Rolling Stone - Pulp Fiction - Essay Example

Rolling Stone Pulp Fiction (1994) Starring John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Harvey Keitel, Eric Stoltz, and Ving Rhames. Directed by Quentin Tarantino Written by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary One thing that cannot be said about Quentin Tarantino is that he is subtle. Nuance is thick in the courageous and violent film that Tarantino gave a name of Pulp Fiction (1994), as this intricately woven story of the criminal underworld is also presented with rich philosophical implications, contemplation and abundance of spraying bodily fluids. The film is as thoughtful as it is wildly and almost obscenely violent. Even as it digs deep, it skims along the surface meaning that a whole range of audience fulfillment can be achieved. In this sophomore effort by one of the most controversial directors, Tarantino is as much a star as is his electrifying cast. Tarantino develops a unique style in which his story is told through disconnected scenes that are out of sequence, leaving the audience engaged in an effort to try to figure out just where the story is going. Just as it seems impossible to find meaning, the stories flow together so that the viewer forms that inevitable ‘O’ on their lips as it begins to make sense. The individual scenes are riveting enough that the viewer can wait until they begin to make sense. There is no rush. If you haven’t seen the film, please know that the following review is filled with spoilers. The film is a bumpy ride and a review of it would be no less. The film opens with a dialogue between Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer as they sit in a diner talking to one another like most desperate couples. The short scene ends as they pull guns, Plummer screaming at the patrons at the top of her lungs as they initiate a heist that won’t be resolved until much later. After this intense short scene, the opening credits begin to roll, listing off a series of accomplished actors who will bring to this film their own unique brand of quirky interest. The real break-out star of the film is John Travolta who is consistently paired with Samuel L. Jackson as a duo of enforcers for organized crime boss Marsellus, played by Ving Rhames. Although mentioned repeatedly, Rhames character doesn’t show up until closer to the end of the film in what has to be some of the most disturbing and riveting scenes in any film. However, just like the structure of the film, his entrance has to wait for the moment as Travolta and Jackson dominate the film with storylines that include killing off a group of fraternity brothers in over their head with their crime boss. As well there are a series of drug based subplots that include watching a dead Uma Thurman pop back to life after having her chest stabbed with a thick needle on a hypodermic filled with adrenaline. Earlier in the film she is quirky yet elegant, but nothing is held back as she swipes her hand across the dribbles of vomit still clinging to her face from her overdose. Travolta, his belly rounded just as his face has become moony, his roles as a dancer or high school screw up in Saturday Night Fever and in Welcome Back Kotter long behind him, comes on as almost repulsive. Somehow he mixes the portrayal of streetwise intelligence with simplistic insights into a compelling and sensitive character that the audience can’t help to love. No one would want to meet him, but everyone knows him. His character ‘Vincent’ is that guy who gets things done that no one else wants to do. Jackson, meanwhile, waxes philosophical on a plane above Vincent’s head and just slightly right of what might be expected for his character. The pair become instantly iconic as they experience the rollercoaster ride that is their life. One of the most classic on-screen pairings comes from Uma Thurman’s portrayal of Mia Wallace and Travolta’s character Vincent. His still unmet (by the audience) boss Marsellus has instructed Travolta to take his girlfriend out for the night so she is entertained. This puts Travolta in a precarious situation because he is attracted to her, even though he knows not to be tempted. They go to a 50s themed club and eventually engage in a scene that will be remembered in cinematic history as one of the most engaging dance scenes that rivals other cinematic favorites such as Dirty Dancing and Footloose. Flirtatious with a sense of humor, watching Travolta and Thurman do the ‘batman’ is both strangely endearing and subtly disturbing. His ‘date’ with the girlfriend of the very dangerous Marsellus plays at the edge of strange sexual attraction. Until she manages to overdose and sober up Travolta who now must find a way to bring her back to life or suffer at the hands of his boss. No longer attracted to the woman who has put him in this situation, it moves from a dire situation to resolution with a humorous, yet dramatic stab of adrenaline that ends their interactions awkwardly as she is revived. Of course, she asks that Marsellus not know of the incident. Travolta is more than willing to keep that