Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy Read Online Free PDF Page B

relatively pedantic study of Greek drama provided us with the universally imitated structure of classic Hollywood narratives, Nietzsche’s lively and provocative analysis found in tragedy the key to an understanding of art in general. And that key unlocks in Tarantino’s film a textbook example of the artistic paradigm articulated in Nietzsche’s book. In fact, the correlation between these two works is almost uncanny. Thus, a Nietzschean interpretation of Reservoir Dogs can not only help explain the otherwise puzzling dissonance between the beauty and horror, comedy and violence, and music and story characteristic of Tarantino films to date; it can also provide us with more than mere Beggin’ Strips ® for philosophical thought about all cinematic art.
    Tarantino looks to be the Nietzsche of our day, a genius upstart right out of the gate. But Nietzsche’s ideas have proved resilient and profound beyond anyone’s expectations. Might the same be said of Tarantino 100 years from now? Will his films possess the same artistic influence and philosophical staying power as Nietzsche’s books? Is his art of blood and banter just matinee Kibbles ’n’ Bits ® , or is there some philosophical meat to it?

Nietzsche and Tarantino: Life Outside the Pack
    Nietzsche wrote prodigiously even as a child. By the time he was twenty-four he had composed at least nine lengthy autobiographical sketches, numerous historical and philosophical essays, and a staggering count of poems, letters and diaries. While his childhood friends played as a way to escape life’s seriousness, precocious young Friedrich played in order to produce material about which he could later write. 10 While The Birth of Tragedy was his first book-length publication, it was several years in the making and integrated ideas developed in at least
three prior essays (“Greek Music Drama,” “Socrates and Tragedy,” and “The Dionysian Worldview”). Nietzsche himself later wrote the most incisive criticism of this early work and judged it “ponderous,” “image-mad,” and “disdainful of proof.” 11 Yet, Nietzsche’s mature ideas remain thoroughly indebted to its radical insights about art, pessimism and morality, and Nietzsche’s own appraisal of The Birth of Tragedy in his last published book reaffirms and reiterates its “decisive innovations,” 12 despite the fact that he later rejects all metaphysical responses to pessimism, even the semi-transparent metaphysics he attributed to Greek tragedy.
    In a nutshell, The Birth of Tragedy employs examples from Greek history and art to argue that all vital artistic inventions are the products of two dialectically opposed powers locked in creative conflict. Nietzsche called these two powers the Dionysian and the Apollonian, after the two Greek Gods that he believed were their most direct artistic embodiments. According to Nietzsche, any noteworthy creative endeavor is essentially an expression of one or the other of these two primordial forces, or a mixture of them both.
    The title of Nietzsche’s book derives from his imaginative claim that Hellenic tragedy originated with a Dionysian chorus and developed into an Apollonian dream-like spectacle which preserved and expressed these two natural impulses in a perfectly balanced and historically unique way. The Birth of Tragedy was famously described in 1912 as “a work of profound imaginative insight, which left the scholarship of a generation toiling in the rear.” 13 But when it was first published in 1872 its general reception was much less appreciative.
    Most readers were probably baffled by the book; respected critics were openly hostile towards it. In large measure, this unfavorable reaction was the consequence of Nietzsche’s highly personal and poetic writing style, which disoriented readers accustomed to the rigid scholarly methods of nineteenth-century philology and philosophy. Then again, it also reflected the biting resentment of jealous peers who