The Tarantinian Ethics

The screenplays and films of Quentin Tarantino raise profound comic and ethical dilemmas. Developing ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Botting and Wilson explore ethical issues in relation to Tarantino’s work, postmodernity and recent cultural theory. They argue that Tarantino’s texts provide a provocative and telling contribution to theorized accounts of contemporary culture.

The term ‘Tarantinian’ has been coined to refer to a set of sampled, self-authorizing signs that are cinematically assembled in processes of ‘consuming – producing – expending’ in the general context of a postmodern capitalism that enjoins excess. The Tarantinian ethics are elaborated, in the midst of a homogenized fast-food, movie and video culture, in relation to heterogeneous events of violence, horror and laughter.

Witty and incisive, the book illuminates and interrogates contemporary structures of identity, desire and consumption. It will be of great interest to students of cultural studies, social theory and communication.

Author Biography

Fred Botting has taught English Literature, Critical Theory, Film and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Lancaster, Keele and Cardiff. He has written extensively on Gothic fictions, and on theory, film and cultural forms. His current research projects include work on fiction and film dealing with figures of horror – zombies in particular – and on spectrality, the uncanny and sexuality.