ABSTRACT
In an interview, he gave at the beginning of his career, Quentin Tarantino said that the only people in America who tend not to take violence seriously and laugh at it are ‘black people. They don’t let violence affect them at all’ (qtd. in Willis, 212). What Tarantino had in mind was to make movies in which violence is represented as ridiculous as the violence in his beloved Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, but aimed at a white (middle-class) public. And indeed, his films, which feature not only extreme violence, but also cheap jokes about shit and drugs and have a lot of talk about ‘niggers,’ became a tremendous success. The horrific scenes in his pictures provoke laughter, 1 as the infamous ‘ear cut’ scene from his debut feature Reservoir Dogs (1992) illustrates – a film about a well-prepared heist that fails miserably. In an attempt to find out the identity of the ‘rat,’ psychopath Vic Vega, whose codename is Mr. Blonde, threatens to cut off the ear of a police officer. Preceding this torture scene, he praises the radio station ‘Supersound of the Seventies.’ When he switches the radio on, we hear the middle-of-the-road track ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ by Stealers Wheel. Then, Mr. Blonde takes a sharp razor to the officer’s ear; while the camera turns away and shows the hangar’s blank wall, we hear the officer screaming through the Stealers Wheel song. Conventionally, a viewer may be inclined to identify with a victim who meets a sorry fate, but here the combination of a horrific scene with the carefree music is so ludicrous that the viewer may not only react appalled, but cannot suppress a giggle or a smile. The deliberately chosen soundtrack, to which Mr. Blonde starts to make ultra-relaxed dance movements, is incompatible with his upcoming deed. 2
