American male, twenty-four years old, and when Pulp Fiction came out in the first half of the 1990's, I thought it was the coolest movie that I had ever seen.

Now.

Why?

Why was Pulp
Fiction so cool?

I didn't know.

It just was.

It was "Fonzi," and on the screen, inside the movie, watching, so was I. Projection. Absorption. Mirrored tall, wide, and famous.

"Fonzi is cool.
I am cool.
What am I?

I am a sinner.

The key element to Pulp Fiction is the Bible quote which Jules, Samuel Jackson, says to his victims before he kills them. He quotes Ezekial 25:17 as the following:

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 good will, 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 I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.

This quote defines the movie. The non-linear, timeless, plot structure lets the film begin and end with scenes where the quote is recited, and in the center of the film's events Quentin Tarantino, the director, gives us the quote once more. If the movie is reconstructed along a conventional timeline, the scenes involving the Bible passage would occur before the film's midway point. The fact that the film's structure is dependent upon the quote to act as a kind of spine forces the significance of this quote to be recognized.

Re-read the diner scene which concludes the film: Samuel Jackson's character explains to the Tim Roth character what he thinks the Bible passage means. Pumpkin, played by Roth, had been holding up the diner until Jules took his gun away from him. Jules has the gun pointed at Pumpkin as he explains what he thinks the passage means. He offers three interpretations:

1--Pumpkin is the evil man, Jules is the righteous man, and "Mr. nine-millimeter here is the shepherd protecting [Jules'] ass in the valley of darkness."
2--Pumpkin is the righteous man, Jules is the shepherd, and the world is the one which is selfish and evil.
3--Pumpkin as the weak and Jules as the tyranny of evil men.

The third interpretation is the one which Jules takes as true, but it is clear that all three interpretations are valid. Jules claims that he is trying to be the shepherd, but there is only one certainty that can be taken out of this initial scene -- modern society is signified as the "valley of darkness." Within this darkness one chooses to exist as the righteous man, `the selfish man, the evil man, or the shepherd.

I love guns.

I love guns. I love movies that love guns. Pulp Fiction loves guns. Image is everything -- look closer at the reflection.

Re-read the junk store rape scene involving Butch, Marcellus Wallace, Zed, the store's owner, and the Gimp. The scene begins with Butch, Bruce Willis, and Wallace, Ving Rhames, "gimping" in the store from off the street. They soon find themselves in the basement tied to chairs with sex devices plugging their mouths. Zed and the store owner bring out the Gimp to watch Butch and then take Wallace into the back room to rape him.

This is where it gets interesting.

First, Butch gets free from the chair by either luck or divine intervention -- you decide. He punches the Gimp and heads for the door. Once upstairs, he decides to go back and help Marcellus. Butch goes through a series of possible weapons to use. He picks up first a hammer, then a baseball bat, then a chainsaw, and then a samurai sword. After finding the sword, he heads back down the steps holding it with both hands right under his waist recalling the image of Luke Skywalker. Butch slices open the store owner and then Wallace shoots Zed below the waist.

Now re-read.

American society has castrated me. Life has left me "gimping" into gun stores searching for a feeling of power. Watch the scene reinforce. Watch how Butch chooses his weapon to return to the basement. Each one in the series essentially becoming more and more phallic until he ends up with the largest "substitute penis" he can find. Then, once he gets downstairs, pay attention to where he and Wallace focus their attacks upon the rapists. Once again ladies and eunuchs: castration.

I am homophobic.

The male rape scene in the film is important because, along with a good portion of the action and dialogue in Pulp Fiction, it involves the suppression of homosexual desires. An early scene with Vincent, played by John Travolta, and Jules talking about foot massages introduces this theme of homophobia which permeates the plot. They are discussing Tony "Rocky Horror" having been thrown out the window for having given Wallace's wife a foot massage. Here we have two themes of the movie presented. The first being that, as individuals, we have come to define the real with fiction. This is one of the ways I have been castrated. Several times in the film people are defined by commercialized elements of America. Tony is nicknamed "Rocky Horror," Jules calls the Tim Roth character "Ringo," Butch's girlfriend says she has a tummy "like Madonna's in Lucky Star," the Buddy Holly waiter calls Mia "Peggy Sue", the Wolf calls Vincent "Lash Larue", Jules calls one of the college kids "Flock of Seagulls," and I am "Fonzi."

