Eight Shades of Hate: Takeaways from The Hateful Eight
Watching the The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, I found myself arrested by the force with which the story was told. Hateful Eight centers on the relationships between eight people, known for and connected by their prior reputations more than anything else. On its surface, the film is about bounty hunter John Ruth’s mission to complete another successful hunt, but the actual meaning of the film is more complex.
The specter of race looms large in it, and Tarantino addresses the issue by setting the film only a few years after the events of the American Civil War. The ghost of that war hovers over and haunts the characters in the film, and apparently still haunt us today—a recent mass shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina testifies to the fact. Making a movie set in the late 1800’s both timely and appropriate. Samuel L. Jackson plays Major Marquis Warren, a decorated army veteran who is now himself a renowned bounty hunter. He is black, and the other characters are indignant over having to deal with his presence. To my mind, Warren represents the coming of a new negro, a phrase later taken up during the Harlem Renaissance which symbolized the kind of black person who outspoken in their refusal to accept the indignities of American society.
The encounter that plays out frightful and electrifying, but first there is a series of half-hearted attempts from the other characters to restrain their hostility towards Warren, mostly owed to his reputation as a man highly capable of killing. Tarantino writes Warren as a character whose intellectual prowess is subtly displayed, skillfully employed, and certainly surpasses his physical skills. This quality is established early on and reinforced throughout the film, not by making Warren appear superhuman, but by highlighting the other character’s failure to recognize him as human at all.
As could be expected from this director given his past proclivity, The Hateful Eight is littered with the N-word. Though it used often, the word feels less out of place in this film than it does in other films like Django Unchained or Pulp Fiction. The historical setting makes the harsh dialogue plausible, and the acting performances mostly make the use of the word believable. Not excusable, then or now, but believable that the N-word would be used by white men as a sort of power grab, to put Major Warren back in his place, and reassure themselves of their own. In similar fashion, the B-word is frequently directed at Daisy, the only prominent female character in the film, which seemed too illicit less powerful reactions from the audience. Why is this so? Why do we cringe at the on-screen use of the N-word but not the B-word, similarly used to dismiss and dehumanize?
Beyond race and gender, The Hateful Eight is a commentary on the overall idea of identity.
Who exactly is Daisy and what does she mean to this film? Of the prominent characters, her story is the most underdeveloped. She is branded as a ruthless criminal, but we do not know to what extent this is true, and in a film where the relativity of truth is an important theme, this lack of explanation cannot be overlooked. Daisy seems to serve as a vessel for the other characters to act out their own pent-up anger towards women. Some of the characters consider her a devil, while others think her life is worth saving, and each character's belief about her fate doubles as a window into their definition of justice. Is it cold and dispassionate, or is it emotionally tinged?
These ideas about justice are also seen through the ways the characters interact with each other. John Ruth is the easy choice for an example of dispassionate justice, but even he falls short of this ideal. They all do, which may be the point—these American made figures cannot possibly live up to their own moral codes, and when it is a choice between them and the other, such codes are easily abandoned.
Beyond race and gender, The Hateful Eight is a commentary on the overall idea of identity. Flashbacks, and well-crafted dialogues highlight the fluidity of identity, and how quickly it can shift. The characters' behaviors, and perceptions of each other, as well as the viewer’s perception of them, changes at a dizzying pace. This pace does not set a new standard for Tarantino films, but in the past, the frenetic pace left some viewers confused, and others dissatisfied, and it is better executed in The Hateful Eight. By confining most of the film to a single room, Tarantino creates a world that is less open and sprawling, while maintaining his style as a filmmaker. The result is a film that operates well on multiple levels, at once being easy enough to follow, and at the same time complex and layered.
Will the audience understand the message? Will they understand that Tarantino is critiquing race relations in America on multiple levels? I fear that the humorous moments laced throughout the film will provide people with enough justification to gloss over the more serious aspects of the work. Especially people who still today harbor the same hateful attitudes as the film’s titular characters. More than anything, with The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino deftly shrinks down a significant piece of the American experiment and places it into one room, serving as a metaphorical melting pot. He captures all the madness that is produced as result of this experiment called America, and the taste of redemption we get when this experiment functions as intended, however short and fleeting those moments may be.
