The Pulp Non-fiction of Quentin Tarantino

The subject of humanities is interesting to me in that it looks at history through an art/music perspective. While I love music, I especially take interest in different forms of art. I don’t just consider art to be paintings or sketches, but more broadly classify art as “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance”. In this regard, I consider art to include a variety of media most notably including movies. Movies are a beautiful display of one’s creative and innovative abilities, and the form of movies itself fits into the definition of “production of what is beautiful, appealing, and of more than ordinary significance.” Behind every field of art lie the very artists who create such beauty. I believe that Quentin Tarantino is one of the greatest artists in his respective field of directing, producing, writing, and acting in movies. Throughout his career, even when he transitioned from an independent filmmaker into a major director, he has continually incorporated Italian, Mexican, and Dutch movie styles, has applied an aesthetic use of violence, and has effectively told his stories through nonlinear narrative, a technique introduced in ancient times and displayed in epic poetry, but more notably recognized in films throughout the 20^th and 21^st centuries. From Reservoir Dogs onward, Tarantino has made a name for himself from which his fans can easily recognize and appreciate any film he brings to the table.

Buscemi rehearsing for his future role as Crazy Eyes.

Although Reservoir Dogs was not Tarantino’s first film (that is credited to My Best Friend’s Birthday, which followed the same style of dialog and nonlinear storytelling as his other films, but lacked the proper editing, quality camera positioning, and overall plot to be considered one of his greater masterpieces by most fans, it is the film that launched his career as a revered director, producer, and writer. By not only incorporating an all-star cast of Dogs, including Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth, but also stepping out of the boundaries of any typical crime drama the viewer might expect to watch, Reservoir Dogs shows its own level of raw power and breathtaking intensity. Right from the beginning, during the breakfast scene, there is a personal level of connection instilled in the conversation among the characters. Tarantino takes the typical criminal and gives him a personal connotation, as to say that he has just as normal of humanistic traits as anyone else. The plotline of the story might read something like, “after a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant”, and the actual operation is no more significant than a 7/11 holdup (actually, the interesting approach is that he follows the events before and after the heist but not the heist itself), but when Tarantino uses his nonlinear technique to meet each criminal one-by-one, all the pieces of the puzzle come together to form a memorable tale of the hardships that even four “perfect criminals” can face. Realistically, this is a theme shown in all of his films, that is, taking a step into a thug-like, notorious character’s shoes to gain a whole new perspective of that character, whether it be Reservoir Dogs or Inglorious Basterds, for example. Aside from the use of nonlinear storyline, Tarantino also instilled pop culture references, memorable dialog, strong profanity, and of course violent crime, but wrapped it all up beautifully into a lasting, artistic expression of his recurring “more than ordinary” theme.

After Reservoir Dogs came Pulp Fiction, the movie that Samuel L. Jackson essentially sprouted from. This movie looks at the same sharp-dressed, swagger-driven criminals as in Reservoir Dogs, but this time twists the fate of the characters, making the story more engaging or pulpy, hence the pulp in Pulp Fiction. Samuel L. Jackson and his wallet in this movie share the same iconic title. Jules Winnfield is a memorable Tarantino character, well incorporated into the story at hand. It’s almost as if the movie requires the vigilant Jules character to thrive and become a cult classic. Although Jackson’s character is both revered and memorable, however, the juice really pulps from Bruce Willis’s character, a boxer who must throw a fight for Marsellus Wallace, who happens to employ Vince Vega (Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Jackson). He kills Vince Vega, another seemingly essential character to the film. The greatest meaning comes from the sympathy and assistance of Butch Coolidge (Willis) towards his once enemy Marsellus Wallace.

err, I mean...

there, that's better.

