Tarantino has stated that he originally planned "to do a
Black Mask movie", referring to the magazine largely responsible for popularizing
hardboiled detective fiction. "[I]t kind of went somewhere else". Geoffrey O'Brien sees the result as connected "rather powerfully to a parallel pulp tradition: the tales of terror and the uncanny practiced by such writers as
Cornell Woolrich [and]
Fredric Brown ... Both dealt heavily in the realm of improbable coincidences and cruel cosmic jokes, a realm that
Pulp Fiction makes its own." In particular, O'Brien finds a strong affinity between the intricate plot mechanics and twists of Brown's novels and the recursive, interweaving structure of
Pulp Fiction. Philip French describes the film's narrative as a "circular movement or
Möbius strip of a kind
Resnais and
Robbe-Grillet would admire". James Mottram regards crime novelist
Elmore Leonard, whose influence Tarantino has acknowledged, as the film's primary literary antecedent. He suggests that Leonard's "rich dialogue" is reflected in Tarantino's "popular-culture-strewn jive"; he also points to the acute, extremely dark sense of humor Leonard applies to the realm of violence as a source of inspiration. Film scholar/historian
Robert Kolker sees the "flourishes, the apparent witty banality of the dialogue, the goofy fracturing of temporality [as] a patina over a
pastiche. The pastiche ... is essentially of two films that Tarantino can't seem to get out of his mind:
Mean Streets [1973; directed by
Martin Scorsese, who loved
Pulp Fiction and the way the film was told] and
The Killing [1956; directed by
Stanley Kubrick]." He contrasts
Pulp Fiction with postmodern Hollywood predecessors
Hudson Hawk (1991; starring Willis) and
Last Action Hero (1993; starring
Arnold Schwarzenegger) that "took the joke too far ... simply mocked or suggested that they were smarter than the audience" and flopped. Todd McCarthy writes that the film's "striking widescreen compositions often contain objects in extreme close-up as well as vivid contrasts, sometimes bringing to mind the visual strategies of
Sergio Leone", an acknowledged hero of Tarantino's. In
Alan Stone's view, the "absurd dialogue", like that between Vincent and Jules in the scene where the former accidentally kills Marvin, "unexpectedly transforms the meaning of the violence cliché ...
Pulp Fiction unmasks the macho myth by making it laughable and deheroicizes the power trip glorified by standard Hollywood violence." Stone reads the film as "
politically correct. There is no nudity and no violence directed against women ... [It] celebrates interracial friendship and cultural diversity; there are strong women and strong black men, and the director swims against the current of class stereotype." which likewise feature "religious elements, banality, and violence with grotesque humor." Discussing "the connection between violence and redemption," Demory concludes that while O'Connor's purpose is to convince readers "of the powerful force of evil in the world and of our need for grace," Tarantino "seeks to demonstrate that in spite of everything we have seen in the film – all the violence, degradation, death, crime, amoral behavior – grace is still possible; there might still be a God who doesn't judge us on merits."
Homage as essence Cinema Pulp Fiction is full of
homages to other movies. "Tarantino's characters", writes
Gary Groth, "inhabit a world where the entire landscape is composed of Hollywood product. Tarantino is a cinematic kleptomaniac – he literally can't help himself." Two scenes in particular have prompted discussion of the film's highly
intertextual style. Many have assumed that the dance sequence at Jack Rabbit Slim's was intended as a reference to Travolta's star-making performance as Tony Manero in the epochal
Saturday Night Fever (1977); Tarantino, however, credits a scene in the
Jean-Luc Godard film
Bande à part (1964) with the inspiration. According to the filmmaker, he clarified that the dance scene was not written specifically to showcase John Travolta's dancing; the scene was written in the script before Travolta was cast. However, once Travolta joined the film, Tarantino embraced the opportunity to feature him dancing, citing Jean-Luc Godard's films as his favorite example of musical sequences, admiring how they appear unpredictably and bring a sense of warmth and spontaneity. David Bell argues that far from going against the "current of class stereotype", this scene, like
Deliverance, "mobilize[s] a certain construction of poor white country folk – and particularly their sexualization ... 'rustic sexual expression often takes the form of homosexual rape' in American movies." Stephen Paul Miller believes the
Pulp Fiction scene goes down much easier than the one it echoes: "The buggery perpetrated is not at all as shocking as it was in
Deliverance ... The nineties film reduces seventies competition, horror, and taboo into an entertainingly subtle adrenaline play – a fiction, a pulp fiction." Giroux reads the rape scene homage similarly: "in the end Tarantino's use of parody is about repetition, transgression, and softening the face of violence by reducing it to the property of film history." In Groth's view, the crucial difference is that "in
Deliverance the rape created the film's central moral dilemma whereas in
Pulp Fiction it was merely 'the single weirdest day of [Butch's] life.'" ("
American Me did it too," Tarantino observed. "There's like
three butt-fucking scenes in
American Me. That's definitely the one to beat in that particular category!") Neil Fulwood focuses on Butch's weapon selection, writing, "Here, Tarantino's love of movies is at its most open and nonjudgemental, tipping a nod to the noble and the notorious, as well as sending up his own reputation as an enfant terrible of movie violence. Moreover, the scene makes a sly comment about the readiness of cinema to seize upon whatever is to hand for its moments of mayhem and murder." White asserts that "the katana he finally, and significantly, selects identifies him with ...
