Fall 2021 Final Project for Introduction to Data Visualization, Professor McSweeney

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jean.fischer/viz/TARANTINODATAVIZFINAL/Story2?publish=yes

Profanity Usage in Quentin Tarantino’s 7 Films

The profanity ‘fucking,’ is the most utilized profanity Quentin Tarantino uses within the dialogues of his films, at a word count of 407 words used through out his 7 films. I appreciate Tarantino’s film style and storytelling and I am not the only one. Tarantino has developed a cult following that marvel at his plot twists, eccentric characters, the gruesomely romanticized gore but most importantly the dialogue, which includes a chaotic amount of profanity. It could even been said that the use of profanity has developed it’s own sense of essential character within Tarantino’s scripts. I wanted to see the range of profanities used in general and in each movie to see the variety of profanities used in each film, through out the years. So my research question is, “How many different profanities does Quentin Tarantino use in his films and how frequently, through out the years?”

This data visualization is supposed to be fun and captivating just like Tarantino’s films. The general audience this data visualization is aimed towards is not limited to just Quentin Tarantino film fanatics, but also general cinematic academics and enthusiasts, parents screening the director’s dialogue for their children’s potential viewing, Screen Actor’s Guild, an audience against the unnecessary use of the n-word, and if published in a trendy, online journalist magazine, probably general readers in their early twenties and up.

The films featured in the data set from www.github.com , from Andrew Flowers, were 7:  Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 1, Kill Bill Vol. 2, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Bastards, and Django Unchained. The total types of profanities Tarantino uses over all of these films are 60 different types of profanities. I used quite a few data visualizations to truly capture the journey through profanities that Tarantino takes his viewers on through his films. There are many variations of word clouds for each film as well as one word cloud including all of the 7 Tarantino films together. I used separate bar charts for each film and put them together in a worksheet to compare the profanities and the year of filming to each other, for convenience. In the data visualization story, I included separate pages for each film, to organize and process all of the information for each film, together. In these pages, I added the how early each curse word comes into the film, which could be early as 2 minutes. I found the line graph the most effective way to measure this piece of information.

In the Introduction, I used a general word cloud of the 7 films to indicate the curse words with the strongest reoccurrence. “Fucking,” “fuck,” “shit,” “goddamn,” and the “n-word,” are empathized with their size that they are the most frequently used from the films starting from 1992-2012. I incorporated some photos of the 7 films for visual context. Then I added a bar graph for all 7 films and their collective use of these profanities to gain a clear context on how often each word is used in comparison to each other. The words “fucking,” “fuck,” “shit,” the “n-word,” and “shit,” demonstrate great numbers on this graph.

The next page is a series of bar graphs for each film. The purpose of this data visualization is to see and compare each films use of each of profanity, how often it occurs in the film and what year the movie was released. From this data visualization, the viewer can see Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994,) have the most “fucks” in their films. Django Unchained (2012) is the most use of the n-word. This visualization, with the comparative number of uses as well as the year show the different ranges that each film has in their uses of profanities. It appears Tarantino’s earlier works had more use of profanities, from 1992- 1997. Yet with this information, Django Unchained had 144 uses of the “n-word,” in it’s dialogue, in 2012.

The next page is a collective of each film’s dialogue for profanities in a word cloud format. For a text-based project, I thought word cloud would be a fun and effective way to convey the importance of which profanity was emphasized most often. The most prominent profanity emphasized in each cloud was “fuck” or “fucking.” The one other curse word that stood out was in Django Unchained, “ which the word was the “n-word.” I added a photo of Tarantino in the middle to divide the clouds as well as give homage to the director and his language.

Each of the seven films have their own pages that include: a word cloud, a photo of the film, a line graph that illustrates when each curse word is first introduced in the films, and the bar graph that indicates how often the word in used in the film. For Reservoir Dogs (1992,) the most used profanity is “fucking,” and the earliest profanity used in the film is “jap” at 2 minutes. In Pulp Fiction (1994,) the most used profanity is “fucking,” and the earliest used profanity in the film is “fuckers” and “gook,” at 2 minutes and 28 seconds. In Jackie Brown (1997,) “shit,” is the most used profanity and the earliest used is “fucks” at 30 minutes and 63 seconds.

Now for Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill Volume 2 (2004), I decided to compare these two to each other, for each data visualization. For Kill Bill Volume 1, “shit,” has the most occurrences and the first curse word used was “cocksucker,” at 19 minutes. For Kill Bill Volume 2, the word “fucking,” was used most frequently and the earliest profanity used was “hell,” at 1 minutes and 18 seconds. Inglorious Bastards (2009,) used “fuck,” the most and their earliest profanity used was “bitch,” at 22 minutes and 55 seconds. Finally for Django Unchained (2012,) the most frequent word is the “n-word,” and the earliest profanity used is “goddamn,” at 59 minutes and 65 seconds.

Through these data visualizations, I can visually see the differences in profanity usage from Tarantino’s films from 1992 to 2012. The 1990’s seemed lawless with the amount of profanity used within his films. Maybe that’s how Tarantino gained his traction early on in his career. There is a lull in the early 2000’s usage of profanity. There is a rise of general profanity and racial- profanity in 2009 and 2012, with Tarantino’s films centering on a “redemption-like narrative” in regards to the Holocaust and slavery.

Quentin Tarantino is not only a visualization artist but also a captivating storyteller. He not only draws in his audience to view his cinematic style but he also lures them in with his cheeky dialogue. From 1992 to 2012, Tarantino has used over 60 different variations of profanities. Tarantino used them quite frequently in the 1990’s and then again from 2009 and on, but there is a notable lull in the middle. This lull could be based on the storyline, or a lack of dialogue. His movies with a strong use of profanities seem to gain incredible traction and love for the director.