Strong Student Sample for Essay #2 on Pulp Fiction

Jack Nicholson

Mr. Emilio

English 1102

23 March 2016

“Pulp Fiction as a Postmodern Film”

“With movies as an art form, I think twenty percent of that art form    is supplied by what the audience brings…As far as I’m concerned, what [the audience] comes up with is right, they’re one hundred percent right.”

-      Quentin Tarantino, Toronto International Film Festival

         Around the time Pulp Fiction was released in 1994, there was controversy about the amount of violence onscreen and Hollywood’s negligence to put an end to it. Despite this growing issue, Quentin Tarantino traveled to Amsterdam, where he spent three months in a one-bedroom apartment to write what would become a film about burgers and “coke,” black suits and miracles, a boxer and his gold watch, and one special briefcase. Although every major studio passed on the finished script due to the amount of violence and vulgarity, others, including Danny DeVito and Harvey Weinstein, found it “fucking brilliant.”

         Tarantino’s film immerses the audience into an exhibit of exaggerated images and violent action. While the audience members see everything from two hit men accidently blowing the head off of a teenage boy in the back of a car to a gang boss being raped by two hillbillies, the extravagance of the film is overshadowed by its intertextual references between past pop cultural elements, confusion of space and time, and lack of morality. It is then that Pulp Fiction defines American pop culture by not only drawing connections between other well-known films, but also by fulfilling our wants for a postmodern film that allows us construct our own meaning and escape from our politically correct world with limitations.

                   The film begins in a diner. Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, who we see are irrelevant as the film progresses, are sitting in a booth, smoking cigarettes while discussing why banks and restaurants are easier to rob than liquor stores or local businesses that have a Jewish “Grandpa Irving sitting behind the counter with a fucking Magnum in his hand.” After Honey Bunny makes the call that she wants to rob the diner right there, right now, they stand up on the table, holding out their guns and outcry, “Everybody be cool! This is a robbery!” Then, the audience members hear the 1993 hit “Miserlou” by Dick Dale and the Deltones play as the screen fades out into the credits. Once the credits are finished, we hear the well-known, 1973 song “Jungle Boogie” by Kool and the Gang introducing “The Bonnie Situation.” Now, we are riding in the car with two men in black suits, one with gangster Jheri curls and another with long, straight black hair. The one with the straight hair, Vincent Vega (John Travolta), has just returned from Amsterdam after three years. He’s having colloquial dialogue with his partner, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), who is amazed by how different the popular culture in Amsterdam is. “You know what they call a Quarter Pounder in France?” Vincent says. “A Royale with cheese.”

         In just the first nine minutes, Pulp Fiction draws connections between pop culture elements of various time periods and locations that audience members had not seen in other movies, such as Lion King and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, that were released that year. As the film progresses, we continue to be exposed to pop culture through intertextuality as Tarantino alludes to texts, films, and music that he knows the audience is familiar with. In the story “Vincent Vega & Marsellus Wallace’s Wife,” for example, Vincent and Mia Wallace go to Jack Rabbit Slims where Tarantino references Amos and Andy, Martin and Lewis, James Dean, Jerry Lewis, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, and even reference to Travolta’s early role in Urban Cowboy and Saturday Night Fever. Throughout the film, the audience members see Tarantino recycle famous lines from several movies including Charley Varrick (1973) and School Daze (1988), reenact similar scenes and shots as those in Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and A Clockwork Orange, and allude to his love for Asian culture and films through the metaphorical use of black and white as seen with Vincent and Jules suits to represent Yin Yang. 

         Tarantino’s use of intertextuality as a postmodern technique not only allows him to pay homage to cinema and display his film obsession, but it also allows his audience members to be entertained as they are encouraged to look for references and connections in order to draw a conclusion of their own. Although many believed that Tarantino’s film would receive damaging blowback, Erik Tóth argues that the cult film’s success is based upon its use of intertextuality in “[crediting the audience] with the necessary experience to make sense of the author’s allusions and [offering] them the pleasure of recognition.” This recognition granted to the audience by Pulp Fiction allows it to be one of the most influential movie of the 90s, therefore defining our postmodern desire for a film in which the significance is not based upon an absolute meaning granted by the artist, but rather defined by the intertextual references we do or do not perceive.