The second theme, though, is the masculine fear of homosexuality. Vincent and Jules' discussion upon foot massages leads to Vincent asking Jules if he would give a guy a foot massage. Jules responds, "Fuck you, fuck you," and Vincent plays with him a by saying, "I could use a foot massage." The theme is strengthened by the fact that Tony is nicknamed after a movie about transvestites. American male homophobia is alive and well.

Re-read the end of the male rape scene: After Marcellus gets raped he tells Butch to "get [his] ass out of there."

Re-read the early scene with Vincent and Jules with the college students: Jules asks Brad if Marcellus looks "like a bitch," and when Brad says "no," he asks, "Why did you fuck him like a bitch?"

Re-read the later scene between Jules and Jimmy, played by Tarantino himself, during "The Bonnie Situation" segment of the film: When Jules tries to explain to Jimmy why he needs help, Jimmy responds, "Don't Jimmy me Jules," and after Vincent and Jules finish cleaning the car, the Wolf, played by Harvey Keitel, stresses that they shouldn't start "sucking each others dicks quite yet."

The scene which embodies the repressed homosexuality present within Pulp Fiction most intensely however, is "The Gold Watch" segment of the film. Butch's father, who was a POW in Vietnam, hid a watch up "his ass" for two years so that the Japanese wouldn't take it from him. The gold watch is referred to as Butch's "birth right." When Butch's father died, he gave the watch to the Christopher Walken character who also hid it up "his ass." The Walken character tells a young Butch that "Two men together for as long as [your father and I] were take on responsibilities toward one another." Then he tells Butch that "hopefully this won't happen to [him]." He hands Butch the watch and the plot jumps ahead to the present and Butch is a boxer. He is the essence of the modern warrior within society. The parallel between modern society and war manifests itself when, after he kills the boxer that he was supposed to lose to, Butch is sent into a stream of events which land him in the junk store basement scene where he goes through the event which directly parallels the type of POW horror his father went through in Hanoy.

I hate women.

If survival of "self" within modern society has become a state of war, it follows that women are not welcome. Male characters dominate the action of Pulp Fiction, while female characters are either objects of desire or in the way. The entire "Bonnie Situation" segment deals with how Jimmy's wife would be unable to deal with coming home to "a bunch of gangsters doing a bunch of gangster shit." When the Wolf gets called away from the party he asks Marcellus if Jimmy's wife "is the hysterical type." This hysterical woman who is unable to deal with the war-like mentality men must use to survive within modern society, shows up again when we re-read the final diner scene. When the lovers plan to rob the store goes astray, Pumpkin, Vincent, and Jules all stay calm while the girlfriend, Honeybunny, gets hysterical.

Re-read Jules to Pumpkin: "Chill that bitch out."

When the women aren't acting hysterical they're in the way.

Re-read the film's drug overdose scene: The drug dealer's girlfriend is in the way as the men try to save Mia. She keeps bothering Lance, played by Eric Stoltz, until he finally says, "I'm going to fucking kill you if you don't shut-up."

Re-read Butch finding out that his girlfriend, Fabian, forgot to get his watch from their apartment. First, Butch turns violent and smashes up the hotel room, but he soon calms himself down and says that it's not her fault. The next cut shows him in a state of anger once again. It wasn't her fault because she is a woman and he was expecting too much out of her. The action continues and eventually he is back at the hotel picking up Fabian. In this exchange, women are again shown as being unable to deal with events which the men handle easily. Butch is in a hurry to go and, instead of hurrying with him, Fabian begins to cry. Butch has to talk to her as if she is a baby in order to coax her onto the motorcycle. The war-like state is supplemented with the fact that the "Z" on Zed's keychain parallels Butch with Zoro. Also, re-read the war vocabulary Butch uses as he lets Fabian know that it's not a motorcycle they are on -- it's a chopper. If society has symbolically declared war upon its members, it is clear that the war is dominated by men.

I like my sex violent.

While the women in the film are unable to deal with the violence and reality which they become involved in, they come to establish a link between violence and sex. Sex and violence seem to equal each other within this film. Every scene which involves sexual desire between a male and female character is associated with violence. The diner scene which opens the film starts the pattern early and it continues throughout. Re-read that opening scene: The lovers who rob the restaurant get sexually aroused right before they get out their guns. Where the violence-equals -sex motif centers itself however, is in the character of Butch. Fabian, his girlfriend, is in love with the fact that he is boxer. She is introduced lying on a bed and seemingly uninterested in having sex. She doesn't get aroused until Butch says that if she had a pot belly, he would punch her in it. Then, right before they have sex she asks Butch whether the men who are after them want to kill them.

Butch is the modern warrior.
His life is violence, and she loves this about him.

