The screenplays and films of Quentin Tarantino raise profound comic and ethical dilemmas. Developing ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Botting and Wilson explore ethical issues in relation to Tarantinos work, postmodernity and recent cultural theory. They argue that Tarantinos texts provide a provocative and telling contribution to theorized accounts of contemporary culture.

The term Tarantinian has been coined to refer to a set of sampled, self-authorizing signs that are cinematically assembled in processes of consuming - producing - expending in the general context of a postmodern capitalism that enjoins excess. The Tarantinian ethics are elaborated, in the midst of a homogenized fast-food, movie and video culture, in relation to heterogeneous events of violence, horror and laughter.

Witty and incisive, the book illuminates and interrogates contemporary structures of identity, desire and consumption. It will be of great interest to students of cultural studies, social theory and communication.