In all three stories of Pulp Fiction, the “heroes” must go to extreme and absurd measures to gain their heroism. Vince Vega must rush the overdosing wife of his boss to urgent care. Butch Coolidge is compelled to assist Marsellus Wallace out of a gruesome rape situation. Jules Winnfield and Vince must quickly clean up the remains of an accidental shooting of a peon riding with them, and later Jules abruptly lays down the law to two amateur thieves in a diner. Point being, these three tales all correlate to each other while still having significance to the pulp of the story as a whole, and Tarantino always pushes his character to extreme levels to show their significance and importance. He always makes a clear reason why he is showing any said character. This trait, first expressed in Reservoir Dogs, has continued to last through all his films. Tarantino is original in following small details where they lead, whether they lead to a significant point or to a completely unrelated but still important subject in regards to the other characters. The black comedy style, an expression of satire, can be traced back to such icons as George Carlin, Monty Python, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of South Park). Satire blossomed in Rome with the help of Horatius Quintus Flaccus, or Horace, around the turn of the A.D. era. In his Sermones, Horace describes a typical day in his simple yet contended life. Tarantino multiplies this satirical trait into three pivotal characters, whose lives are devious, private, and generally disregarded, but developed through black humor into exiting climactic endings. Pulp Fiction, and all of his movies, draws attention to human imperfection and imprudence to send a message of mockery and scorn, a trait also recognized in modern literary satire.

I will skip almost a decade to Tarantino’s next line of notable films, the Kill Bill saga (2003/2004). Originally supposed to be one film, it was split due to the four-hour length, where the second volume filled in a lot of unanswered questions raised in the more gore-driven Volume 1, but like Roger Ebert says, “…now that we see it whole, it is greater than its two parts”. This gruesome saga pays homage to several other popular movie styles of storytelling, including Hong Kong martial arts, Japanese Chanbara, and Italian spaghetti westerns, while Tarantino continues to push his technique of nonlinear perspective, integrating flashbacks of the main character, known as “The Bride” (Uma Thurman), at her deadly wedding scene, flashing back to training with legendary Asian martial arts master Pal Mei, a character displayed in several Shaw Bros Kung Fu films from the 70s and 80s, and typical flashbacks giving explanation behind major characters, like the Crazy 88 fighting team or O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), a former member of the Deadly Vipers employed by Bill to kill The Bride. Like in his other movies, Tarantino includes several pop culture references in Kill Bill.

After spending a few years teamed up with director Robert Rodriguez to make such cult classics as Sin City (based off Frank Miller’s graphic novel), Death Proof, and Planet Terror, Tarantino recently made Inglourious Basterds (2009), a farce look at Nazi-occupied France during World War II, where a group of Jewish-American soldiers are recruited to flank and brutally execute Nazi soldiers while simultaneously spreading fear through the Third Reich. Some say despite Tarantino’s thirst for blood as a general theme, that he has recently been somewhat a disappointment in his approach, but that Basterds brings back his unique touch that hasn’t been seen since Pulp Fiction – the pulp. He designs the film to lead the viewer on a trail of twists and turns, and through the ridiculous ending shows that he can get away with his own quirky perspective, even on a subject so concrete as WWII. Tarantino, as a natural entertainer, puts an original spin on the situation, making the war movie fun and exciting in its own way, as he once again intertwines a series of short stories (following the Basterds in their Nazi pursuit, Lt. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) in his ruthless role as the “Jew Hunter”, and Shoshanna Dreyfus, a young French Jewish refugee who is forced to show a German war movie exploiting the trials of a young German sniper at her private cinema), while as a movie continually following a dark comedy aspect.

Like with Jules and Vince in Pulp Fiction, the juiciness of the tale does not necessarily happen with the Basterds – their vigilante mission is a relatively blunt and simple concept, while showing the ups and downs of ruthless violence that any rational underdog Tarantino character must face. In other words, the Basterds scenes aren’t necessarily required to still effectively relay the overall theme, but definitely show Tarantino’s creativity and dark humor. The real pulp of his new movie is inspired by the fact that a young female Jewish refugee must go against her morals to show a Nazi war film in her own cinema, discreetly humiliating her after she witnessed her family slaughtered by Hans Landa some years before, from which she revengefully devises a plan with her fellow employee and long-time friend to blow up the cinema the night of the big premiere with a large quantity of highly flammable nitrate film. The Basterds, meanwhile, are intertwined with Shoshanna and her plot (although never in contact with her and unaware that she has made her own plans to blow up the cinema) through Operation Kino, a British-American operation devised to infiltrate and destroy the Nazi attendance. Just when the viewer expects the heroic plans to fall through, the story ends with the theatre’s destruction and vigilante slaughter by two Basterd members of the Nazi crowd, including Hitler. This shows Tarantino’s dark and creative twist and obvious but satirical inaccuracy with actual modern history. Overall, the story has many historical inaccuracies, but the film is not meant to be a documentary. Tarantino wanted to have fun with the movie, which he had been developing for over ten years, and he perfected the ultimate satirical war movie. Making a personal joke in the last line, Lt. Raine (Brad Pitt) says, “this just might be my masterpiece,” more broadly implying Inglourious Basterds as Tarantino’s masterpiece over his other movies.

