"I Should've Been Motherfuckin' Black Mamba:" What the Poetic License of Quentin Tarantino Reveals about His Racial Politics

In the midst of all the online debates over DJANGO UNCHAINED, I had an epiphany.

It was inspired by something a gentleman had posted on a friend’s Facebook wall. He had written that he had listened to an NPR interview with Quentin Tarantino in early January where Tarantino described himself as amoral, said that he wanted to remake the 1966 film DJANGO and chose to set it during slavery because he needed a setting that was appropriate for the kind of violence he wants in his films. In other words, the gentleman concluded, “It is the violence [for Tarantino] that is cathartic. It’s not a matter of principle, but a matter of violent reaction, revenge. He is using our story for his get-off…” 

Of all the takes on DJANGO UNCHAINED and Tarantino’s intentions for creating it, this is the one that has stuck with me most.  I have very mixed feelings about his films and major issues with the man himself that would require another post to elaborate.  Not yet having seen DJANGO UNCHAINED, I’ve only lurked discussions except to comment on the filmmaker based on things he himself has said. You know, shit like this everything-but-the-burden comment about his past lives to BRITISH GQ:

“I know I must have been a writer in a few other lives. I know I was a black slave in America. I think maybe even like three lives. Yeah, I know that. And I know that I was Japanese in another life and I was Chinese in another life."  

So even though I have yet to see DJANGO UNCHAINED, comments like these made this fellow’s theory about what really drives Tarantino as a filmmaker resonate.

Then I woke up one morning and realized that all the understanding we need regarding the intersection of Tarantino’s racial politics and artistic impulses can be found in one line from KILL BILL VOL 1.

I should've been motherfuckin' Black Mamba. 

I’m no stranger to the use of poetic license. But license not only engenders responsibility, it also casts more transparency than even the most deliberate artist may realize. Whether a media maker is aware of the deeper motivations influencing the way s/he wields poetic license is irrelevant. Poetic license is gonna tell on you.

And what does the Black Mamba moment say about QT? 

Let me ask you this.

Do you think for a second in the Real World Vernita Green wouldn’t have been Black Mamba?

On the surface, it’s a hilarious line. An effective one, too, saying a great deal about not only Vernita and Beatrix’s relationship but also about their respective standing in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad.  And that's precisely why it’s bullshit. It reveals that when it comes to race, Quentin Tarantino just ain’t that fuckin’ knowledgeable or deep, er, his past life as an enslaved African in the United States notwithstanding.

For all the racial messiness that often insidiously permeates even the most progressive of multicultural organizations, there’s no way that a woman like Vernita would have allowed Beatrix to take on the moniker of Black Mamba. No. Freakin’. Way. Beatrix could’ve been turning Bill out three times a day and all-day Sunday. Never would’ve happened. The minute Blondie would’ve piped up at the meeting talkin’bout, “I wanna be Black Mamba,” Vernita would’ve said – say it with me – …

“Bitch, please. I’m motherfuckin’ Black Mamba.”

And that would’ve been the end of that. She either would’ve been Black Mamba or she would’ve been out. With the skills she had, Vernita had plenty of opportunities in the underground economy to bounce to an organization where this never would’ve been a question.  The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, after all, is not a member of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. Or the left for that matter.

The fact that Vernita Green was not Black Mamba and is sore enough still so many years later to even mention it is proof-positive to the extent Tarantino will flex his poetic license to pursue the superficial laugh at the expense of accuracy.  “I should’ve been Black Mamba” reveals he either has a flimsy understanding of how racial dynamics play out in an organization or doesn’t care about depicting those dynamics accurately.  Rather he only wants to approximate the truth to that delicate point where it can be named without being disrupted. Therein lies the shits and giggles for him, and the rest of us if we don’t give it a second thought. The bottom line: it was far more important to Tarantino to solidify the Bride’s superiority over Vernita, physical and racial, and for that superiority to be so obvious and impervious, the Black woman is the one who has to complain about it.

Don’t even get me started on the shit that comes out of Tracie Thom's mouth in DEATH PROOF.

Time to Check Tarantino, Too

I have swirl of conflicting feelings about the Don Imus affair and the current turn in the Duke rape case that makes it difficult to write about them. That difficulty feeds itself because these are the kind of topics that I usually sink my teeth into. The longer I remain silent on these issues, the more confused I become over them, and that furthers my hesitancy to comment. Not a comfortable place to be for a strident cultural activist for whom language is important.

