Abstract

Reveling in the self-reflexive and the metacinematic, Quentin Tarantino's films are often associated with a Baudrillardian postmodernity. His most recent Inglorious Basterds continues in the same self-referential vein as his earlier films but adds a blatant falsification of history which pushes the question of the reality and images even further. But, this essay asks, is a Baudrillardian perspective the most fruitful one in comprehending the creative potential of Tarantino's latest film? Moving from Baudrillard through Virilio to Deleuze and Guattari, the essay explores ways in which the film's investment in vision and screens opens for a creative and enabling engagement with images - not cinema as truth, as Deleuze would have it, but the truth of cinema. As such, Tarantino's in many ways outrageous film provides an important contribution to analyzes of the relation between perceptions of the image and conceptions of the real and contributes to the politically crucial endeavor of understanding what images 'want.'.