<i>(since the following will talk about the movie's dialogue, a warning: yes, it will feature references to a certain

racial epithet)</i> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/">A movie</a> that has been much di scussed. What has been said here has most likely been said before; some of it is so obvious as to be self-evident, but I point it out anyway. This is not an att empt at any search for something so tiresome as "meaning", though a small mentio n of this is made at the end. It is almost entirely an attempt to examine its ef fects, why they work, why they occasionally don't work, and why attempts to imit ate them often fail. <font size="3"><b>NON-LINEARITY: A MISPERCEPTION</b></font> A first point at greater clarity and focus. The movie is often cited for its dis tinguishing quality of non-linearity. This, I think, is a mis-seeing. The movie is almost entirely in chronological order. A crucial sequence for the characters is what takes place in the diner, and what takes place right before it. Since t his is the crux of the movie, it is taken out of sequence. The opening of the yo ung robbers is the very event which precedes it; rather than seeing this crucial event, we then move back to the killers in their car. The movie now is entirely in sequence, with the exception of the boxer's flashback, until the last sectio n, which are the events that take place before the diner robbery, and finally, t he diner robbery itself. A non-linearity suggests an almost random sequencing of events, their point in t he sequence of no importance. This, however, is a simpler structure, something l ike that of a story where the character experiences something right after the cr edits which leaves him in a traumatic state, the nature of the event hidden from us, until it is finally shown to us at the conclusion, making clear something a bout our hero. That this sequence is set aside marks its crucial importance; it is only a question of discerning why it is considered so important as to be set aside as the conclusion. <font size="3"><b>ROLES DEFINED BY THEIR FUNCTION</b></font> What I've written so far refers to characters without using any character names, only their character roles, roles defined by function. It is possible to go thr ough all the major characters with a reader easily identifying who each is, by j ust stating their role: The killers. The gangster kingpin. The gangster's moll. The boxer. The fixer. Th e hippie dealer. The young robbers. The hillbilly rapists. The only major character that I can think of that is without function but is sti ll a stock movie type would be the "french girlfriend" of the middle section. That the characters are functional types is, I think, essential for why the movi e works. Jake Gittes of <i>Chinatown</i> is a character who is a detective; the forties detective that might show up in sketch comedy is something entirely else . Jake Gittes or Charles Foster Kane showing up in a comedy sketch can only be a parody of Jake Gittes or Charles Foster Kane; the detective type or pompous mil lionaire type is something else. There are a few quick visual signs of these typ es - fedora and trenchcoat for the detective, monocle and tuxedo for the million aire - which allow us to instantly recognize them. The fun lies in these types b ehaving either according or not according to type - the detective's tough guy at titude, the millionaire's highfalutin air. These types also have the advantage o f being seen as entirely artificial, from narratives alone. There may be million aires and detectives in real life, they may be tough or pretentious, but these a re types alone<a href="#wxmsm">*</a><a name="bkfwxmsm"></a>.