So today I want to vent about a recent "incident" in popular culture which has garnered little attention yet demands discussion and on which my position is clear, and that's Quentin Tarantino's excessive use of the n-word in his films.

On Wednesday, I was in Manhattan with time to kill between a meeting and a class so I decided to treat myself to a flick at Union Square. I had just enough time – three hours and eleven minutes to be exact – to catch the double feature Grindhouse. For those of you who don't know, Grindhouse is actually two movies and several faux trailers that harken back to the so-bad-their-good shock cinema of the 70s. The first movie Planet Terror is a zombie parody written and directed by Robert Rodriguez while the second joint Death Proof is a combined homage to the race car and girl revenge flicks written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

There's a consensus among film critics about Grindhouse that I join: Rodriguez got it right, offering the same mindless entertainment as the films he attempts to emulate while, once again, Tarantino wallowed in a self-indulgence that turned a good concept into a mediocre film. Once upon time, critics heaped deserved praise on Tarantino for his way with dialogue. Characters in his films would wax on for minutes about topics that were irrelevant to the story, but audiences (myself included) ate it up because the tangents were so damned entertaining. The praise has gone to Quentin's head because Death Proof is filled with scenes where female characters go on endlessly about nothing of importance ( to anyone else except Quentin, that is) and, unlike their male counterparts in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, they bore you to tears.

What has yet to penetrate Tarantino's consciousness – and needs to with the same quickness in which Don Imus was put in check – is that his public love affair with the n-word ain't cute.
It seems that he has learned only one lesson only to evade another. Although Quentin has repeated the mistake of casting himself in his own movie, at least the n-word isn't sailing out of his character's mouth in Death Proof as it did in Pulp Fiction. The problem, however, is it flies consistently out of the mouth of thr stunwoman Kim (played by actress Tracie Thoms.) In fact, Kim is only one of two African American characters in Death Proof. The other character is a local radio DJ named Jungle Julia – I kid you not – played by Sydney Tamiia Poitier(yes, daughter and namesake of Sidney Poitier, the accomplished actor renowned for the dignity he displays both on and off screen.) Both Kim and Jungle Julia fall neatly into the stereotype of the quick-lipped sista who cusses and disses people without provocation, her closest friends being her favorite targets of her inexplicable aggression.

Now maybe, just maybe, these stereotypes are part of Tarantino's weak effort to emulate the films of this time. After all, the B-movies of the 70s weren't exactly bastions of character development and logical plots. The heyday of grindhouse theatre coincided with the decade of Blaxploitation, a genre that many of us celebrate to this day even as we chastise its equally stereotypical yet less politically inspired successor the hood flick. It's a hard sell, but I'm willing to entertain it.

I'm not willing to entertain, however, Tarantino's attempts to at once relish the n-word while dodging criticism for its excessive use by having it spew from the mouth of an African American actress. As an author of hip hop noir for adult audiences, I have experienced the challenge of writing around a word that is used so prevalently in the environment that you are trying to realistically depict. But Thoms' Kim uses the n-word so damned much, it's ridiculously unrealistic and undeniably purposeful. And unfunny. And offensive. Anyone and everyone's a n***a to Kim regardless of their gender or race and even her feelings toward them at the moment. Amused or angry, she tosses out the word when she can readily use something else -- or nothing at all -- that would be no less, uh, "appropriate" given the context.

I don't agree with Spike Lee on much, but he's right on this one. Quentin Tarantino is infatuated with this word. The gratuitous use of the word by an African American character in Death Proof is undeniably his way of using the slur without getting called out for it, and I just thought y'all should know. Despite those conflicting feelings about the various issues raised by the Don Imus affair, I'm harboring colorful fantasies of Black folks pulling a drop squad on Quentin Tarantino and forcing him into N***as Anonymous.

It seems we've reached a new low in the history of the n-word and all its variants, mi gente. When having your ongoing debates about who is "allowed' to say the word, the role hip hop plays in its proliferation, and whether or not the inconsistencies in holding people accountable for its continued use are justified, discuss this, too. The firing of Don Imus might make some Whites in media think twice about tossing out racial epithets in the name of entertainment, for sure. But it also may encourage the Tarantinos of the world who refuse to kick their n***** habit to invent more ways to make us say the dirty words for them.

What are we going to do then?