Why You Don’t Want Your Ex to Date Anyone Else
Even in a long gone by now golden age of men who were dandies that proudly laid out their affections as well as their fleeces, and women who moved with gilded elegance, the idea that we meet the one and fall in love has been a pervasive myth. It does sometimes happen to be the case, that the first love is an enduring one. But for most people their endurance is tested in terms of how much disappointment, and consequently, how much pain they can bear throughout the course of several romantic relationships. It is not unusual that some romantic relationships end, and there are good reasons that we should want them to. What is unusual is that even when a relationship does end, and even when we no longer love a person, we sometimes refuse to accept the idea that our former beloved will go on to care for and eventually love someone else.
It feels good to be thought of and remembered by the ones we love, but it feels better to be remembered by the ones we don’t.
We harbor the wish that our exes continue to see us in a certain light. We want them to think of their time with us as a unique and singular experience that irrevocably changed them for the better. It is oddly gratifying to know that they are forlorn without us, but this wish only reveals something about our own state of mind. When a relationship ends, even one whose demise we welcome, both people enter a state of loneliness. In this painful space of separateness, we find ourselves yearning for our former foundation. Yes, there was rot, and it was filled with cracks, but it still provided something. When we diverge from the path of coupledom, we find ourselves not knowing what comes next. The feeling of being lost is what we are trying to avoid when we cling to our exes in one form or another.
We maintain a connection to an ex by trying to transform the romantic relationship into a friendship. An effort that usually fails because we have not given ourselves enough time and space to make sense of what happened and sort ourselves out. But in another sense, it “works” because sorting out and sense-making is the last thing a person wants to do when they are reeling from the pain of a breakup.
And even when we choose to expel a former lover from our life, we still want that person to think well of us. We want to feel special in their eyes even when they long ago lost the ability to spark the same reaction in ours. It feels good to be thought of and remembered by the ones we love, but it feels better to be remembered by the ones we don’t. It makes us feel especially unique and powerful. That I could reject a person and they could still hold me in the highest regard and still want me.
It makes sense that people are dismayed when they find out their ex has a new romantic interest. They’re moving on, and if an ex is moving on then maybe we aren’t so important after all. Maybe we never were. Those kinds of thoughts are felt more than they are formulated, and they produce an aching sensation. Of course, we can’t avoid them forever, neither by turning towards the past we had with our ex or leaping into the arms of someone else without taking time for self-reflection. You can acknowledge the pain of having your ego bruised, by the mere thought of your ex caring for someone else as much as they once cared about you and accept that in all likelihood that is exactly what will happen. Their role in your story is finished for now, or forever, and all that any of us can do about it is get back to the relationship we are always in, which is with ourselves, and slowly start to rebuild.
Can Psychotherapists be Seen as Artists?
When approached and practiced in certain ways, psychotherapy can be elevated to the level of an art form. The fact that psychotherapy is still (and necessarily so) a private affair that is hidden from public consumption makes it more difficult to qualify or quantify its status as a form of art. But for the many who practice it and the few who get to observe it, there are differences between straightforward practitioners and artists in the trade.
Consider this—art is a realm of subjectivity, where often times consensus is king and the majority rules. The paintings of a Da Vinci and Picasso, or the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright still leave some cold. As do the writings of Baldwin, Morrison, or Rowling. But to a sizeable amount of people, their works represent titanic triumphs of human creativity. Whatever this sizeable number is, it represents mass approval, which is so often necessary for the triumph of art over obscurity, but of course a number is not all that art is. And this mass effect I speak of has lent its weight not only to the crafts of painting, architecture, or literature, but also to psychology, the study of the human mind.
To be clear, mass approval is not enough. The popularity of a thing does not mean that it is worthy of adulation. Art stirs something deep inside of us and brings it to the surface. Art disturbs, and is confrontational at times, but it also seeks pathways to deeper connection with oneself and with the world. The beauty of art lies in the way it makes us feel something that is deeply personal and at the same time relatable to all of humanity. How the artist achieves this effect differs based on their tools and the talents they possess, but the desired effect is always the same. To wake others up to themselves and get them to feel deeply.
It takes courage and a certain audacity to practice art
The psychotherapist does not use the brush of the painter, the instrument of the musician, or the charts, graphs, and measuring tools of the scientist. They use themselves—their presence, consisting of their body, heart, mind, and spirit, which allows them to forge an alliance with those they work with in hopes of bringing forth something new. The artist plays at God as they attempt to corral creation, and in a sense the psychotherapist does the same. The best are very intentional about their ambition.