This allows for them to placed into almost any scene without explanation or poss ibility of incredulity, since these types are recognized immediately as types. I f we have a comedy sketch set in a woman's college dorm with the forties detecti ve suddenly showing up, marked by some variation of "Harlem Nocturne", we requir e no back story of who this detective is; we know already there will now be a co llision between the ridiculousness of the hard boiled type in the context of a c ollege dorm. These types are so well-known that we do not even need to have seen the movies or read the novels in which they originally appeared. They are so pr evalent as types, that anyone recognizes them through quick shorthand. One more point is essential: they are not designed for depth, but to play off them as typ es. This, I think, is crucial because the roles of <i>Pulp Fiction</i> are something like these types, if not recognizable through the same visual short-hand, recog nizable through their function, and why certain effects work so well in this mov ie and are very difficult to reproduce elsewhere, and why one aspect is misident ified as a flaw, rather than an aspect of design. First, the flaw. The characters in the movie are faulted for their lack of depth . This, however, has nothing to do with the way they are written, but with their conception as types themselves. It is, again, like faulting the lack of depth i n the millionaire or forties detective type characters in a comedy - we might fa ult the fact that the types are chosen over rounder characters, but some effects can only be achieved through types, rather than characters who are detectives o r millionaires. There is no possibility of depth when characters are conceived a s types, but this is an expected part of their design. The flip side of this is why <i>Pulp Fiction</i> works very well in many ways. T he functional types in the movie are types who, in other narratives, would have the sole purpose of performing their function to further the plot - the assassin killing a man, the gangster's moll seducing a man, the boxer hurting or killing through his hands - here, their function is entirely suspended for long periods , and we wonder for some if it will ever be put to use. As types, they may have no deeper character to discern, but they also have a freedom of speech unlimited by character. A forties detective type can talk in hardboiled argot, but then q uote from Aristotle, and finally sing part of an XX song - all without us questi oning this character doing this, whereas non-type "realistic" characters ultimat ely cause us to ask - what was their life before this, who is this person, this detective who has all these varied interests? There is something about the type that is pure transmitter, and even when he says things that are contrary to his type - a forties detective, say, playing the harpsichord - he remains his type. We are not surprised if, in a parody skit, this forties detective plays the harp sichord and then, in the next moment, is back under a street lamp smoking a ciga rette, giving hardboiled narration. This is why the types are so effective in this context: the viewer listens to th e dialogue, some quite baroque, without ever questioning the link between the di alogue and its source - why does the character talk this way? It also allows the movie to move the characters through various milieus, some very artificial, wit hout credulity ever being broken. This is why Tarantino's imitators often failed : they began with non-type, "realistic" characters, a man or woman not defined b y a role, who among other things was a robber or a killer. The baroque dialogue, in this context, now sounded ludicrous - why is this person talking like this? The other possibility was to curtail the dialogue, so that it was more consisten t with a "realistic" character, so we end up with something no different from so cial realism. This, it should be emphasized, is <i>not</i> what <i>Pulp Fiction< /i> is, and were it to be done in this mode, its effects would not be possible. An example of a detail that's used well in conversation yet does not get us any closer in intimacy to the character is Vincent's time in Amsterdam. We know that

he spent close to three years there. He tells Jules details about life in Europ e, dialogue that became quotable and overly quotable. This time in Amsterdam com es up again with the dealer, over his car being in storage for three years, and the date with Mia. Yet at no time are we told what purpose there was for his bei ng in Amsterdam, nor do we ever feel a strong urge to know this - that this woul d provide additional insight into this man. Dialogue about Amsterdam would be le ss like a monologue giving a central insight into a man, and more like one more joke told by a comedian. And a good comparison of such characters would be to comedians. We might discern an attitude or approach in a comedian's lines, but we do no expect, and we will not, approach him or her in