Kill Bill and Liverpool Biennial

I've always really liked Quentin Tarantino films (like everyone does) but I'd never seen Kill Bill 1&2 until a few nights a go and I thought they were great. I preferred them to Jackie Brown and maybe even Pulp Fiction (although that's probably sacrilege to say in the world of film).

There are a few characteristics that I identify with Tarantino films:

Funny, smooth, sophisticated but entirely "filmic" dialogue

Actors/ Actresses he reuses as all good directors do (Thurman, Jackson etc)

Chapter markers in a film and a non-linear narrative

Experimental with genres

Great soundtrack

Violence - but not too far

Tension

Tongue-in-cheek everything!

For these reasons, and the carefully crafted you feel with watching Kill Bill Volume 1 & 2, I believe these films are more like artworks than Hollywood films - not that I'm clear on what the difference between the two is anyway!

I think my favourite thing though is the dialogue. It's indulgent and Postmodern, referencing film-lovers life long obsessions. But more than that, Tarantino does to film dialogue what Billy Childish does to garage music: he creates the perfect ideal of replication, so much so that even if you look back at the originals from the genres that he references, you won't find anything as good as his replication. It's like the ideal stereotype to the extent that it's better than the stereotype. It cashes in on that dialogue from Carol Reed films or film noir or classic Westerns; the mighty speech and the mighty comments.

But even with this perfected reference, I think without any knowledge of the reference, the films are still excellent - they play with the reference but they don't need it and that's where I think the film can differ with contemporary art of today.

Today in a discussion after a lecture the issue was raised of current artworks that reference other artworks, with the example used being a piece from the Biennial in the Copperas Hill Building - Kyungah Ham's "Abstract Weave". The argument was that the work was blatantly referencing the work of Modernist artist  Louis Morris (as pointed out in the caption), but that without this reference the work was successful anyway.

Kyungah Ham's work

Louis Morris' original

But I disagree, unlike Kill Bill, the work loses a lot if you take away the reference of its entire aestheticism. There seem to be many elitist and entirely-referencing works around, but not in the Postmodernist "bringing low  popular culture into a high culture status" way, it seems to be more alienating to the viewer, or at least that is how I felt after seeing it and not making the connection and not thinking it was amazing. I felt a bit fooled and condescended once I found out. Someone suggested that it is a good thing because it encourages you to follow the trail of references and influences, but I feel as though I am missing out on a meaning that is directed to a class or mentality that I am not in. I think this exclusion is a really negative feature of contemporary art and the way it is displayed, and always has been I suppose.