            Another prevalent characteristic of Tarantino films involves his use of a nonlinear plot structure. Rather than having a definite beginning and ending, Pulp Fiction tells three stories that the audience progressively see intertwine with one another. For example, the film begins with Honey Bunny and Pumpkin discussing their plans to rob the diner, only to fade out and be re-introduced in the last scene of the movie where the audience discovers Jules and Vincent, who we know will be shot to death by Butch (Bruce Willis) as seen in “The Gold Watch,” eating after “The Bonnie Situation.” While this type of circular structure is intended to create suspension as we are exposed to certain scenes and events when we least expect it, Tarantino’s technique embraces the postmodern idea of confusion of space and time in order to increase audience participation.  In creating three different stories instead of one narrative, Tarantino rejects the modern art of Hollywood filmmaking and the social construction that films must follow a logical plot, while also eliminating the straight-forward, linear narrative that passive viewers were growing tired of seeing. Pulp Fiction fulfills out demand for increased audience participation, leaving it us to become an active audience that must construct the story and its meaning for ourselves.

Additionally, this film takes place in its own universe: a place where Red Apple cigarettes and Big Kahuna Burger exist. We never truly seem to find out what year it is because the movie embraces pop culture of different periods, and we never know where exactly the movie takes place. Although many assume the film is set in Los Angeles as in other film noirs, the film does not take place in the real or imaginary world of Hollywood films. According to John McAteer, “[Pulp Fiction] takes place in a cartoon world in which Hollywood clichés are exaggerated so far they take on a reality of their own.” This universe Tarantino creates, or “Tarantino’s World” as it has been come to known, submerges us into a world where the characters and scenes are given life in a way that relates to the audience members. Within his world, Tarantino places emphasis on small conversations, which can be seen when Jules and Vincent step aside from entering the apartment to continue their conversation on foot massages. Rather than eliminating dialogue that is typically seen as non-essential to the plot by other directors, Tarantino allows the irrelevant dialogue to drag on in order for his audience to learn about the lives of the characters and also find a way to relate to them beyond their bad deeds.

These bad deeds essentially emphasize the last element of postmodernism seen in the film which addresses a loss of morality. In the second scene of the film, Vincent and Jules are discussing Quarter Pounders in France with as much seriousness as they are discussing Marsellus throwing a man out the window. Additionally, when Jules is asking Brett why he is “trying to fuck [Marsellus] like a bitch,” he recites Ezekiel 25:17 from the bible, although it is rewritten to borrow lines from the 1976 Kung Fu film, Karate Kiba (Bodyguard Kiba). Essentially, in presenting a lack of character morality, Tarantino presents a resemblance to our postmodern, post-religious society.   

          Ultimately, Tarantino defined that a film does not have to follow the standards created by Hollywood.  Rather than addressing the desires of a studio chairman, he fulfills the wants of an audience who are not seeking something new, since the stories are inspired by 1930s pulp fiction magazines, but something that is real. It is then that Pulp Fiction remains ambiguous because its meaning is not given by the artist, but determined by which elements of postmodernism the audience chooses to perceive. And so, by the end of the movie, we are left to decide which definition of “pulp,” given at the beginning of the film, we prefer the most. The meaning is up to us.

Works Cited

McAteer, John. "Three Stories About One Story: Postmodernism and the Narrative Structure of

         Pulp Fiction" Tarantino and Theology. Ed. Jonathan L. Walls and Jerry Walls. Los

         Angeles, CA: Gray Matter, 2015. 240-57. Print.

Pulp Fiction. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. By Quentin Tarantino. Prod. Lawrence Bender. Perf. Uma

Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, and John Travolta. Miramax, 1994. Film.

"Reservoir Dogs Press Conference." Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated. Ed.

Gerald Peary. N.p.: U of Mississippi, 2013. 31. Print.

Seal, Mark. "The Making of Pulp Fiction: Quentin Tarantino's and the Cast's Retelling." Vanity

Fair. Condé Nast, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

Tóth, Erik. "Intertextuality in the Cinematic Production of Quentin Tarantino." Thesis. Masaryk

         University Faculty of Arts, 2011. Intertextuality in the Cinematic Production of Quentin

         Tarantino. 14 Dec. 2011. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.