intimacy, or necessarily learn vital details of the ir character. That a comedian's lines are entertaining, but do not form a charac ter, and are simply a set of lines, is an indictment against some comedians when they act in movies or get their own shows. The problem, of course, is that the character in the movie or show is often one of social realism, a husband, a sing le father, an office worker, whose dialogue is expected to reflect and give grea ter insight into the character there. The dialogue in this movie is not written in a series of stand-alone lines of a comedian's - the lines of dialogue do intersect and play off of each other; but the entire conception and approach is that we are always distant from these char acters, but also, that we expect to always be distant from these characters. Tha t this is the approach, however, does not necessarily make the task of writing e asier, anymore than a comedian's lines are easier than dialogue in a suspense dr ama. It does, however, offer a reason for why the dialogue here is so distinctiv e, so baroque, yet at the same time makes us no closer to the characters, and wh y attempts to imitate the dialogue in a social realistic setting will fail. I end with an example, a set of lines from the hippie dealer. The hippie dealer has only two functions, to sell drugs to the killer, and later provide the adren aline shot. Here, he sells some drugs. Nothing is conveyed about the hippie deal er, nothing additional is done, other than what is part of the transaction of se lling drugs, yet the lines are extraordinarily colorful: <img src="http://i.imgur.com/O0dUz.jpg" alt="Vince and Lance look at drugs" titl e="Vince and Lance look at drugs" /> <blockquote> LANCE Now this is Panda, from Mexico. Very good stuff. This is Bava, different, but e qually good. And this is Choco from the Hartz Mountains of Germany. Now the fi rst two are the same, forty-five an ounce -- those are friend prices -- but this one...(pointing to the Choco)...this one's a little more expensive. It's fifty -five. But when you shoot it, you'll know where that extra money went. Nothing wrong with the first two. It's real, real, real, good shit. But this one's a fuc kin' madman. </blockquote> <font size="3"><b>BLACK AND WHITE AND COLOR</b></font> The major characters of the movie, then are types defined by the task they are e xpected to perform. They are flat by design, but that they are flat does not mak e them any less memorable. Many movie characters, even if they are complex, are rendered flat in our memories, or in the reproductions and invocations of these characters, becoming fixed by a single trait or a few lines. Characters in black and white movies, by being in a period of movies that was visually less real, m ore theatrical in its dialogue and conception, allowed for the possibility of ic on making that a more realistic period of movie making did not. Something like t

his point might be made in Jack Rabbit Slim's: Vincent and Mia walk about the re staurant, filled with actors playing movie icons, with Vincent and Mia icons the mselves. Jack Rabbit Slim's is a mess of color, but Vincent and Mia stand out because the ir entire ensemble is colorless, black and white: <img src="http://i.imgur.com/FysV0.jpg" alt="Vince at Jack Rabbit's" title="Vinc e at Jack Rabbit's" /> <img src="http://i.imgur.com/4VyYX.jpg" alt="Mia at Jack Rabbit's" title="Mia at Jack Rabbit's" /> <font size="3"><b>ABSURDITIES AND ABSENCES</b></font> There are a number of absurdities and absences in the setting of the movie. Thes e are unimportant and unacknowledged by the viewer, because the movie is not in a social realistic mode. It places character types in a number of settings; that the settings might be absurd in a "realistic" context is irrelevant, just as st icking the forties detective in the context of a woman's sorority or a moon base for a comedy skit, we ignore details that are wrong about either setting. For t hat matter, we don't question why this character type is even there - the purpos e is simply whatever comes out of the absurd juxtaposition. I mention here absur dities or absences that go unnoticed, not as errors, but to make clear that the very setting has not been established as one that is "realistic", that the movie does not work because it is "realistic", in fact, would not work if its setting were "realistic". A partial list: <ul> <li>A robbery of a large, busy restaurant with windows open to the street, a ste ady in-inflow of customers, in Los Angeles during broad daylight.</li> <li>Two seasoned assassins are to retrieve a suitcase from a group of unexperien ced, almost entirely unarmed students. They know in advance who they'll run into in the apartment. Yet somehow, these two are worried that they don't have suffi cient firepower for the job.</li> <li>A crime organization so small that it requires its kingpin to go on a hit on ce one of his assassins leaves.</li> <li>A local fight is somehow given play by play broadcast on the radio.</li> <li>No mention or reference to grunge, post-punk, or, most strikingly, hiphop. T he music listened to is almost exclusively from fifteen years before.</li> <li>A pawnshop run by two southern accented hillbillies in the middle of Los Ang eles.</li> </ul> <font size="3"><b>THE MASSIVE AMOUNT OF POP CULTURE REFERENCES IN THE DIALOGUE: ANOTHER MISPERCEPTION</b></font> A brief digression. It is a movie noted for the constant use of pop culture in i ts dialogue. There are, in fact, very few. Fabian makes a Madonna reference: <blockquote> FABIAN

