Inglorious...

Last weekend I saw what I thought would be a typical QT movie, meaning of course, that it would be brimming with undue and over-done violence, would be humorously irreverent, expertly filmed, completely stylized... and totally enjoyable. Inglorious Basterds was exactly that, and I loved every minute of it.
What I didn't expect was the sociological/philosophical questions it would bring to mind.

*** spoiler alert ***

I sat there, laughing (though shielding my eyes from the gore) with the rest of the theater when the members of Brad Pitt's inglorious squad beat a German soldier to death. I laughed (though shielding my eyes from the gore) when they carved a swastika into their foreheads so they could never forget the atrocities they'd committed while wearing the Nazi uniform. I was pleased to see that they weren't going to pull a Valkyrie, but that Hitler was indeed going to die, and of course-- I laughed when they riddled him with bullets. I felt a sense of satisfaction when a theater full of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers burned.

But then it hit me... how sick is this? How sick are we that we, as a collective group of individuals in a theater, are actually happy and pleased to see the torture and deaths of a group of people (however heinous their own actions had been). Were we really so very different from the Nazis in the movie who laughed as their hero sniper killed hundreds of ally soldiers? We sneered from our theater seats as Hitler laughed at the allies dying... and then we laughed as the movie depicted their deaths.
I don't even know if QT intended this little commentary, because I think with a film like that, he enjoyed seeing the Nazis "get theirs" as much as the rest of us in the theater. Even so, it made me think... and maybe you'll think about it to...