Re-read the morning after Butch and Fabian's sexual encounter. Fabian is shown watching a movie which contains guns, violence, and motorcycles. Butch asks her why she watches those types of movies and she replies, "You know why." When she says this, the camera is on the television set and the reflection of her image is shown inside the movie's war scene. It is a moment in the film which crystallizes the sex equals violence dynamic, and it illuminates the significance of Fabian's reply to Butch in the bathroom after they had sex. Butch states, "I think I broke a rib," and Fabian replies, "Giving me oral pleasure?"

Keep reading Butch's role in all of this. See Bruce Willis perfectly cast.

The taxi ride which follows Butch's boxing bout also highlights this argument. Esmerelda Villa Lobos, the taxi driver, had listened to the fight on the radio and she knows that he killed his opponent. Her dialogue paints her arousal. She says, "You were the fighter? You're him, I know you're him, tell me you're him." Butch says that he is the fighter and she tells him that he killed "the other boxer man," then she asks him what it feels like. Butch responds, "Why you a weirdo?" and Esmerelda says, "No, its a subject I have much interest in."

So do you.

I am a necrophiliac.

What about the Uma Thurman character however? She is the only woman with a significant part within the film. How does her role fit into these paradigms? While she does not get in the way of the male characters, nor is she ever hysterical; the sex equals violence dynamic is present within her scenes also. The sexual tension between her and Vincent manifests itself in the fact that if they were to engage their desires, Wallace would kill them. Tarantino, however, uses the Mia character for purposes larger than the sex/violence theme which he has fully established without her. Mia becomes the vehicle for Tarantino's psychoanalysis of how male attraction is somehow linked to dead women. Re-read the Jack Rabbit Slims scene. The restaurant has waiters and waitresses which dress-up like dead American icons. Vincent calls it a "wax museum with a pulse." After Vincent suggests that maybe Mia and him should have sat in the Marilyn Monroe section, Mia responds, "Which one . . .There's two Marilyn's." Vincent points out that there are not two Marilyn's. There is a Marilyn Monroe, a Mimi Mandora, and a Jane Mansfield "who must have the night off." The scene expresses the ideal of male desire. While, in the restaurant, there is only one Marilyn, there are actually three, six, a hundred Marilyn's. Society and history have established her as an ideal female representation and women are expected to meet that ideal.

Of course, the best part about Marilyn is that she is no longer alive. She has become a complete representation of sexual desire without any of the humanness and unpredictability that comes with a living woman. This death-equals-desire motif is worked through in the scene that follows the restaurant sequence.

Re-read: Vincent and Mia come in the door after winning the dance contest and Mia puts on some music while Vincent uses the restroom. She selects the song, "Girl You'll be a Woman Soon," and begins to dance about the room. The song and scene imply that Mia and Vincent are going to have sex, but this inevitability is undermined. Mia finds Vincent's "madman" heroine, snorts it, and overdoses. As she is apparently dying there is a close up on her face and the chorus "Girl you'll be a woman soon" repeats again and again. As if that were not enough, when the camera comes back the music is gone and there is a close-up shot of Mia's face. The first thing that Vincent says upon seeing an apparently dead Mia is, "Fuck me. Fuck me."

I use Viagra.

So, with all of these themes playing themselves within the film, how does the main theme of a society which has castrated its members materialize. It materializes symbolically throughout the whole of the film, and the concept which drives it is the initial definition of pulp which is displayed on the screen before the film begins. Two definitions are offered:

pulp:

1). a soft, moist, shapeless, mass of matter.
2). a magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough imprinted paper.

The definitions are significant because the first one comments directly upon the state of modern America, and the second one characterizes the feel of the picture. Television, cinema, advertising, and magazine covers are what we use to define our ideal images. Communication and transportation has eliminated the problems of time and space from personal interaction. The problem is that no one has anything real to talk about. In the film this is illustrated in the conversations that the characters have with one another. Rarely do they ever talk about anything of any importance. Directly following the diner sequence which opens the film, we are introduced to Vincent and Jules as they talk about fast food restaurants in Amsterdam. First Travolta says, "It's the little things that make Europe different. I mean they got the same shit over there as we got here, but its just a little different." Already it is evident that the postmodern world is smaller than any globe in history. Some examples that he gives is how they sell beer in the movie theatres and how in a quarter pounder with cheese at McDonald's is called a "Royale with cheese."