Shut up, Fatso! I don't have a pot! I have a bit of a tummy, like Madonna when she did "Lucky Star," it's not the same thing. </blockquote> Tony Rockamorra has a nickname: <blockquote> JULES You remember Antwan Rockamora? Half-black, half-Samoan, usta call him Tony Rocky Horror. </blockquote> Mia mentioning that Vince is an Elvis man: <blockquote> MIA This is (pointing out each individual part of the name for emphasis) <i>Jack</i> . <i>Rabbit</i>. <i>Slim's</i>. An Elvis man should love it. </blockquote> There are the mentions in Jack Rabbit Slims, not metaphors or analogies, but nom inal references to what's there - the Marilyn Monroe waitress, the Douglas Sirk burger. <blockquote> VINCENT That's Marilyn Monroe... Then, pointing at a BLONDE WAITRESS in a tight sweater and capri pants, taking a n order from a bunch of FILM GEEKS -VINCENT ...and that's Mamie Van Doren. I don't see Jayne Mansfield, so it must be her n ight off. </blockquote> The rest, that are metaphorical, are exclusive to Jules Winfield. In the post-credits opening: <blockquote> JULES You, Flock of Seagulls, you know what we're here for? </blockquote> In the "Bonnie Situation": <blockquote> JULES Hey, that's Kool and the Gang. We don't wanna fuck your shit up, We just need t o call our people to bring us in. </blockquote>

<blockquote> JULES You're gettin' ready to blow? I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker! Every time my fingers touch brain I'm <i>Superfly TNT</i>, I'm the <i>Guns of Navarone </i>. I'm what Jimmie Walker usta talk about. </blockquote> <blockquote> VINCENT What do you mean, walk the earth? JULES You know, like Caine in <i>Kung Fu</i>. Just walk from town to town, meet people , get in adventures. </blockquote> <blockquote> JULES Nobody's gonna hurt anybody. We're gonna be like three Fonzies. And what' Fonz ie like? Yolanda stays silent. JULES C'mon Yolanda, what's Fonzie like? </blockquote> And, of course, Jules keeps referring to one of the robbers as Ringo. <font size="3"><b>DEVIATIONS IN EXPECTED NARRATIVES</b></font> An examination of an obsessive, brilliant man, a fully formed character, whose d eductions may well end up being wrong is a study of that character, a possible e xample being <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-George-Julian-Barnes/dp/14000 97037/"><i>Arthur and George</i></a> by Julian Barnes, a look at Arthur Conan Do yle. Imagine now a story with a hero that is Sherlock Holmes in all but name, no t so much a character, but a few traits, genius and doggedness, say, suitable to move through a puzzle like Sherlock Holmes narrative, but with a twist - the de tective is obviously, tragically, wrong. The victim proclaims their innocence, t he audience discerns their innocence, but the Holmes character and others do not see this - the detective is praised once again for his brilliant deductions. Si nce there is almost nothing in terms of character to think about - just one or t wo traits - the story's focus is instead on the form itself. This change of form may imply a critique of something else - the age of reason, idolatry of a great thinker instead of scrutiny of the process by which any conclusion is reached, no matter who makes it, etc. A genre form which deviates from the expectations of that form always prompts an interpretation. If the characters remain the types of the form, providing no an swer in their own character, then the focus shifts to what is being said about t he form itself, and the answer is almost always polemical. Again, we can imagine a possibility easily: a standard revenge drama, where a man's family is killed, where he then goes after the killers, where both the father and the killers are painted in the simple colors of the genre - the father whose only traits are hi s grief and desire for revenge, the killers who are cruel men. Perhaps there is

