Regarding the specific scene you describe (I haven't seen the movie), the difference is in the fact that the characters are watching and laughing at real events (real to the fictional characters) where as the audience is laughing at a piece of fiction. In the reality within the movie, the americans were actually dying. In our reality, actors were shooting blanks and special effects and pyrotechnics guys were blowing dummies and miniatures (and digitial objects/people) up. When we are watching it, we know it is a fiction so we can laugh when Ahhhhnold tells Sully "Remember when I said I'd kill you last? ... I lied." and let's go of his foot dropping him off a cliff (props to anyone who can name that movie).

Oh and it wouldn't be a Quentin Tarantino film if the violence wasn't graphic and over the top, like the Bride's fight with the 88s in Kill Bill, Part 1.

@Draugnar: Commando

Definetely Commando, love that film and the yellow porsche that mends itself, quality.

I have question your logic, since both the fictional audience and the real audience could be stated to be suspending their sense of reality. That is the "nazi" audience had stopped seeing the enemy as human or even real. This is true to some degree for anybody who must kill other humans. The real audience on the other hand does at least for the duration of the movie suspends their disbelief that charactors are not real.

Major Props to Friendly Sword. And what young lady played his daughter?

@Warsprite - Then I must be the exception for I do not for one minute believe that James Bond is real and killing people in the 007 films or that Jason Bourne is such a perfect killer even when I am watching them. They are escapist fantasy and I believe the majority of the audience recognize that and only find the humor or cheer on the hero because it is so over the top. The Nazi's laughing at real (to their world) footage of snipers killing people would be more on the order of someone today laughing at the mass-murders presented in Schindler's List.

Yes after the film. During the film if you escape, at some level it becomes real to you.

The soldiers laughing at other soldiers being killed in combat is no way compared to laughing at Schindlers List. Soldiers often disassociate them selves from the enemy during war. This is a normal way coping with the horrors of war.

But ignoring reality to escape is different than laughing at reality. Laughing when Ahhhnold comes back, flips the porsche back on it's wheels and says "I let him go." is NOT the same thing as laughing at a bunch of people actually dying. If it truly became rral to us, our moral compasses would kick in and we would say "Hey, this isn't funny, he just murdered a man in cold blood out of revenge."

@Draugnar: That'd be Alyssa Milano. But Tony Danza's still the boss.

@ Thucydides Perhaps one point being made is that many "nazis" where just soldiers fighting for their country. Another way of looking at it is, war is brutal no matter which side your on, and both sides must do horrible things to win. Look at Dresden we deliberately created a firestorm killing mostly civilians. A final way of looking at it is Bread and Circus for the masses.

Is it? Not all psycologist agree. Studies also suggest frequently watching fictional films of that nature does desensitise people to the real.

hahah

Quentin Tarantino has a pathological interest in violence.

Isn't that why his movies appeal so strongly to today's culture?

Thucydides, I absolutely agree with you. I just saw the movie today and I had the same impression the entire time that Tarantino was poking fun at a Western audience that is reflexively repulsed by Nazi's.

Christoph Waltz' character's monologue about the nature of the rat I thought was clearly in reference to this theme. He points out that we have a reflexive disgust of rats though they have never done us any personal harm, and while he's talking about the Jews, I think Tarantino is talking about Nazi's. The Frenchman is apt to point out that rats spread disease, just as we might point out that the Nazi's carried out a most disgraceful genocide, but Christoph Woltz is quick again to point out that the Bubonic plague was a long time ago and that squirrels are just as apt to spread disease as rats, they are both rodents, yet we do not treat squirrels with the same reflexive disgust as we do the rats. Again I would say that the point is that most of us have a reflexive disgust of Nazi's that goes beyond the normal revulsion of other groups that commit genocide or other murderers and killers, and some are revered as war heroes. Tarantino makes this connection with the German war hero who's deeds we naturally see as atrocities, though we might laugh at the horrific cruelty committed by Brad Pitt and his band of Inglourious Basterds.

