Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy Read Online Free Page A

a form of “simulation” that somehow makes the “real” more “real” or authentic. Through the mixing of human bodies with machines and, by extension, the mixing of pleasure with pain, Tarantino repeatedly emphasizes the fact that simulation is at work in Death Proof . By combining human bodies with machines, Tarantino opens the door to the combination of the real with the artificial or simulated.
    Death Proof , in many ways, is an attempt to rewrite cinematic history. Tarantino largely does away with the more grand “history” of Baudrillard. For instance, while the posters for Death Proof as well as Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror (the other half of Grindhouse , the two-in-one “double feature” of which Death Proof is the second part) might throw back to the exploitation posters covering the grindhouses of Times Square in the 1960s and 1970s, the contents of Death Proof and Planet Terror are stripped of all traces of the historic and economic eras that produced the films that they reference. Tarantino seems to be the first to do away with this larger history as he freely mixes cell phones and text messaging,
markers of the present, with pristine muscle cars, markers of the past.
    The multi-million dollar collaboration of Grindhouse quickly erases the actual economic structure that dictated the tiny budgets of much grindhouse fare (although depending on your understanding of “exploitation cinema,” you could still define Tarantino and Rodriguez as “exploiters” of their own niche markets). Similarly, in the contemporary production of Death Proof there is no space for the quickly disappearing open-road speed-freak freedom of the early 1970s that you find in Vanishing Point . The original historical and cinematic context can’t help but be lost.
    Death Proof throws away memory in favor of the speed of the muscle car. Moving away from memory like this is actually part of Death Proof ’s structure: with the movement of the story from Texas to Tennessee, Tarantino practically erases the entire first half of the film, with the exception of a few passing references and the character that links them together, Stuntman Mike.

Hyperreality and Simulation
    Baudrillard, in Simulacra and Simulation (1999) and America (1994), argues that the United States, and Hollywood productions in particular, are evidence of an all-pervading “hyperreality.” 6 It is in hyperreality that there is “no more fiction or reality,” only a blurring of the two. 7 Hyperreality and simulation, in turn, connect directly to the hyper-speed of capital’s circulation: everything moves, everything sells, everything disappears.
    According to Baudrillard, “America is neither dream nor reality” (1999, p. 3). Instead, it is hyperreality through and through. The U.S. and American cultural productions must be understood “as fiction” (p. 29). And Death Proof always seems ready to embrace its position as fiction whether it’s through countless references to other films or fictions or the self-imposed cult status of the film.
    The characters of the second part of the film are in fact, simulations. As actresses playing stuntpersons (Kim [Tracie
Thorns] and Zoë [Zoë Bell]), and actresses playing a make-up girl and an actress (Abernathy [Rosario Dawson] and Lee [Mary Elizabeth Winstead]), they create simulations in their fictional work. They also constantly draw attention to their occupations verbally, be it as stuntperson, make-up artist, or actress. Meanwhile, when the action shifts from the stuntperson’s game of “Ship’s Mast” to the actual violence on the part of Stuntman Mike, Stuntman Mike still simulates violence. The action consists at base of stuntpersons acting out car chases from their favorite movies.
    What Baudrillard calls “the era of simulation,” others more loosely dub “postmodernity.” Theorists now, according to Baudrillard, must primarily concern themselves with the “question of substituting the signs