a single twist to this revenge drama: the father, in seeking justice, ends up ki lling a number of innocent or marginally guilty figures, so that by the end of t he picture he is as evil, if not more evil than the very men he pursues. This wo uld be a story not about the psychology of the father, since there is nothing to be examined, but revenge stories themselves - the simplified universe they crea te, the assumption that the hero is always righteous, the audience's own bloodlu st. <i>Pulp Fiction</i> puts functional characters that are standard in any genre, b ut without the forms we expect. The killings of the killers is incidental. The b oxing match that the boxer is supposed to throw, but does not, is never shown. W e expect a major plot to develop from the kingpin's moll seducing one of the kil lers, but no seduction ever takes place. Since there are deviations from the for ms, it is expected that <i>something</i> must be being said here; no answers can be found in the characters, because, as said before, they remain by conception unknowable and distant. That nothing is being said about the forms, and that this is not an indictment o f shallowness, but simply one approach, and one that has been attempted many tim es before, should be considered instead. If, again, the forties detective is pla ced in an uncommon place for a comedy skit - a lunar base, a woman's sorority, t he venue of a bugs bunny cartoon - and then they play with the form - the wrong person is arrested, the object of obsession, rather than the Maltese falcon, is a giant piece of cheese made from the moon, a bracelet bought off eBay, the grea test carrot ever grown - no attempt is being made to examine the form, only to e ntertain by playing with the form itself. That no great statement is being made, should not be an indictment, anymore than it is with this movie. Where this form-playing goes awry, is in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03 61748/"><i>Inglourious Basterds</i></a>: the form that we expect is a tragic end ing, instead we get a victory. If it were other contexts, we might accept this p layfulness: here, it turns mass death into a successful fight for the audience's needs. If we revolt against this, it is for the same reason we revolt against t he idea of those stories that find a life lesson learned or the possibility for optimism in the most tragic situations. Some experiences contain only grief, and to find an upbeat message in the story is to diminish the characters of the tra gedy for our own selfish needs. Rather than creating a communion between ourselv es and those in a far more difficult, choiceless situation, it transforms their situation into something from which the audience can extract either a banal lie, or sate their cheap desires. <a name="wxmsm"></a><a href="#bkfwxmsm">*</a> The central importance of the type s, the nature of the types, that they are alive yet at the same time immutable, gives the title to this post, a line of dialogue describing the faux celebrities of Jack Rabbit Slim's which may well be the movie making self-reference: "A wax museum with a pulse". <font size="3"><b>A DIGRESSION: THE ADRENALINE SHOT SCENE</b></font> The scene where an adrenaline shot needs to be administered to the moll in order to revive her is, I believe, a re-enactment of an anecdote from the excellent M artin Scorsese documentary, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077157/"><i>Am erican Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince</i></a>. The movie can be seen <a href="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-83345045 90800781268">here</a> at Google Videos. The anecdote comes in between the 36:00 and 38:00 points. It's the film's subject describing one of his many difficult a nd strange experiences while being a heavy user of various drugs. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/DrOfu.jpg" alt="Steven Prince" title="Steven Prince

" /> <blockquote> Out of that, uh, a lot of close calls, I managed to get a lot of medical supplie s, medical equipment, that you might not normally have. Like, we had oxygen. We had an electronic stethoscope that gave a tape readout, so you could tell how ma ny heartbeats...we had adrenaline shots. We had all kinds of stuff...adrenaline shots to bring you through when you OD'd. This girl, once, OD'd once on us. And she was out, man. It was myself and her bo yfriend. And he said...and her heartbeat was dropping down. And we got everythin g out, oxygen, and nothing was working. And he looked at me and he says: "Well, you're gonna have to give her an adrenaline shot." I said, <i>"What are you talk in about?</I>" I said, <i>"You give it to her."</I> He said, "I can't, it's like a doctor working on someone in his own family." <i>"Bullshit. You've known her two days. What the fuck is that?"</I> And he said, "I can't do it." And so we ha d the medical dictionary...you know how you give an adrenaline shot? Okay, the a drenaline needle's about that big (indicates about six inches) Okay, you gotta g ive it into the heart. You have to put it in a <i>stabbing motion</I>. (makes st abbing motion) And then plunge down on it. (makes plunging gesture) I got the me dical dictionary out, looked it up, got a magic marker, made a magic marker wher e her heart was...measured down two or three ribs, measured it in between there. And then went <i>HUH!</I> (makes quick stabbing motion) And...(creaking noise t o accompany plunging gesture) And...(snaps fingers) she came back like that. She just came...