secret. Meanwhile, Bruce Willis comes in with his own subplot involving the end of his boxing career. He has a tender and sweet relationship with a woman, Fabienne, played by Portuguese actress Maria de Medeiros. Willis is ready to get out of the boxing game having aged out of the sport. Marsellus has given him explicit instructions to take a dive, but because of his pride he has won the bout. Not only has he won, but he killed his opponent taking a valuable player out of the ring for good. He double-crosses Marsellus by betting on himself against the odds and having instructed his girlfriend to pack them up so they can leave quickly after his victory, but she forgets to pack a gold watch for which he has sentimental value. He has to go back for the watch, which leads Marsellus’ men to find him. This leads to a chase that takes them into a pawn shop. While all of this sounds so gritty and serious that the film would seem to be a pure drama, it most decidedly is not. The audience is given humor and shock more than any other experience, the intelligence of the writing and the dialogue a backdrop to the violence that is presented with gratuitousness. This should be expected from the genre of writing from which the film takes its name. The spray of blood is almost a character of its own as the film. As the film travels along its trajectory it comes to an end where the violence changes from pure bloody mayhem to the disturbing minds of some deviant characters who would engage in sexual violence. What would this type of film be without a little rape? It isn’t a female victim, however, that goes through the emotional trauma of having control of their body taken from them and placed into the control of a sadistic psycho-path. Marsellus, in his pursuit of Bruce Willis is lead straight into the path of a pair of men who have a pension for ball gags and chains. In a twist that is more unexpected than any other, Willis gets out of his obligation to the crime organization by saving Marsellus after he has been violated by the perpetrators of the hideous assault. This leads to one of the most remembered lines of the film when Marsellus, after being released from his bonds and after having been assaulted, gets the revenge that only a male would take but that every female victim would want. Although the revenge is left to the imagination, he looks on his rapists and hints at his intentions when he says “I'ma get medieval on your ass” (IMDB n.p.). However, this is not the end because there are still quite a few storylines to be cleaned up. The film ends where it begins, in the diner where Roth and Plummer are discussing their lives right before pulling guns and taking over the eatery. Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, Travolta and Jackson are sitting in the same diner contemplating how they survived the night as Jackson suggests that maybe it should mean more. As Plummer and Roth pull their guns their out of control efforts come in conflict with the sensibilities that Jackson has acquired for the criminal ‘arts’. While Travolta is taking a break in a restroom, the drama unfolds and after Roth and Plummer show they are emotional in their crimes, screaming and out of control, Jackson takes hold of the situation as Travolta emerges from the bathroom to back him up. This interplay of characters and emotion is intense, even as it is enjoyable to watch. The humor is priceless and leaves the audience satisfied in ways that only an exploitive film can with gratuitous violence that is playful and consistent. Tarantino takes his audience on a complex and rich ride of violence, philosophy and mayhem. He creates a world of ‘pulp’ in which his characters reflect that genre of writing which is filled with similar vignettes to those that can be found in true life crime or detective novels. The film is highly enjoyable, if abrupt and shocking. The genius of the writing takes the storyline out of sequence and weaves the various plots into something that ends up going beyond what would be expected. The film is a pinnacle type of film where the right alignment of the stars placed all of these actors into position with Tarantino who crafted something unique and legendary with the ‘tools’ he was given. Those tools are formidable, but as an ensemble they are more than just memorable. It is likely that the dance scene will end up on a host of montages in the future as part of a list of iconic moments from film. Watching Pulp Fiction is like indulging in every guilty pleasure one has ever imagined and wrapping it into a single package of intelligent and delightful storytelling. It is filled with violence, humor and the best of what film was meant to be – a rollercoaster ride of visual shock and obscenely delightful humor. Name Professor’s Name Class Date RIT Essay Reflection The RIT assignment was created through posing as a writer for Rolling Stone Magazine with a review of the movie Pulp Fiction. Rolling Stone is known for being the rock music fan’s sanctuary. The counter culture nature of the work in the magazine allows for a review of the world from the culture of