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Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards

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Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots with-in the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody…show more content…
The Jew Hunter is very polite yet vicious and frightening and displays this again through a silent brutal strangling of one of the spies. These scenes depict Jewish and supporters revolt against Hitler’s reign and the war in itself it was before American involvement.
Inglourious Basterds argues that the American lens of Jews in World War II is inaccurate by contrasting the traditional American lens with a strong Jewish lens through parallel plots in the story. In Inglourious Basterds, we mentioned the opening scene which starts with the “Jew Hunter” in complete control and using fear tactics to make a French farmer give up the Jews he is harboring. This scene shows the “Jew Hunter” in full control of the situation with all power resting solely in his hands. The Jewish family being harbored is completely helpless as they hide under the floorboards. The Jews in this scene are in line with what the American perspective of Jews in World War II, helpless and at the mercy of the Nazis. However the Basterds violently contradict the American lens of Jew’s role in World War II history. This is done so in the way the film is laid out with alternating five different chapters, which alternate between Jews having power and lacking power. The Basterds reverse the power structure and become the ones inflicting fear. They begin to not only kill Nazis they make the Nazis fear Jews. This can be seen in one scene where the “Bear Jew” walks out of a dark tunnel, bat banging
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