(snaps fingers again)...right back, like that. </blockquote> <img src="http://i.imgur.com/R7bpw.jpg" alt="Steven Prince" title="Steven Prince " /> <font size="3"><b>THE FLAWS IN THE BONNIE SITUATION</b></font> I enjoy most of the movie; my pleasure dips in "The Bonnie Situation". I can poi nt to two details that may be the cause. In the first two stories, we have characters who may have assigned tasks, yet th e task is an afterthought or it is performed in a context we do not expect. The sequence is spent with the characters simply talking, as we anticipate whether t his task will even be performed, and how. The first story is spent wondering if the moll will even seduce the killer, and whether it will bring him into conflic t with the kingpin. In the second story, we expect to see the boxer fight in the ring. Instead, we are given something entirely different - the boxer talking to his girlfriend, as we anticipate his conflict with the kingpin. When the confli ct does arrive, it is not in the way we expect. The third story is a deviation from these other two, with the fixer doing the ex act task he has been assigned, without distraction, giving orders which the othe r characters follow. The pleasure in the other sequences lay in the period waiti ng for the characters to perform their tasks, an anticipation entirely absent he re. The other key difference is that this is the first sequence where a major charac ter shows up undefined by a specific role. Again, I can reel off the other roles according to types and they're all readily identifiable - the killers, the moll , the boxer, the french girlfriend, etc. For the "Bonnie Situation", when I list the major characters, I have the young robbers, the fixer, and...here I draw a blank on the character who owns the safe house, and I simply want to state <i>Qu entin Tarantino</i>, because this character has no type (his name is Jimmie). <img src="http://i.imgur.com/0GkBu.jpg" alt="Tarantino as Jimmie" title="Taranti

no as Jimmie" /> Many have faulted Tarantino's acting here, but I will not add any kindling to th at pile. I don't see the role working any more effectively, if, say, we move Fra nk Whaley or Steve Buscemi into this part. That it is a part that is not a type, that this role has the possibility of roundness, makes clear the design of the other parts. Questions that did not exist with the other parts now arise with th is one - Who is this person? What job does he have, criminal, legal, or in-betwe en? How does he know Jules Winfield? There has been a focus on this character sa ying "nigger" twice in front of Jules - how well does he know Jules that he has such comfort to say this? The focus then causes the debate to veer off into the social codes of real life - and perhaps tries to connect what goes wrong in this sequence with these same social codes. Again, I think this is a mistake: the pr oblem is not the use of this word, or Tarantino's acting, but the use of a round , realistic part for the first time in the movie, because the writing that has w orked so well up to this point now fails with this character. When I imagine this sequence working better, it is not necessarily with a differ ent actor in the role, but replaced with another character type - perhaps not on e based around a task but a recognizable type, nonetheless, maybe the standard i ssue university professor with a plummy english accent who spends the whole sequ ence tamping his pipe. He says many of the same lines that the character now has , including the racial epithets, but instead they now work, because we do not co nsider the possibility of knowing this character any deeper than any of the othe rs, whether it's his use of racial epithets, or his friendship with Jules Winfie ld. I give the idea of a professor as an example, but it could be any other type , a blues musician, a rich man, a con man, as long as it be clearly a <i>type</i >, rather than the possibility of a realistic character. <font size="3"><b>THREE SECRET STORIES AND THE BRIEFCASE</b></font> A great deal of focus has been given to the contents of the briefcase in the mov ie. In part, I think this lies with the deviations in form talked about earlier. The forms are not what we expect, there must be some explanation for this, and it lies with what is in the briefcase. Again, I think this is a mistake - the fo rms are altered for the same reasons of pleasure that the forms are played with in a comedy sketch or a cartoon. One point that I think is underemphasized, is that the movie consists of three s tories that are expected to remain secret and unknown to almost all, except for a few participants and the audience. The audience ends up privy to three secrets with no one in the movie seeing all three. The flip side of this is the briefca se, which is seen by many of the participants, but kept hidden from us. The three secret stories are Mia's near death: <blockquote> MIA If you can keep a secret, so can I. VINCENT Let's shake on it. </blockquote> The rape of Marsellus: <blockquote> BUTCH

