Quentin Tarantino’s Cartoon Violence

Abstract

In this article, the author returns to the study of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘cartoonism’ that appeared in animation 2(2) in 2007. The focus here, as in Chris Pallant’s original essay, is on how filmic live action in Tarantino’s work displays the diegetic conventions of the cartoon, namely, its (1) hyperbolic, (2) graphic novel and (3) comic strip violence. The article adopts Pallant’s interpretive framework in analysing Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time. . . in Hollywood (2019), only this time supplements the analysis with a consideration of the film’s dramatic content. Drawing on Aristotle’s Poetics the author explores whether cartoon violence in Tarantino’s film is inversely related to drama and, more generally, speculates as to whether the cartoon form is inherently non- or anti-dramatic through the ‘private’ and commercial manner of its consumption.