youth (Travers 12). A review in the magazine is not going to be geared to the family or underscore the moral implications of the film within the context of culture. A review in this magazine embraces the concepts that are contrary to mainstream cultural acceptance. Reviewing a film like Pulp Fiction for Rolling Stone Magazine requires an edgy rhetorical style with a slightly deeper analysis of the importance of counterculture ideals as they come against the mainstream morality and conformity. As a writer for Rolling Stone a reviewer would be ‘in the face’ of the audience while maintaining an intellectual stand for the review. Using Pulp Fiction as an example is a great choice in order to be able to be both shocking and insightful. Readers for Rolling Stone are expecting the pieces that they read to be edgy with a bite that will leave them entertained through just a touch of anarchy. While the success of counterculture based writing in magazines and through news outlets has led to it becoming almost a mainstream aesthetic, writing for a magazine that is iconic and important in the scheme of countercultural history requires looking a little deeper and finding a way in which to express those aesthetics through defining the subject matter at its grittiest roots. Once again, the film Pulp Fiction provides a great deal of material from which to express this type of emotion and set of beliefs. The target audience for a magazine like Rolling Stone would be those in their late teens and twenties who look at the world through critical analysis that most often stems from university level course work that has expanded their ability to look at the world through an academic perspective. Target audiences for Rolling Stone are primarily male and look at music as an expression of their life experiences, important to their culture and meaningful to how they view the world. There is a high level of intellectualism attached to the target audience of Rolling Stone Magazine in relationship to the position of music in the lives of the youth culture; more specifically male youth culture (Chandarlapaty 26). Writing for a counterculture audience means writing for an audience that was directly or indirectly influenced by overriding cultural commentary created by writers like Jack Kerouac or through films like Easy Rider (1969). These influences helped to define anti-establishment rhetoric and created a generation of baby boomers who even when they are mainstream, relate to the remnants of counterculture ideals (Gair 97). Their children and now grandchildren are lost in an emulsion of counterculture, conservatism, liberalism, and apathy that means that they can switch into reading the Wall Street Journal or listening to Fox news as easily as they can pick up an issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. They can relate to it all. Counterculture is now an aspect of mainstream socialized existence in America. Even though it is no longer radical or outside of the norm, writing for counterculture publications that are known for the edge and sometimes radically left viewpoints requires that there be certain elements in the work. This includes the use of shocking language and concepts that would be rejected by Parenthood Weekly. The writing needs to be adult with a youth based flavor, easily savored by either a late teen or a thirty-something who remembers well their rebellious youth. The writer in the example that I created was based on someone who is enthusiastic about films that are on the edge and had no problem with gratuitous violence. The reader would likely not have that problem, so why would the writer? The intention of this work was to connect at that raw level where people celebrate violence as choreography, movements that are timed with showers of red and with the punctuation of sound that seems to be appreciated by adrenaline junkies who seek their fix vicariously through film and games. The writing for the review was intentionally somewhat out of sequence with a nod to Tarantino’s style of storytelling so that his vision was reflected for the perception of the reader. In order to capture the audience with the substance of the film it was important to show how Tarantino seems to meander and then pull that string of storytelling tight to yank it right back into line and make a cohesive model. While it revealed spoilers it hit the highlights that would leave a reader wanting to know more. The review was intended to capture the interest of both those who had seen the film and to entice those who had not seen it to go as soon as possible. While the spoilers in the review are explicit, they can’t reveal all of the beauty of the film. In order to help the readers think about the film either before or after going to the movies, it was intended that in revealing the highly exploitive and shocking outline of the rape sequence that movie goers would be more impressed and have more of a reason to go see the film. For those who had seen it, they would be placed in a position to think about what it means to show a male victim rather than a female victim and to