The second example brings about another element in the defining of America as pulp. Throughout the film a conglomerate of languages are used. In the diner sequence which opens and closes the film, the Tim Roth character calls for the waitress in a foreign tongue and when she comes over the waitress informs him that what he said means "boy." Bruce Willis' character, Butch, has a French girlfriend who speaks French to him as he gives her "oral pleasure," then directly following that scene the two have a conversation about how she does not speak Spanish. Willis responds "Well you don't speak Bora-Bora either." In the Jack Rabbit Slims scene with Vincent and Mia, Mia has to use the restroom so that Vincent can have some time to think of something to talk about. The film relays that the society which Americans have built, the movie stars we have created, the television shows we have produced-- all things which we once had control over--now control us. They are what we talk about, they are what we define ourselves by, and they are how we define our success.

Re-read The Jack Rabbit Slims scene once more: Vincent and Mia are walking around this "wax museum with a pulse" high on drugs. Every pop icon in the history of the country is represented within the restaurant and Vincent does a very disoriented lap around the bar. He sees Elvis, James Dean, Don Juan, . . .. Then he sits down at his table and Buddy Holly is his waiter. It is impossible in America to tell the difference between what is real and what is unreal; it is impossible to tell the difference between representations and the things which they represent. Americans are walking around in a drug-induced haze, unable to control anything and unable to feel anything. The beautiful part about this scene is that Vincent and Mia, in this diner full of American icons, participate in a dance contest. Tarantino has set up a reality inside this restaurant that begs for the presence of a John Travolta waiter all dressed up in his best Saturday Night Fever polyester outfit, and then he gives us Travolta in a dance contest. Travolta is no longer playing Vincent in Pulp Fiction, he has become a representation of a representation. He has become part of the "wax museum with a pulse." By using the drug scenes as symbolic of how America has intoxicated us with its consumerism, it is possible to see the Mia overdose scene as how to save oneself from the onslaught of commercialization around us. Americans need a shot of adrenaline to the heart. The problem is that no one knows how to give the shot, no one knows what will happen after, and no one can find the "little black book" which answers all these questions.

If you want the hero to survive turn to page 1.

Pulp Fiction carefully examines the feeling of helplessness that exists within modern society. The spiritual condition of modern America is an unhealthy one. It is clear that the "boss' dirty laundry," which Jules has inside the suitcase is Marcellus Wallace's soul. The Band-Aid on the back of Wallace's neck and the combination of "666" on the briefcase lock, suggest that his soul had been stolen by the devil. This, the "little black book" reference and the Bible passage which Jules recites are enough to get a debate on religion ignited. The most important aspect of Pulp Fiction in this regard however, is Jules' take on what a miracle is.

Re-read the scene with Vincent, Jules, and the college kids that have Marcellus' briefcase: Jules feels God came down from and stopped the bullets from killing him and Vincent. Vincent, however, sees their survival simply as a freak occurrence. Jules responds to by stating that Vincent is "judging this shit the wrong way." Jules' point is that "It could be that God stopped the bullets, he changed Coke to Pepsi, he found my fucking car keys. You don't judge this shit on merit," and he concludes, "Now whether what we witnessed was an according to Hoyle miracle isn't important, what is important is that I felt the touch of God. God got involved." This is how we awake from the disorientation which modern society places us in. This is Jules' adrenaline shot to the heart. When Jules speaks of his awakening he refers to it as "what alcoholics call a moment of clarity."

Through God we're saved?

No.

The message of the film is not religious. The possibility of the divine represents itself in the bullets being stopped, but this representation is immediately tempered by the fact that, just as Vincent is asking Jules whether or not he believes God stopped the bullets, Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the head. There is a chaos at work and Jules has found a way to calm the chaos within his spirit. The non-fiction of this Pulp Fiction hides under the realities of popular culture. Jules' ability to feel the soul inside him is the victory, but the postmodern reality of such a realization is presented by Vincent telling Jules that what he has decided to become is a bum. Jules would rather think himself a shepherd and the reality is that the shepherds of our society may just be the bums. Society has castrated us and the weak lie down and take it, the evil pick up their guns and fight against it, the selfish sell their souls, and the shepherds walk the earth "like Cain in Kung-Fu." You can be the diner manager made to scream, "I am not a hero," as a gun indents your temple; or you can be the evil man who holds the gun. You can be a part of the commercialization and consumerism of America, or you can be a bum. You can be Jules, come in touch with your soul, and survive the film; or you can be Vincent and get killed while you sit on the toilet. Its up to you. This is Pulp Fiction, the choose-your-own-adventure-text of the nineties.

Find the best ending.

This is important.

Find your savior.