Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (7 page)

But in addition to pairing the music with incongruent images, Tarantino employs music to structure
Reservoir Dogs
from within. This is a highly unusual and artful way to construct a film. An analogue to Tarantino’s opening credit slo-mo sequence, where each character is introduced within an allotted screen time equal to two measures of “Little Green Bag,” might be the way director Fred Zinneman and film editors Elmo Williams and Harry Gerstad (who won an Academy Award
^®
for their work) cut the climactic scenes in
High Noon
in beat to the Tex Ritter music, increasing the tempo of the edits, measure by measure, to keep pace with the tension-building melody.

Later in
Reservoir Dogs
, Tarantino uses music in yet another way to structure the entire torture scene temporally, as he explains: “what makes [the scene] work is that it unfolds in real time (the time it takes to play a song) and you can’t cheat, it has
to be played out to the end.”
²¹
But in addition to affecting irony and structuring the syntax and frequency of his cuts, scenes and shots, Tarantino uses music in his films (and this is especially true of
Pulp Fiction
) to provide the tonal core around which the entire film is constructed. It is as if on some deep level the images are
dictated by and added to
the music, rather than the reverse. So, contrary to what Tarantino himself says above, it’s not so much that the music forms an ironic counter-point to the images, as it is that the visuals, setting, dialogue and other Apollonian elements form a dissonant counter-point to the Dionysian music. But what philosophical importance can this have? Quite a bit, actually.

Here again, Nietzsche’s analysis of tragedy provides us with an interpretive key. Under the assumption that human nature is an evolutionary outgrowth of nature in general, Nietzsche posited a state of primordial union as the origin of the Apollonian-Dionysian antagonism which animates all human life. Music as the originary artistic expression of that primordial oneness is thus the primal
art
(and here again, Nietzsche was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, who believed music to be a pure expression of the will). Apollonian lyrics and dialogue are but natural responses and imagistic complements to the Dionysian music—the Apollonian dream of a Dionysian subconscious, as it were.

Nietzsche says Schiller once confessed that his poetry always began, not with words and images, but with a musical mood. Nietzsche postulates the same origin for tragic poetry. It began with music. The tragic arts began with a Dionysian chorus musically lamenting the death of its god Dionysus, the true hero of every tragedy. The plot, dialogue, drama and spectacle all grew out of and in response to the music of the chorus, like a troubled dream grows out of the subconscious remnants of sufferings experienced in waking life. When these elements all combined artistically in such a way as to express implicitly their meaning and original significance, tragic music-drama was the remarkable result.

True tragedies were thus perpetually painful, albeit veiled commemorations of a lost primordial unity and “divine” identity.
They were musical creation myths about the true nature of human being—myths which not only accounted for life, but changed it. The single greatest virtue of Greek art (and perhaps this was Nietzsche’s greatest insight) was its capacity to show persuasively what life
could
be, thereby redeeming life by transforming it for the better: “Art is not merely imitation of the reality of nature but rather a metaphysical supplement of the reality of nature, placed beside it for it overcoming.”
²²

Recall that Ella Taylor accused Tarantino of being cinematically intrusive during the torture scene, making it an instance of “frighteningly pure art.” Philosophically speaking, the scene in question—and the movie—may indeed be pure art, but
not
because the cinema intrudes upon it. In fact, the only intrusive moment in that scene is the manifestly merciful one which occurs at its climax, when Tarantino’s camera, like Hitchcock’s camera in
Psycho
, pans
away
from the actual violence, thereby excluding it from the frame and leaving the act itself to the viewer’s imagination. At least until Mr. Blonde prances back into the frame and starts talking into the severed ear.

Reservoir Dogs
ends exactly as Nietzsche would say it should: cop and criminal fuse, all the colors and individual identities run back together into a bloody mess, and everybody is rejoined in an orgy of death. The only survivor is Mr. Pink: having crawled out from under the ramp where he hid during the final shootout, Pink grabs the bag of loot and runs from the warehouse—only to be apprehended by police waiting outside. As Stephen Weinberger notes, Mr. Pink is the only member of the gang with a color alias who “remains throughout a professional, thoroughly suppressing any traces of
humanity.”
²³
In other words, he is the only one who guards his anonymity to the end, who sees through the betrayal, and who feels no compassion or sentimentality or rage. Weinberger only observes this uniqueness; he cannot explain it. Nietzsche can.

What Nietzsche would call the “intoxicated” cruelty unselfconsciously expressed by Mr. Blonde is the cruelty that hides in the heart of every character in the film. So too the courage and treachery of Mr. Orange, the mercifulness and loyalty of Mr. White, the hard-boiled amiability of Mr. Blue, and the dilettante intellectualism of Mr. Brown are good and bad characteristics shared by all. Together, the rainbow colors that protect each individual’s anonymity constitute the mask of the Dionysian hero: each color is a dismembered part of the primordial whole with which the film begins, parts that can only be restored to full life and oneness by a piecemeal sacrifice of each “human” member, of each separated individual. Mr. Pink’s survival betokens the reconstituted Dionysus. All but one must die for all to be rejoined and redeemed.

Some have tried to understand this redemption in terms of religious suffering and post-modern self-realization.
²⁴
But the real redemption realized in
Reservoir Dogs
is not the impossible return to innocence ironically referenced by the opening discussion of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”; it is the redemption proper to Greek tragedy, what Nietzsche calls a Dionysian “augury of restored oneness.” And the site of that restoration is art. Film, to be precise. Cinema. And in the end, the cinema intrudes on us only by revealing to us who
we
the viewers are, as if the screen before us were a mirror in which is reflected our own individual virtues and vices, desires and fears, longings and failings.