At times the psychotherapists will fail: there will be clients who do not change or become better, and some who may become worse. To fail in the endeavor to create and bring forth something new in a person can be more devastating than errant brush strokes and misplaced musical notes. This is because a person expresses consciousness rather than simply being a product of consciousness. To work with another, knowing their potential and their limitations, and journey through the maze of their life with them takes courage and trust. Trust, in another and in oneself, is the bedrock on which creation takes place. Without it there is no sense of direction, no willingness to take risks, and no progress which can be made.
It takes courage and a certain audacity to practice art, because it requires a willingness to exist separate and apart from others. A distance that is necessary when one does not simply want to talk, but feels they truly have something to say. Whether or not the feeling is justified is a bargain which must be struck between the individual and society. Some psychotherapists have much to say about nothing. They regurgitate empty platitudes or vomit up their own insecurities, inappropriately praising themselves or judging others without having earned a right to do either. They move at a frenetic pace while accomplishing little of substance; they retreat into data and evidence whenever they are confused or unsure, signaling that they do not know how to practice the art of psychotherapy, but only how to follow the manual they were taught.
The client who comes before the psychotherapist may for the first time in their lives, as a result of their dissatisfaction, be open minded enough to have a real encounter with themselves. The approach of the typical psychotherapist is management and symptom reduction—to be able to give a pat on the back to the client as they walk out the door and assure them that they are okay without ever asking them to be better. The artist who practices psychotherapy seeks other things—connection, engagement, growth, and transformation in ways that are organic and unique to the individual they are working with at the time. Only art can do this. At its core the musician has there 12 notes to achieve this, the writer has there 26 letters, and the psychotherapist has their self. More than any theoretical background, use of the self is needed, a self that accepts life with its tensions and challenges, and helps others do the same.
What is the Purpose of Psychotherapy?
To tolerate life remains, after all, the first duty of all living beings. Illusion becomes valueless if it makes this harder for us.
— Sigmund Freud
The psychotherapist is always listening. They listen to the stories people tell them; stories that double as half-truths they simultaneously tell themselves. Stories that the therapist may tell themselves just as often. Listening comes with the territory, and part of what makes someone a good therapist is the ability to do so. To an outside observer it might not look like much is going on between a client and a therapist. Just two people having a conversation, but beyond initial appearances, a complicated exchange is playing out between the client and the therapist.
It is only through facing the things in life that are most difficult and confusing for us that we make sense of them.
In a therapeutic dialogue both client and therapist are constantly testing one another, and constantly testing themselves. The client wants to know if someone the therapist, purported to be a professional helper, is really up to the task, which is a fair question because therapist do not always know. More than that, the therapist is not always sure of the client’s commitment either, and there is enough uncertainty and trepidation to make one ask, what is the purpose of all this psychological probing and is there an end goal to be reached once it’s all done?
It’s certainly a fact that people test one another, in therapy and in life, to find out whether or not it is safe enough, physically and psychologically, for them to be honest about who they truly are. and few situations engender this more than the unfamiliarity of finding oneself for the first time sitting on in a therapist’s office with the expectation that you simply open your mouth and start to share your thoughts and feelings with someone you just met. In order for anyone to do this, the therapist has to quickly convince the client of their skill and capability. Without this initial convincing, there is no reason for the client to be there, and their presence will certainly be short-lived. With it, the client feels safe enough for the work to begin.
What the client gains is a place to retreat from life when they need to. A place where they can get enough distance from the world to start learning about it—if you live long enough you know that it is difficult to be curious when you are being assailed on all sides by challenges, at which point surviving life’s harsh realities becomes the main goal, the only goal, and the lens through which all other choices are filtered. Therapists are there, one hour at a time, to pull the client out of their world, and more importantly, to pull out the parts of the client’s world that they struggle with the most. To push the client to confront the parts of life they are most confounded by.
It is only through facing the things in life that are most difficult and confusing that people begin to make sense of them. It is a process that must be repeated numerous times throughout their lives because new challenges require new answers regarding how they will be met and eventually overcome. In the end, there simply is no cure for life.
The psychotherapist acts, for some length of time, as a secular guide on the client’s journey, helping them learn how to confront their deepest anxieties and overcome their most stressful life events. Helping clients to become more skilled in the art of living is the psychotherapist’s purpose, and in carrying it out, clients themselves begin to develop their own, one that is not based on unearned confidence, but is carefully arrived at, with the proper motivation to pursue it.