Quentin Tarantino Tells Off Critics Upset With N-Word Use and Violence in His Films: Go ‘See Something Else’
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Quentin Tarantino has the following message for anyone upset with the graphic violence and frequent use of the N-word in his movies: “See something else.” The director had no apologies or regrets when recently asked by Chris Wallace about the backlash he often gets from viewers. Tarantino was a guest on Wallace’s HBO Max talk series “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” and said that people who don’t like the content in his movies just shouldn’t see them, period.
“You talk about being the conductor and the audience being the orchestra,” Wallace told Tarantino. “So when people say, ‘Well there’s too much violence in his movies. He uses the N-word too often.’ You say what?”
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“You should see [something else],” Tarantino answered. “Then see something else. If you have a problem with my movies then they aren’t the movies to go see. Apparently I’m not making them for you.”
Tarantino’s use of the N-word in his screenplays has long been defended by his frequent collaborator Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in almost every Tarantino feature film to date. Tarantino’s critics often cite “Django Unchained” as a problem since it features the racial slur nearly 110 times.
“It’s some bullshit,” Jackson once told Esquire magazine about the backlash. “You can’t just tell a writer he can’t talk, write the words, put the words in the mouths of the people from their ethnicities, the way that they use their words. You cannot do that, because then it becomes an untruth; it’s not honest. It’s just not honest.”
“Django Unchained” leading star Jamie Foxx also had no issue with Tarantino’s script, once telling Yahoo Entertainment, “I understood the text. The N-word was said 100 times, but I understood the text — that’s the way it was back in that time.”
In the Tarantino documentary “QT8: The First Eight,” Jackson doubled down even harder on his defense of Tarantino’s language.
“You take ’12 Years a Slave,’ which is supposedly made by an auteur,” Jackson said. “Steve McQueen is very different than Quentin. When you have a song that says [the N-word] in it 300 times nobody says shit. So it’s ok for Steve McQueen to use [the N-word] because he’s artistically attacking the system and the way people think and feel, but Quentin is just doing it to just strike the blackboard with his nails. That’s not true. There’s no dishonesty in anything that [Quentin] writes or how people talk, feel or speak [in his movies].”
Tarantino appeared on Wallace’s HBO show during the press tour for his new book, “Cinema Speculation.” The novel is now available for purchase.
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