So we're cool? MARSELLUS Yeah man, we're cool. Two things: don't tell nobody about this. This shit's b etween me and you and the soon-to-be-livin'-the-rest-of-his-short-ass-life-in-ag onizing-pain, Mr. Rapist here. It ain't nobody else's business. </blockquote> The third is what happens to Marvin. His body and the vehicle are destroyed, van ishing from the earth, becoming a mystery. <blockquote> JULES We cool? WINSTON Like it never happened. </blockquote> <font size="3"><b>MY FAVORITE SHOT FROM THE MOVIE</b></font> It is during "The Gold Watch" sequence, when the camera does a slow zoom on a wa r movie on TV, Fabien floats over the screen's surface. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/XPU7h.jpg" alt="Fabien reflected in TV" title="Fabi en reflected in TV" /> It's an image that stays with me, in and of itself, but also because it's made u p of such simple elements. Fabien stays in a secure place away from the violence bookending her scenes. Analysis has focused on the fact that it is a war on TV, and that this connects with Butch's memory and what takes place after. I don't think it's necessary for it to be a war for this sequence to work, only a scene of movie violence, for there to be the ominous aspect, not simply as a foreshado wing of violence, but tied in with the idea of the characters in the movie as ty pes. The boxer that has betrayed the kingpin, has been used for conflict in fict ion over and over. They are designed not for examination of characters, but for the pleasure of eventual conflict. The violence on TV is, for me, like the sand running out of an hourglass - sooner or later, we expect, we want, the boxer and kingpin to meet. It is inevitable not because of the characters, but the struct ure itself and the expectations of the structure: violent conflict. This ties into the previous point of the characters as types. The details of the types are almost of no consequence - if Vincent had gone to another country for three years, with a different set of funny, interesting associated dialogue, it would have no consequence for the character. The details are of no consequence for motivation with one exception - the boxer's need for the gold watch. "The Gold Watch" opens with the memory which places the extraordinary importance of the talisman with both the boxer and the audience. The boxer wakes from this like it's a nightmare. He then pulls off his scam and safely escapes. There wil l be no possibility of conflict between him and the kingpin, he has escaped, and is in a safe place. In the middle of this sequence, the boxer wakes again from a horrible dream, presumably, again, of the gold watch. He sees the violence on TV, what the audience expects and wants from these types in conflict. There is n o reason for the boxer to leave his safe place - except for this implanted memor y, designed for the purpose of him going on what would otherwise be an irrationa

l quest - the retrieval of a simple watch from his house, even if it means great possibility of harm, but which will fulfill the ends of the structure: bringing him into conflict with the kingpin. When I see the boxer wake from his nightmar e each time, I see a reaction not just to the memory itself, but that the memory is there almost arbritrarily, alone, in order to drive him into conflict. It is something like a science fiction film, where a character's memories have been i mplanted so he acts according to the purposes of some shadowy, sinister group, t he character vaguely aware that there is something of design, something not enti rely his own, to these memories. This is part of the image of Fabien floating above the TV as well: she is part o f this movie structure whose purpose is to bring about violent contact between t he principals, without any consciousness of it. <font size="3"><b>CHANGE CLOTHES AND AN EMPTY BRIEFCASE</b></font> This post ends with what might portentiously be called the "meaning" of the film . The characters, as I've said, are all types, defined by their tasks. Many of t hese are tied with their outfits - the suits of the assassins, the tuxedo of the fixer, the dress of the moll. Each sequence is marked by the major characters c hanging their clothes. The first sequence has the killers leaving their suits and ending up in casual c lothes. This is considered so key to the movie, that the change of clothes seque nce is moved to the very end. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/Rd2Zk.jpg" alt="Vince and Jules out of costume" tit le="Vince and Jules out of costume" /> The moll nearly dies, and ends up instead of her blouse with a shirt from the de aler's house. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/IHkVo.jpg" alt="Moll out of costume" title="Moll ou t of costume" /> The second sequence shows us with both the moll and one of the killers back in c ostume. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/iSdg6.jpg" alt="Vincent and Mia back in costume" ti tle="Vincent and Mia back in costume" /> It is also devoted to a lengthy sequence of the boxer changing from his boxing o utfit to street clothes. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/AwyWI.jpg" alt="Boxer changing in cab" title="Boxer changing in cab" /> He then gets ready to change to an entirely new outfit, one he can wear once he' s made his escape: <img src="http://i.imgur.com/SYRRr.jpg" alt="Boxer changes to new clothes" title ="Boxer changes to new clothes" /> But he has to retrieve his watch, so he has to go back to street clothes suitabl e for a fight: <img src="http://i.imgur.com/dkdmR.jpg" alt="Boxer puts on old shirt" title="Box er puts on old shirt" /> In the third sequence, we see the killers forced to change clothes. Jules never

