I had just watched Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds the night before Ash Wednesday (a raucous Fat Tuesday, eh?), and was reading through various online news Ash Wednesday morning when I saw the news blip that British TV Host, Kay Burley, mistook Vice-President Joe Biden’s Ash Wednesday forehead smudge for a bruise. Rounding out the story was the background that Biden is the first Catholic vice president, and the first Executive branch figure to appear in public with the Ash Wednesday mark. Kennedy, our only other “openly Catholic” executive was never photographed with a forehead mark of the cross, though his life perhaps is a cultural landmark of mortality.
Burley and her co-host wondered aloud whether Biden had run into a door or slipped on the ice at the Vancouver Olympics. When I saw the photo of Biden, I also didn’t think “oh right, Ash Wednesday mark,” my mind went right back to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which, I’d like to offer ain’t that far a jump.
Inglourious Basterds puts forth more than a few signifying foreheads. There is the central “let me give you something you can’t take off” carve a swastika in the forehead of the surrendering soldier scenes of course, but there is also a Golem story early on, and the “Indian Poker” game played in the bar scene (Native American riffs are everywhere in this film).
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