Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood – the Me Too revolution

Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (US 2019). Margaret Qualley (Pussycat, a Manson Family "maenad") and Brad Pitt (Cliff Booth). Please do click to enlarge the photo!

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino's first film not associated with Harvey Weinstein who was dismissed from his company and expelled from the Motion Picture Academy after sexual abuse allegiations by 80 women.

The ”Me Too” phrase had been launched by Tarana Burke in 2006, but the movement started from Alyssa Milano's tweet on 15 October 2017. Global outrage was fired by the Weinstein exposure, but I believe that deeper in the background lay Donald J. Trump, having crossed a line in disgraceful behaviour.

The Me Too revolution is a world historical change. There has never been anything like it. So far we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Tarantino has defended the women abused by Weinstein and apologized for not taking a stronger stand.

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Regarding Me Too, Tarantino's new film takes place on inflammatory terrain, fire hazard grounds as dangerous as the Amazon rain forest. Marilyn Monroe called Hollywood ”a big meat counter”. Early on we visit a Hollywood party at the Playboy Mansion. The female protagonist is Sharon Tate Polanski.

The counter-culture's degradation after the hippie period is represented by Charles Manson's harem of young women at the Spahn Ranch, called ”maenads” by J. Hoberman in The New York Review of Books. Maenads were priestesses of Dionysus, also known as bacchantes.

In this film key truths are heard from unexpected sources. Pussycat (Margaret Qualley), one of the Manson maenads, gets a lift from Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) and proceeds to seduce him, but Cliff resists.

” Pussycat: Want me to suck your cock while driving?
Cliff Booth: How old are you?
Pussycat: What?
Cliff Booth: How old are you?
Pussycat: Wow, man. First time anybody asked that in a long time.
Cliff Booth: What's the answer?
Pussycat: Okay, we gonna play kiddie games? Eighteen. Feel better?
Cliff Booth: You got some I.D., you know, like, a driver's license or something?
Pussycat: Are you joking?
Cliff Booth: No, I'm not. I need to see something official that verifies that you're eighteen, which you don't have because you're not. ”

Cliff is an ex-convict, he has served sentences in prison, and he has murdered his wife. He is dangerous but he will not commit statutory rape.

In a flashback we see the circumstances in which Billie Booth (Rebecca Gayheart) was quarreling with Cliff prior to her murder in their boat. Presumably the cause of death was declared as drowning as in the case of Natalie Wood.

Tarantino's account is startling and disturbing because he reveals the potential of sexual violence behind a pretty boy exterior.

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Everybody who has read memoirs and biographies from studio era Hollywood knows how it was back then. The sixties were a decade of feminism, sexual revolution, and free love. The world changed. I for one have been surprised by the Me Too revelations, that nothing had changed after all in terms of sexual harassment. Although Tarantino does not discuss any of this explicitly, I was constantly aware of the tensions while watching Once Upon a Time.

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Relevant to these tensions is that both male protagonists are macho losers. They represent male ideals of a bygone era. Cliff has become a loner after killing his wife. His best friend, besides Rick, is his pit bull Brandy. In the finale, Rick has married an Italian film star, but his looks tell everything about their relationship. Perhaps the Laurel and Hardy poster on the studio wall in the Bruce Lee sequence is meaningful.