watch his retribution on his attackers. In the review it was also important to put the meaning of violence in the film into perspective. Although as a reviewer it was necessary to make it clear that the violence was frequent and wildly entertaining, it was also necessary to create a picture of how the violence had an emotional connection to the story. The violence, although frequent and sometimes seeming to be reckless and without reason, actually can be identified as meaningful throughout the film. A film that has cultural importance will have meaning even in what seems to be random acts of violence (Kibbey 124). Through exploring the meaning of the violence in the Tarantino film through innuendo and explicit ideas about it, the review further entices the reader to explore more about the film. One of the most important things about Tarantino as a writer, director, and actor in film is that he really loves the movies. He loves the B films as much as the blockbusters, the different genres inspiring him to write and direct at a level that most filmmakers can never quite reach. Cettl writes that Tarantino is one of the “important” contemporary film makers” of this time period (47). Tarantino takes the different genres of exploitation films, especially of the late 1960s and 1970s and creates art out of their aesthetics so that they are recreated into his own version of fun and intellectualism. Tarantino is raw and vulgar, pulling no punches as he takes the audience through the full on exploitive experience, all the while creating meaning and depth through imagery and dialogue that gets to the heart of some very real ideas. In From Dusk til Dawn (1996) which he wrote and starred in, he plays a man with schizophrenia who gets caught up with his brother at a brothel filled with vampires (Kibbey 47). In the midst of all that gory mayhem, his character is hearing voices and seeing things, his experience rather well written and acted in the midst of some of the cheesiest vampire drivel ever created. The film has a huge cult following and these types of meaningful, socially relevant details is why his film work. It is the contrasts that are important in a Tarantino film and in writing about his masterpiece, Pulp Fiction, it was important to capture something of the way in which those contrasts and details affect the story. Although the films feel raw, they also have the feeling of a kid in a candy store. Tarantino carefully picks the pieces that will come in conflict with the others, making sure the flavors are just a bit off. In order to write a good piece on this topic, the review of the film had to show the ways in which he dug deep for ideas and imagery that could capture the essence of the film. With a film as complex as Pulp Fiction, it is vital that it be explored in broad strokes in an article that has a limited length. If the writer gets too caught up in the details, the main ideas can be lost. It is the intention of this article to have some of the details, but paint them with those broad strokes in order to create interest for viewers to revisit the film or see it for the first time. In writing a review for Rolling Stone Magazine about the film Pulp Fiction, the work must be on the edge and have the shock value that both the magazine and the film employ for the audience. Although the writing was conservative for shock value writing, it was intended that it would hold the attention of the reader through expressing some of the details of the film that were the most controversial. The film is not for the faint of heart and that was one message that needed to be clear so that the reviewer could give the social film context for the reader. In addition, while it has a great many very adult and serious themes, the review was intended to have the same sense of humor that is found in the film. Writing for a magazine whose primary audience is looking to experience counterculture ideas, it is important to keep the work relevant, edgy, and with a certain sense of anti-establishment rhetoric. As a director and filmmaker, Tarantino fits into that type of environment easily. Writing about his work means to embrace the exploitive nature of his creative efforts and holding on for the ride. Works Cited Cettl, Robert. Sensational Movie Monologues. Los Angeles, CA: Wider Screenings, 2010. Print. Chandarlapaty, Raj. The Beat Generation and Counterculture: Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print. Gair, Christopher. The American Counterculture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Print. IMDB. Pulp Fiction. 2013. Web. 2 June 2013. Kibbey, Ann. Theory of the Image: Capitalism, Contemporary Film, and Women. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. Print. Pulp Fiction. Director Quentin Tarantino. Writer. Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery. Perf. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Eric Stoltz, and Ving Rhames. Pulp Fiction.Miramax Films, 1994. Film. Travers, Peter. The Rolling Stone Film Reader: The Best Film Writing from Rolling Stone Magazine. New York: Pocket Books, 1996. Print. Read More