Pulp Fiction Narrative
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Pulp Fiction is a controversial film, written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, in 1994. It has almost everything you could wish for in a movie; drama, hilarity, intensity, action, thrills, fun, intelligence, romance, intimacy, over-the-top bravado, vulgarity, sweetness, humor, and soul-searching. The film is very raw and brutal, but has a unique sense of style that keeps the viewers entertained. It will build its way up gradually to an incredibly intense scene, before dropping down to a relatively calm, only to build back up again a few scenes later. This goes on throughout the entire course of the film, pummeling the viewer from one scenario to another.
In Pulp Fiction we see how Vincent (John Travolta) and the dealer are bringing Mia (Uma Thurman) back to life, after she had an overdose. In a medium shot the dealer explains to Vincent what to do. While the dealer is counting to three, the camera zooms into even tighter close ups of Vincent and Mias face, the needle where the adrenaline is dribbling off, and the dealer and his pierced girlfriends face. This effect is used to show how nervous the dealer is, how much his pierced girlfriend enjoys this spectacle, and how afraid Vincent is. The spectator is able to identify with all these emotions.
According to the feminist film theorist, Laura Mulvey, one of the most important pleasures of the classical narrative is identification. This is send to occur when the spectator narcissistically identifies with an idealized figure on screen, typically a male hero whose actions determine the narrative, in a process that recapitulates the discovery of the image of oneself in the mirror phase. For the scene just discussed, the idealized figure is Vincent, whom the spectators personally identifies with.
Then, to even increase the tension of this extraordinary scene, the camera zooms into the place where the needle has to push in, while there is no noise at all. As Vincent pushes the needle down, the camera shows Mias opening eyes in a close up shot, while the diegetic sound of the needle stabbed in her heart makes us believe that we have seen the crucial moment. The graphic violence of how the needle is pushed into her heart is again elliptical. In a medium shot we then see Mia screaming.
Nevertheless, Quentin Tarantinos films show plenty of violence. In Pulp Fiction there is for example a homosexual rape, the hit-men killing their victims, and a man having his head accidentally shot off in a car. For this last scene, Vincent is shown just before the gun accidentally goes off, without actually showing the exploding head. As a result, the two hit-men are covered in blood and parts of the brain.
In addition, Tarantino’s violence confuses the spectators’ emotions, as his representation of violence is comical. Jules (Samuel L Jackson) asks his victim before killing them, what a Big Mac is called in Paris, and why the French do not call a Quarter Pounder a Quarter Pounder. He then tries his victim’s fast-food, because he has never tried that brand before, as he prefers MacDonald’s. Tarantino seems to be fascinated by life’s grotesque haphazardness. In one scene Butch (Bruce Willis) returns to his house, where he finds a machine-gun in his kitchen, whereby the discovery of the gun is being presented as a point-of-view shot, a subjective moment inserted into an overall framework of objectivity, picks it up and shoots the hit-man, after having his last pee. This scene is terrifying, and hilarious at the same time.
Throughout the film there is a mystery of what is actually inside the briefcase. Every time it is opened up, the characters’ faces go pale with either amazement, or shock. A light shines out on their faces, and the audience is never allowed to actually view what is inside the briefcase. Although in the