honourable heroes." Conard argues that the first three items symbolize a nihilism that Butch is rejecting. The traditional Japanese sword, in contrasts, represents a culture with a well-defined
moral code and thus connects Butch with a more meaningful approach to life. The
biker film ''
Nam's Angels'' is also shown with Fabienne characterizing it as "A motorcycle movie, I'm not sure the name."
Television Robert Miklitsch argues that "Tarantino's telephilia" may be more central to the guiding sensibility of
Pulp Fiction than the filmmaker's love for rock 'n' roll and even cinema: Talking about his generation, one that came of age in the '70s, Tarantino has commented that the "number one thing we all shared wasn't music, that was a Sixties thing. Our culture was television." A random list of the TV programs referenced in
Pulp Fiction confirms his observation:
Speed Racer, Clutch Cargo, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, The Avengers, The Three Stooges, The Flintstones, I Spy, Green Acres, Kung Fu, Happy Days, and last but not least, Mia's fictional pilot,
Fox Force Five. "The above list, with the possible exception of
The Avengers," writes Miklitsch, "suggests that
Pulp Fiction has less of an elective affinity with the cinematic avant-gardism of Godard than with mainstream network programming." Jonathan Rosenbaum had brought TV into his analysis of the Tarantino/Godard comparison, acknowledging that the directors were similar in wanting to cram everything they like onscreen: "But the differences between what Godard likes and what Tarantino likes and why are astronomical; it's like comparing a combined museum, library, film archive, record shop, and department store with a jukebox, a video-rental outlet, and an issue of
TV Guide." In a 2007 video interview with fellow director and friend
Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino purportedly "reveals" the secret contents of the briefcase, but the film cuts out and skips the scene in the style employed in Tarantino and Rodriguez's
Grindhouse (2007), with an intertitle that reads "Missing Reel". The interview resumes with Rodriguez discussing how radically the "knowledge" of the briefcase's contents alters one's understanding of the movie. Despite Tarantino's statements, many solutions to what one scholar calls this "unexplained postmodern puzzle" have been proposed. A strong similarity has often been observed with
Robert Aldrich's 1955
film noir Kiss Me Deadly, which features a glowing briefcase housing an atomic explosive. In their review of
Alex Cox's 1984 film
Repo Man in
The Daily Telegraph, Nick Cowen and Hari Patience suggest that
Pulp Fiction may also owe "a debt of inspiration" to the glowing car trunk in that film. In scholar Paul Gormley's view, this connection with
Kiss Me Deadly, and a similar one with
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), makes it possible to read the eerie glow as symbolic of violence itself. The idea that the briefcase contains Marsellus's soul gained popular currency in the mid-1990s. Analyzing the notion,
Roger Ebert dismissed it as "nothing more than a widely distributed urban legend given false credibility by the mystique of the Net".
Jules' Bible passage Jules ritually recites what he describes as a biblical passage,
Ezekiel 25:17, before he executes someone. The passage is heard three times – in the introductory sequence in which Jules and Vincent reclaim Marsellus's briefcase from the doomed Brett; that same recitation a second time, at the beginning of "The Bonnie Situation", which overlaps the end of the earlier sequence; and in the epilogue at the diner. The first version of the passage is as follows: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee. The second version, from the diner scene, is identical except for the final line: "And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you." While the final two sentences of Jules's speech are similar to the actual cited passage, the first two are fabricated from various biblical phrases. The text of Ezekiel 25 preceding verse 17 indicates that God's wrath is retribution for the hostility of the
Philistines. In the
King James Version from which Jules's speech is adapted, Ezekiel 25:17 reads in its entirety: And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I
am the LORD, when I shall lay My vengeance upon them. Tarantino's primary inspiration for the speech was the work of Japanese
martial arts star
Sonny Chiba. Its text and its identification as Ezekiel 25:17 derive from an almost identical creed that appears at the beginning of the Chiba movie
Karate Kiba (
The Bodyguard; 1976), where it is both shown as a scrolling text and read by an offscreen narrator. The version seen at the beginning of
The Bodyguard (1976) is as follows: The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the inequity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the father of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious anger, who poison and destroy my brothers; and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I shall lay my vengeance upon them! In the 1980s television series
Kage no Gundan (
Shadow Warriors), Chiba's character would lecture the villain-of-the-week about how the world must be rid of evil before killing him. A killer delivers a similar biblical rant in
Modesty Blaise, the hardback but pulp-style novel Vincent is shown with in two scenes. Two critics who have analyzed the role of the speech find different ties between Jules's transformation and the issue of
postmodernity. Gormley argues that unlike the film's other major characters – Marsellus aside – Jules is: linked to a "thing" beyond postmodern simulation ... [T]his is perhaps most marked when he moves on from being a simulation of a Baptist preacher, spouting Ezekiel because it was "just a cool thing to say ..." In his conversion, Jules is shown to be cognizant of a place beyond this simulation, which, in this case, the film constructs as God.
