Inglourious Basterds ~ Hollywood continues to perpetuate racial stereotyping of the American Indian.

American Indian racial stereotyping is once again presented in the Hollywood movie; “Inglourious Basterds” written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and released in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures. Tarantino has repeatedly stressed that despite its being a war film, the movie is his “spaghetti western but with World War II iconography”

Inglourious Basterds does indeed have some of the characteristics of a spaghetti western such as the blatant racial stereotyping of the American Indian.

Brad Pitt plays the character Lt. Aldo Raine, the “Apache”, a redneck with a distinctive Southern drawl, (he is nicknamed “Apache” because his ancestral family tree includes American Indian blood.) “Supposedly” a direct descendent of mountain man Jim Bridger, with an accent to match, he does not mince words when he gives his squad of eight their behind-the-German-lines marching orders, personally requiring 100 Nazi scalps and other cruel barbarism from each of his men. In the movie, Brad Pitt’s character states, “That means I got some “injun” in me.” He continues on, pointing out that this will evoke fear in the minds of the enemy, implying  that Indians are well known savages. Although this particular stated line is missing from any script, media or movie trailer, it is what prefaces Lt Aldo’s demand that each man barbarically mutilates 100 enemies.  Perhaps Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt or the movies producers have some deep rooted defective racial genetics of their own.

Note: In 1835 Jim Bridger married a woman from the Flathead Indians tribe with whom he had three children. After her death in 1846, he married the daughter of a Shoshone chief, who died in childbirth three years later. In 1850 he married a Shoshone with whom he had two more children. Some of his children were sent back east to be educated. (Definitely neither one of them was  Brad Pitt or Lt. Aldo Raine.)

Lt. Aldo Raine the “Apache” stated to be a direct descendent of mountain man Jim Bridger? Why not General Samuel Curtis “I want no peace till the Indians suffer more…No peace must be made without my directions.” Or perhaps General John Chivington, the Butcher of the Sand Creek Massacre: U.S. soldiers inevitably chased the defenseless Cheyenne and Arapaho by horse and foot with knives and guns in hand. Their victims had to be positioned before ripping off their scalps, cutting off their ears, smashing out their brains, butchering their children, tearing their breastfeeding infants away from their mother’s breasts, and then murdering those infants. The “Bloody Third” soldiers had to kill the infants before cutting out their mother’s genitals.

Hollywood continues to perpetuate American Indian racial stereotyping to portray the indigenous peoples of this county as loathsome barbarians or savages.

The Script:

CHAPTER TWO

“INGLORIOUS BASTERDS”

FADE UP

EXT – SOMEWHERE IN ENGLAND – DAY
A bunch of SOLDIERS are lined up at attention.
LIEUTENANT ALDO.RAINE, a hillbilly from the mountains of
Tennessee, walks down the line. He recruits the men, the
Germans will later call; “The Basterds”. Lt.Aldo has one
defining physical characteristic, a ROPE BURN around his
neck. As if once upon a time,. he survived a LYNCHING.
The scar will never once be mentioned.

LT.ALDO
My name is Lt.Aldo Raine, and I’m puttin together a special team. And I need me eight soldiers. Eight – Jewish – American – soldiers Now y’all might of heard      rumors about the armada happening soon. Well, we’ll be leavin a little earlier. We’re gonna be dropped  into France, dressed as civilians. And once we’re in enemy territory, as a bushwackin, guerrilla army, we’re  gonna be doin one thing, and thing only, Killin Nazi’s.

The Members of the National Socialist  Party, have conquered Europe through  murder, torture, intimidation, and  terror. And that’s exactly what we’re
gonna do to them. Now I don’t know bout y’all? But I sure as hell, didnt come down from the goddamn Smoky  mountains, cross five thousand miles  of water, fight my way through half Sicily, and then jump out of a fuckin air-o-plane, to teach the Nazi’s  lessons in humanity. Nazi ain’t got  no humanity. There the foot soldiers of a Jew hatin, mass murderin manic, and they need to be destroyed. That’s why any and every son-of-a–bitch we find wearin a Nazi uniform, there gonna die.

if.

LT.ALDO

(CON’T)
We will be cruel to the Germans and through our cruelty, they will know who we are. They will find the  evidence of our cruelty, in the disembowed, dismembered, and  disfigured bodies of their brother we leave behind us. And the German will not be able to help themselves  from imagining the cruelty their  brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives.
And the Germans, will be sickened by us.
And the Germans, will talk about us.
And the Germans, will fear us.
And when the Germans close their eyes at night, and their sub conscious tortures them for the evil they’ve done, it will be with thoughts of us, that it tortures them with.

He stops pacing, and looks at everybody.

LT. ALDO
Sound good?
They all say;

ALL
Yes, sir!

LT.ALDO
That’s what I like to hear. But got a word of warning to all would-be warriors. When you join my command,
you take on debit. A debit you owe  me, personally. Every man under my command, owes me, one hundred nazi scalps.
And I want my scalps.
And all y’all will git me, one hundred
Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazi’s… .or you will die trying.

NOTE: Reference to the origin of scalping. Page 180

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