Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy by Richard Greene, K. Silem Mohammad Page B

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.

PART II
    “I Bet You’re a Big Lee Marvin Fan”
    Violence, Aggression, Negative Ethics

4
    The Moral Lives of Reservoir Dogs
    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