Adele Reinhartz writes that the "depth of Jules's transformation" is indicated by the difference in his two deliveries of the passage: "In the first, he is a majestic and awe-inspiring figure, proclaiming the prophecy with fury and self-righteousness ... In the second ... he appears to be a different sort of man altogether ... [I]n true postmodern fashion, [he] reflects on the meaning of his speech and provides several different ways that it might pertain to his current situation." Similar to Gormley, Conard argues that as Jules reflects on the passage, it dawns on him "that it refers to an objective framework of value and meaning that is absent from his life"; to Conard, this contrasts with the film's prevalent representation of a nihilistic culture. Rosenbaum finds much less in Jules's revelation: "[T]he spiritual awakening at the end of
Pulp Fiction, which Jackson performs beautifully, is a piece of jive avowedly inspired by kung-fu movies. It may make you feel good, but it certainly doesn't leave you any wiser."
The bathroom Much of
Pulp Fictions action revolves around characters who are either in the bathroom or need to use the toilet. To a lesser extent, Tarantino's other films also feature this narrative element. At Jack Rabbit Slim's, Mia goes to "powder her nose" – literally; she
snorts cocaine in the restroom. Butch and Fabienne play an extended scene in their motel bathroom, he in the shower, she brushing her teeth; the next morning, but just a few seconds later in screen time, she is again brushing her teeth – vigorously, after having given Butch "oral pleasure." As Jules and Vincent confront Brett and two of his pals, a fourth man is hiding in the bathroom – his actions will lead to Jules' transformative "moment of clarity". After Marvin's absurd death, Vincent and Jules wash up in Jimmie's bathroom, where they argue over a bloody hand towel. When the diner holdup turns into a standoff, "Honey Bunny" whines, "I gotta go pee!" As described by Peter and Will Brooker, "In three significant moments Vincent retires to the bathroom [and] returns to an utterly changed world where death is threatened." The threat increases in magnitude as the narrative progresses chronologically, and is realized in the third instance: • Vincent and Jules's diner breakfast and philosophical conversation is aborted by Vincent's bathroom break; an armed robbery ensues while Vincent is reading on the toilet. • While Vincent is in the bathroom worrying about the possibility of going too far with Marsellus's wife, Mia mistakes his heroin for cocaine, snorts it, and overdoses. • During a stakeout at Butch's apartment, Vincent emerges from the toilet with his book and is killed by Butch. In the Brookers' analysis, "Through Vince ... we see the contemporary world as utterly contingent, transformed, disastrously, in the instant you are not looking." Fraiman finds it particularly significant that Vincent is reading
Modesty Blaise in two of these instances. She links this fact with the traditional derisive view of women as "the archetypal consumers of pulp": Locating popular fiction in the bathroom, Tarantino reinforces its association with shit, already suggested by the dictionary meanings of "pulp" that preface the movie: moist, shapeless matter; also, lurid stories on cheap paper. What we have then is a series of damaging associations – pulp, women, shit – that taint not only male producers of mass-market fiction but also male consumers. Perched on the toilet with his book, Vincent is feminized by sitting instead of standing as well as by his trashy tastes; preoccupied by the anal, he is implicitly infantilized and homosexualized; and the seemingly inevitable result is being pulverized by Butch with a Czech M61 submachine gun. That this fate has to do with Vincent's reading habits is strongly suggested by a slow tilt from the book on the floor directly up to the corpse spilled into the tub. Willis reads
Pulp Fiction in almost precisely the opposite direction, finding "its overarching project as a drive to turn shit into gold. This is one way of describing the project of redeeming and recycling popular culture, especially the popular culture of one's childhood, as is Tarantino's wont as well as his stated aim." Despite that, argues Fraiman, "
Pulp Fiction demonstrates ... that even an open pulpophile like Tarantino may continue to feel anxious and emasculated by his preferences." == Accolades ==