It was clear to me that Tarantino was going out of his way to show the more human side of Nazi's, to make it clear that they are just as human as the Allies. As Thucydides mentioned, one of them had just had a son and was celebrating with his friends, even playing drinking games similar to ones that we would play. Also near the start, a Nazi's courage and discipline in the face of death would have been highly commendable if it had been a Yankee in his place, and his consequent bludgeoning would have been far more traumatizing if it weren't so easy to rationalize his fate with his antisemitism. The German war hero makes another humanizing statement in passing as a joke, pointing out that "most" German soldiers are somebody's son. I thought it was quite obvious that all these details were there to highlight the double standard between rat and squirrel, though they may both be rodents.

Draugnar, I think the comparison between the theatre of Germans and the audience is a valid one. Yes, you might be able to rationalize the horrifying brutality committed by Brad Pitt and the Inglourious Basterds (we're not talking about Ahhhnold here), but it is just as much a portrayal of WWII and actual people dying as the embedded film within the film of the German war hero was a portrayal of WWII and actual people dying. The difference is merely which side of the us vs. them it's on. It would be foolish to pretend that the Allies didn't also have blood on their hands, but as the victors they are celebrated as war heroes rather than war criminals. I'm not vindicating the Nazi's in any way, but I feel that the mere fact that I have to say that as a disclaimer is a testament to the reflexive cultural repulsion held for WWII Germany.

So, isn't it something akin to the quote: "Winners write the history books."

Also Christoph Waltz' performance was phenomenal. Definitely the best in the movie. He'll probably get an Oscar for it.

Onar, yes, it is. But while most people realize that in the back of their minds it never really overcomes the instinctual us vs. them gut reaction. Tarantino was making it much more obvious by drawing direct symbolic parallels by setting the climax in a theatre that's displaying a film portrayal of the exploits of a Nazi war hero.

"reflexive cultural repulsion held for WWII Germany."

Well, what of it?

Is there something wrong with "the reflexive cultural repulsion held for WWII Germany."

I don't know what you're asking me.

Nazi architecture is enough for a reflexive cultural repulsion for WWII Germany.

Well never think that I am somehow supporting the atrocities committed by the Nazi's in WWII and the Holocaust... I'm not suggesting that at all. The point that I think Tarantino was making is that we have a double standard when it comes to this issue because of the instinctual us vs. them mindset. Atrocities were committed heavily on both sides of the war and all around the world throughout history, yet while Nazi's provoke a natural gut reaction of disgust we take the atrocities committed by our own side more in stride. Nazi's were punished as war criminals, as they should have been, but on our side we celebrate war heroes despite that their accomplishments might be similar. Now this is a controversial statement precisely because of the inherent us vs. them mindset, and it is difficult to go against intuitive sense of justice and morality even if you can rationally accept that a human life is a human life no matter where it is, and that taking human life is taking human life no matter who is taking it. I'm not a pacifist, and I don't know whether or not Tarantino is (though his gusto for violence gives me a hunch), but I think his main message is just to simply point out the double standard here. There's nothing necessarily wrong with hating the Nazi's if you hate them because of the atrocities they committed, but then to be logically consistent you have to abandon the us vs. them mentality and also hate Allied soldiers and officers for being responsible for atrocities committed by them. You can't really logically condemn one side and vindicate the other when crimes against humanity were committed on both sides.

I agree with you Chris, and I'm glad you saw what I saw.

Several times I thought to myself, looking at the faces of these Nazis, that they looked perfectly normal, and were it not for the uniform, I would basically accept them as a friend. But Pitt's character is so strongly entrenched in his hate for Nazis that he will not even allow them to repent and leave their Nazism behind, rather he feels it necessary to either kill them or carve a swastika in their forehead. This implies that everyone who ever wore a Nazi uniform is evil... and that's just not true.

Aww.. but now I don't want to see it :)

No you should see it I really enjoyed it lol

@Draugnar: Sorry for the confusion (I don't know how multi-accounters do it). This is pootercannon sitting for FS.

Then the props go to pootercannon. :-)