warfare was about humiliating the opponents, not "dee-stroying" them. It was probably rare for a tribe to declare its goal was to wipe an enemy off the face of the earth. That kind of genocidal thinking was much more common among Europeans.

And no way would an Indian leader require a scalp quota. Scalping was all about taking a prize to glorify an individual victory. Indians didn't try to kill large numbers of people so they collect as many scalps as possible.

Conclusion

In short, Tarantino's version of Indian-style revenge is almost a pure fantasy. By highlighting the most extreme elements of Indian culture--Apaches! murder! torture!--he's perpetuated the most extreme Indian stereotypes. Inglourious Basterds isn't much different from 1950s-style Westerns in which people go on a rampage because they're "half-breeds." They kill people because the Indian inside them impels them to.

Perhaps Tarantino's next movie will show characters emulating Indians by honoring their pledge of allegiance to the US. You know, by serving in the military, getting college educations, and passing legislation. Maybe, but I doubt it. Tarantino wants audiences to leer and slaver at Indians, not understand and respect them.

For more on the subject, see Tarantino's Indian Revenge Fantasy and The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  Tarantino's idea of a typical Indian.