"Pulp Fiction"
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                             February 25, 1995

   It's another week with nothing in the theaters of Tampa Bay that lends
itself to my "women and film" theme, so I decided I'd catch up on the films
that have been nominated for Best Picture Oscars that I haven't yet seen. I
did see (but not review) "Forrest Gump" last summer, so I decided to take in
"Pulp Fiction."

  This is a film I had purposely stayed away from because of its high violence
quotient, but I figured it couldn't be any more violent than "The Quick and
the Dead" that I reviewed the other week, and it had to be a lot better film,
since it won the Palme d' Or (best film prize) at this year's Cannes Film
Festival. It does have several women characters but with the exception of one
North Hollywood wife who has her husband well under control but never appears
on screen, they are all pretty much appendages to their chosen men, either
trophy wives or clingy, dependent girlfriends.

   When I was a graduate student and young assistant professor I worked on the
philosophy of a 19th C. German philosopher named Franz Brentano. You might
think this is a non sequitur but, in fact, I came out of the theater after
having seen "Pulp Fiction" pondering one of Brentano's essays in aesthetics.
He asked himself the question, "Can a work of art be a good work of art if its
subject matter is evil?" Brentano thought not. "Pulp Fiction" is certainly a
good example of a work of art that might lead you to come to that conclusion,
if you think, as I do, that professional hit men and big-time drug dealers and
hoodlums are evil.

   There is no doubt that "Pulp Fiction" qualifies as absolutely bravura
filmmaking. Writer/director/actor Quentin Tarantino and his crew have produced
a film that superbly written, acted, photographed, designed, and edited. It's
impossible not to admire all these technical aspects of the film. The cast is
first rate--even those (i.e., John Travolta, Bruce Willis) you don't expect
this of. Those from whom you do expect good acting such as Harvey Keitel, Uma
Thurman, Amanda Plummer, and Maria de Medeiros, are not disappointing. The
dialogue is often very funny and even someone like me, sitting there chagrined
and bothered by the subject matter, can't help but join in the laughter at
many points throughout the film.

   It's the subject matter that is the sticking point. The film is about two
hit men, Vincent Vega (Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), who work for a
millionaire Black crime boss named Marcellus Wallace, into big time drug
trafficking, gambling, fixing fights, and who knows what else. (One intriguing
aspect of the plot is a briefcase belonging to Marcellus that Vincent and
Jules kill a lot of people to recover. But we never find out what's in it.
Stealing a page out of Patricia Rozema's book in "I Heard the Mermaids
Singing" Tarantino uses a kind of golden luminescence to depict whatever the
contents of the case are, just as Rozema used such a luminescence to portray
an indescribably beautiful work of art.) The plot is an interlocking series of
vignettes, not chronologically sequenced, surrounding these characters and
others they know or encounter. There is an enormous amount of killing but,
unlike "The Quick and the Dead," this one has blood and gore
everywhere--bloody pulp being, no doubt, one o f the things the title alludes
to. Drug use (heroin, cocaine, pot) is pervasive and central to the story of
at least one of the vignettes. And if that isn't bad enough, there is also a
huge, visually beautiful, screen-filling, slow- motion close-up of a syringe
of heroin filling up and being shot into an arm. I guess the worst problem for
me is the way the film makes Vincent and Jules sympathetic characters and
thereby seems to valorize and glorify the violent, evil lives they live, and
despite the fact that the film rather tepidly makes the point that neither of
them will be in this line of work anymore after the events in this story are
over.

   In defense of the film you might say that it is just what its title
implies, a kind of over the top, highly exaggerated pulp fiction on film, and,
as such, not to be taken literally or all that seriously. And besides, it's
R-rated so impressionable children won't see it. Well, I don't buy either of
those comments. It's the scenes of violence and killing and drug overdoses and
torture in this film that are the focus of the film's adrenaline rush. They
are clearly the parts that excite the filmmakers and the audience whether
they're meant to be taken literally or not--and many will miss the subtlety of
the literary allusion and simply groove on these cool guys doing these cool
things.
  As for the protection provided by the rating system, all I can say is there
was a little kid in the theater while I was watching "Pulp Fiction." You could
hear him reacting to the more shocking scenes--so much for the enforcement of
the rating system (not to mention its utter breakdown when it comes to being
able to acce ss such films on video).

    The subject matter of "Pulp Fiction" is almost enough to make me want to
run out and see "Forrest Gump" for a little saccharine fix. Though the events
that simpleton Forrest Gump walks through unscathed are really some of the
same hellish landscapes as we find here--only he doesn't quite figure it out.
Maybe the thing to do this Oscar season is stay home with a good cheap
paperbock and a box of bonbons and let someone else try to choose a best
picture out of this crop.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and
Film.

   Copyright 1995 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not
resend or reprint this review without the written permission of the author.