A Wide Spin of Film and Ad Speculation

16 Aug, 2026

It took me a while to figure out why “Stuck in the Middle with You” has been in my head for most of the morning, and why it’s got me thinking about effective soundtracks. The song was (probably) most famously featured as the accompaniment to a torture scene in Reservoir Dogs, the finger-snapping tune bopping along as Michael Madsen’s Mr. Blonde cuts off a policeman’s ear with a straight razor.¹ The movie wasn’t my cup of tea, but even so, I recognized there just how well Quentin Tarantino made use of music, not just as background, but as an essential part of what was happening, almost a character in itself. That skill was just as true in that 1992 film as it was for any of his other productions I’ve seen.

But you don’t have to have the reminder of a master’s handiwork to recognize when soundtrack design doesn’t succeed. I don’t recall anything good about Clint Eastwood’s Invictus—and in that sense, the only thing appropriate about that terrible film was its illuminatingly terrible soundtrack, epitomized by the random insertion of a tune eye-rollingly titled “Colorblind.” I was relieved to find I wasn’t the only viewer who was completely confused about what was going on here; why was there any need to drop in a song at that particular point in the story; why this song, which had nothing to do with what had come before, was happening at the time, or would occur thereafter? My cynical take was that Eastwood thought he had to give his son, who’d written the score, a project to put his name on, and that even the paternal love of a quality actor and filmmaker was blind to the degree of crappiness produced by his kid. Critic Dan Mecca, though, nailed it without having to speculate about father-son foibles when he described how off-kilter the whole thing was: “There’s really no narrative cue,” he said, “for the song when it appears in the film, which makes its blatant lyrics all the more obtrusive.”² A particularly bad example, maybe, of what Tarantino accused many directors of doing: “put[ting] in innocuous music to get the ticking clock going.”³

Two poles of practice, then, the expert and the abysmal. But what brought the song to my mind? Aha. Waiting for a train last night, the subway walls were covered in ads for Meta Glasses: a whole long row of fashionable heads confronting you with their hip specs. Unsurprisingly, I noticed that if these models’ images accurately reflected who they were in real life, I would have no desire to spend a second with any of them, and that reaction was even independent of the fact that they were advertising a hideous product. Most wore an expression of angry superiority, as if they were about to run your insignificant self over and were silently daring you not to move; a couple bore a mocking sneer that let you know the wearer cared less than you did about sincerity or whatever; that he (both were hes) would always surpass you in being dismissive about every last issue or object or person that came up: would always be deservedly cooler. They’d probably never do anything with themselves but spend their money on brand names and gadgetry, but if doing so was the purpose of the game, then there’d be no question they’d won. It was those wry-lipped boys who put the tune in my head, courtesy of something like a Tarantino anti-hero.

The connection may have been less at first to Tarantino’s productions and more to his own similar facial expression, at least during the real start of his fame after Pulp Fiction. It’s not necessarily fair to judge the man based on those images—after all, there are plenty where he’s smiling and doing a zillion other non-cynical things with his mug—but there was a time there when he was sort of glorying in the nerd’s victory over the popular kids and graduates of film school programs who’d thought they were above his B-movie revelry, and it all made me think this was not a person I would’ve enjoyed meeting.⁴ But the sentiment is there in those ‘90s films; the cool of Mr. Blonde as he goes about his cruel business (the camera panning drily while the blood is flowing to the shot of a low entrance with the painted-on warning “watch your head”); the (admittedly brilliant) look-what-I’m-doing use of older movie and music tropes. Tarantino’s films during that decade and into the 2000s (I’m thinking the Kill Bill films) captured and shaped a cool irony that was all over the place, a sort of sublimation of grunge’s apathy and a nascent hipster culture that just couldn’t be bothered to express interest in anything but looking interesting and listening to the right music. Tarantino’s over-the-top violence managed to be stylish and even at times downright funny: how not to get at least a bit of sense in it all that really caring about things like, oh, love, concern for the world, believing in your day job, etc., etc. was for squares? And letting you groove along to all the splattering of viscera and knowing commentary, the music was a huge part of what made it all work.

The thing about Meta, though, is that the expressions on those models’ faces seem to express Mark Zuckerberg’s attitude to everything that’s not Meta or Mark Zuckerberg: disposable, unworthy of consideration. Although the bro-y smirk is there, the data-stream violence this guy unleashes is of a different, quieter, less visible and action-packed sort than we see in heist and gangster and martial arts films. And this distinct variant of successful dork definitely doesn’t have the music in his blood, or the ability to use it in an artful way. A commercial way, a way attractive to investors and politicians, sure, I guess. But compare his addictively scrolling, on-brand screens and their simple need for dazed eyeballs with Tarantino’s output.

Even filled as it often is with depictions you’re never quite sure need to be there, or be there in the vicious forms they are, there’s nothing simple or submission-inducing about them, nothing that says they’re trying to steamroll your objections or hesitations out of the way, or redirect you to a niche where you might be more comfortable, confirmed in your own tastes and opinions, and hence willing to shell out the money to have more of the same. Why are we invested in any of these characters, in most of Tarantino’s criminals who would think nothing of knocking us off? How could there be people out there like Mr. Blonde, honing his sick skills and his musical appreciation at the same time—and how could we find our feet tapping along it all to the familiar, uplifting beat (a musical masterstroke, because something more fitting, like a blare of death metal, most likely wouldn’t make us want to dance indecently along)? Tarantino doesn’t demand you ask big questions; like the Metaverse, he’s not interested in morality plays, and so much of his explosive cool would be destroyed if he were. But his films are done in such a way that you probably can’t help but feel at least a little unsettled about the enjoyment you get watching brains being blown out or worse.

I don’t know where all this speculation is going, so I also don’t know how to wrap up this post. But I do know that in the end, all of Reservoir Dogs’s colorful characters went down, and that none of their quirks or knowing sneers saved them. Were the role to be allowed into Tarantino's movies, I’m betting the villain wearing Meta Glasses would be the first to be bumped off.

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