Tarantino is known for several subtle trademarks recurring throughout all his films. Some familiar trademarks include: references to modern cult movies, television, and music; shots from inside a car trunk; unconventional storytelling techniques (e.g. nonlinear stories, chapter format); frequent use of melee weapons; abrupt interjection of characters’ backgrounds; frequent reference to his home state of Tennessee; comeback roles given to forgotten actors; strong use of alias names; consistent inclusion of Mexican stand-off scenes; frequent work with the same actors (e.g. Harvey Keitel, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Uma Thurman); casting of comedians for small roles (e.g. Stephen Wright (Dogs), Kathy Griffin (Pulp Fiction), Mike Myers (Basterds)); continuing application of Dutch elements (e.g. opening tune in Reservoir Dogs, Tim Roth’s Dog character “Mr. Orange” (the royal color of Holland), the opening conversation about Amsterdam in Pulp Fiction, the bride’s real name in Kill Bill (a.k.a. Beatrix, the name of the royal Dutch Queen)).

Perhaps his most notable continuing trait is his nonlinear adaptation of each film. Somehow Tarantino incorporates one or more flashback stories into all his movies, meanwhile precisely following the roles of multiple characters. The nonlinear style can be traced back to the literary works of such epic poets as Homer. Homer, as a bard, sang of the tales before, during, and after the Trojan War in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, illustrating constant flashbacks by his main heroic characters, both humans and gods. Homer’s plots, like those of Tarantino today, were well crafted and filled with dramatic episodes and finely tuned characters. Homer’s poetic characters also broke the barriers of the stylized Greek language, while similarly Tarantino’s characters break the barriers of conventional, conservative, modern dialog.

note the mushroom cloud laying mother fucker, mother fucker.

Tarantino’s second main distinct quality is his aesthetic use of violence, that is, stylistically excessive and significant in connecting with artistic and cultural symbols and references. In Greek tragic theatre, the focus was not on realism but rather ideas, symbolism, and language. Among Greek tragedy was satyr-play, which displayed the indecent temptations of sexually driven satyrs. Positive response to satyr-play indicated the extent of Greek sensibility, as also noted with Tarantino fans at his dark humor and satirical styles. Perhaps the most important aspect of Greek tragedy was the deep implication that humans cannot escape pain and suffering. Terrible things happen in Tarantino’s films (e.g. the mutilation of a cop’s ear in Dogs, the rape of Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction, the murder attempt of The Bride in Kill Bill while she is pregnant, the unreasonable slaughter of Shoshanna’s family in Basterds), but all these events are morally justified in some way (namely a vigilante act bringing those guilty to an end), and this same moral implication on horrific incidents was a primary recognition in Greek tragedy. In Tarantino’s style and Greek tragic style alike, the concern is not merely centered on violence for its own sake, but rather fundamental human ordeals with no simple or quick solutions. Aestheticism was later recognized in Great Britain with Oscar Wilde, whose outrageous manner gained him renown as an aesthete, unusually sensitive to the beauty in art, music, and literature, a title that could similarly be given to Quentin Tarantino for his unique conceptualization and expressional stretch from reality.

Tarantino wants to retire at age 60, and perhaps start a family by that time. As of now, like a priest, Tarantino is married to his profession. I think this is what makes him such a creative and respectable director. Right now, he is going alone (remaining unmarried), giving his time to his films, which I feel is a good way to bring out his full potential in creating a masterpiece like Pulp Fiction or Inglourious Basterds. Through his unique nonlinear approach, aesthetic use of violence, personal application of hallmark traits and innuendos, and prolific style of dark comedy, Quentin Tarantino has gained legendary status while mastering his craft as a director, producer, writer, and actor. Movies are indeed his “masterpiece”.