Laura Hatcher

Pulp Fiction

Our group study was the film Pulp Fiction (1994 Quentin Tarantino.) As the term postmodernism is very wide it can be applied to many different films and Pulp Fiction being one of them.

Firstly intertextuality is a key postmodern feature in this film. A mix of different genres and themes can be found throughout the film such as gangsters, war, musical, romance and art-house. Tarantino also cross links to many of his other films such as The Assassin (1993) and Reservoir Dogs (1992). Travolta characters also lives a life that was expected of his character in Saturday night fever’s future, which signifies that he

definitely intended to make these links. An example of intertextuality in the film is the scenes in the trendy diner ‘Jack Rabbit slims’ as it has many references to 1950’s stars and movies.

Secondly, pastiche is used a lot throughout the film as it’s made up of many different storylines with completely different characters and genres borrowed from different films. A quote from Tarantino himself even shows that he admits to using pastiche in his films; ‘I always hope that if one million people see my movie, they see one million different movies.’ An example of this in the film is when Marcellus walks out in front of Butch’s car at the traffic lights and turns to face him, as this resembles the scene in Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) when Marion’s boss crosses the street in front of her car.

Another key postmodern feature in the film is hybridity. The tone of the film is disorienting in the way it clashes and mixes different kinds and levels of feeling. For example, when Vincent is killed absurdly whilst on the toilet reading a piece of pulp fiction. Also throughout the film there are various scenes with off-hand shootings where the killer doesn't even look at the victim which

shows how relaxed they are with behaviour like this and that it is normal in that society.

Finally, the narrative structure is very disjointed. This is a key feature that makes the film postmodern as the story is constantly changing. It is argued that the films narrative is fragmented and disorienting in terms of time and space and therefore another reason it’s called postmodern. It works with micro-narratives, giving a fragmented sense of location and history. Tarantino fans favourite part about the narrative is the way that huge stretches of it are devoted to 'trivial' conversations e.g. foot massages and burgers.

Overall, Pulp Fiction shows many different features throughout that make it postmodern; hybridity, pastiche, narrative structure and intertextuality. All of these cleverly tie in together to make the film good and also to get the message that Tarantino wanted across, the thought that they are watching numerous films in one.