Greek Apollonian artists managed to create artistic visions, fictional worlds and musical enchantments that were so beautiful and sublime they became the very models after which Greek civilization and culture patterned itself. And Greek Dionysian artists revealed through their music and poetry the primordial truth of those realizations: that at bottom, we are all one, and
the fate of every single individual is entangled with that of every other, just as the seemingly individual stories that play out in
Reservoir Dogs
turn out, in the end, to be but facets of the same stone. Or perhaps better said, interlaced themes in the same musical fugue.

Quentin Tarantino has left a lasting mark on film art. No doubt about it. And flaws notwithstanding,
Reservoir Dogs
is a genuine tragedy for the postmodern age. In and of itself that’s no small accomplishment. But artistically he’s where Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone were with
Fistful of Dollars
and
For a Few Dollars More
: his originality and infectious daring have earned him a loyal following and well-deserved praise, and the broad strokes of his trend-setting work have displayed real brilliance.

But will Tarantino’s delight in wild abandon for its own sake collar his work in the future to dog-runs of silly and destructive excess? Or will the filmmaker whose howl awoke a sleeping art world to a new and exciting presence develop the discipline that produced genuine masterpieces like
Unforgiven
and
Once Upon a Time in the West
, thereby making big dogs out of Tarantino’s own heroes, onetime
auteur
pups like Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone? In short, Tarantino, “Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie—or are you gonna bite?” I hope you bite.

JAMES H. SPENCE

 

 

 

Reservoir Dogs
is a heist film. A group of criminals is gathered, each is given a color-coded alias, and together they rob a jewelry store. But the robbery goes bad when a clerk sets off the alarm and one of the gangsters—known only as Mr. Blonde—retaliates by killing employees. The police arrive, and the gang must shoot their way to freedom.

If this were the story, it wouldn’t be all that interesting. But nearly all of the movie takes place in a warehouse
after
the robbery. It opens with the Reservoir Dogs finishing breakfast in a diner, the credits roll, and suddenly we are in the chaotic post-robbery world. Mr. Orange, who eventually turns out to be an undercover police officer, is wounded during the escape, and at the rendezvous point members suspect that they have been set up.
Reservoir Dogs
, then, is not the story of a robbery, but of something else. It’s the story of how the gang deals with a wounded Mr. Orange, Mr. Blonde’s murder spree, and the possibility that they have been betrayed. These are all moral themes.

What about the moral character of these Reservoir Dogs? Tarantino’s protagonists are always cool, much cooler than we are. They are confident, calm under pressure, articulate, and well-dressed. Usually they are criminals. From their casual use of violence to their refined sense of style, we know that these characters are not like us. Their approach to morality is different as well. Tarantino’s characters are not confined by rules or conscience. They seem to make their own rules.

What are we to make of the Dogs, morally speaking? The
Reservoir Dogs: Fifteenth Anniversary Edition
DVD contains a
bonus feature offering a psychological profile of several of the characters. Supposedly, the Dogs are immoral psychopaths who fake emotions and sympathy, and use moral words solely to manipulate others. This seems implausible to me, and more so each time I watch the movie. I have become convinced that the movie is
filled
with morality. Not, I should stress, immorality, but
morality
.

One standard account of morality looks something like this: There are moral rules (perhaps God-given, but we don’t need to bother with that here) and these rules form the basis, the most fundamental aspects, of morality. If this view is correct, then the Dogs are obviously immoral. A second way to view morality is to deny that there are any objective values that could justify such moral rules, and conclude that there is really nothing to morality at all. We could call the first view
traditional morality
and the second
nihilism.
Part of the reason Tarantino’s movies engage us is this: traditional morality is always in the back of our minds as we watch
Reservoir Dogs
, so it frames the way we view the characters and events and shapes our expectations about how the characters ought to behave. Tarantino cuts across the grain, so to speak, and his characters violate our expectations.

A third possibility is that morality is constructed using the raw materials of human nature and social interaction. On this view, it’s a mistake to think that there are objective values built into the foundation of the universe. But it’s also a mistake to think that this means that there’s no such thing as morality at all. That would mean that human beings have certain natural tendencies which form the basis of morality, and upon which we construct moral rules that provide a way to resolve disputes. In other words, some moral behaviors (helping a loved one in distress for example) come more naturally to us than others (such as paying our debts), but either way they are moral. David Hume distinguishes, in his discussion of justice in
A Treatise of Human Nature
, between character traits that we naturally praise (natural virtues) and those we praise because they are useful to society (artificial virtues).
²⁵
For Hume, calling these latter virtues
“artificial” does not diminish their importance; it merely indicates that the standards are constructed by us as a way of preserving peaceful social interaction.

On this view, morality results from certain facts about the human condition: we are both selfish and compassionate, and these opposing tendencies give rise to conflicts which require us to invent rules to help resolve our disputes. Unlike the other views mentioned, the truth of this view depends upon facts about human psychology, because it is human psychology that is the source of morality. Human beings are self-interested, but they possess other characteristics (Jonathan Glover calls them “moral resources”) that restrain our self-interested behavior.
²⁶
These moral resources include a natural compassion for others, a deep psychological aversion to killing other human beings,
²⁷
and a concern for what others think of us (Glover calls this concern our “moral identity”). This moral identity is a picture of ourselves as morally good persons, which explains why we believe we deserve the respect of others. Since we value the respect of others, we desire to preserve our moral identity, and this means we are less likely to behave badly. All these features of human psychology manifest themselves as expectations about how we and others should act. In other words, they form the basis of morality.