returns to the story, or his original suit. This is tied to his abandonment of a role, an abandonment of a set of tasks. Vince, who returns to being a killer, c annot conceive of this: <blockquote> VINCENT So if you're quitting the life, what'll you do? JULES That's what I've been sitting here contemplating. First, I'm gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I'm gonna walk the earth. VINCENT How long do you intend to walk the earth? JULES Until God puts me where he want me to be. VINCENT What if he never does? JULES If it takes forever, I'll wait forever. VINCENT So you decided to be a bum? JULES I'll just be Jules, Vincent -- no more, no less. VINCENT No Jules, you're gonna be like those pieces of shit out there who beg for change . They walk around like a bunch of fuckin' zombies, they sleep in garbage bins, they eat what I throw away, and dogs piss on 'em. They got a word for 'em, the y're called bums. And without a job, residence, or legal tender, that's what yo u're gonna be -- a fuckin' bum! </blockquote> Jules then demonstrates the break from his identity - he is an assassin, but rat her than kill in a context that expects it, he specifically doesn't. The impulse for this are bullets that should kill him but do not. This could be looked at a s religious salvation which brings Jules to a path of penance. I look at it some what differently: Jules sees bullets that should kill him and do not, and sees t hat he is just a role in a structure, with events taking place according to the demands of the structure. He should clearly be shot, but it is necessary for thi s structure that he remain alive. This is no different from countless movies whe re major characters are the target of hundreds of bullets at close range, yet so mehow <i>the bullets always miss</i>. This is solely because of the position of the roles, a major character shot by minor insignificant characters. This is emphasized in the very speech that Jules gives to one of the robbers, th

at he can kill with impunity because of his role, that it has nothing to do with anything he is. He mentions that his bibilical quote is almost incidental to hi s character, like so many of the details of the parts in this movie. It was just a cold-blooded thing to say. It is something he never questioned. Only now does he try to place others in the parts of the saying: <blockquote> JULES I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker 'fore you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw so me shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin', it could mean you'r e the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or is could by you're t he righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish . </blockquote> Neither of these fit, the only one that fits is with the role that he has, a cha racter who cannot be killed by bullets in some contexts. It has nothing to do wi th morality, only the position of the character in the narratives: <blockquote> JULES But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyran ny of evil men. But I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd. </blockquote> As a shepherd, he acquires true agency, outside of any structure. He leaves his outfit, stops performing his assigned task, and departs the story entirely. A supplemental point: just as Jules perceives the rigged game aspect of the miss ed bullets and the assigned roles, he perceives the artificial quality of the br iefcase, that, just like the boxer's memory, it is designed solely as a task obj ective, an indescribable object of value. For Jules, the artificial nature of th e universe is confirmed when he opens the briefcase and shows it to the robber. It is of extraordinary importance to the robber, but he's unable to describe it to his fellow criminal. It is something like a character in a science fiction wo rld who suspects that everyone is in a hypnotic state, that the enthusiastic res ponse to a political leader has nothing to do with the leader himself, but a Pav lovian reaction to the color of the leader's jacket or a subliminal signal in hi s speeches. The reaction by the robber to the briefcase makes clear that it cont ains something that has a universal lure, but somehow cannot be described, exist ing only for narrative purpose - it confirms Jules' sense of the artificial worl d he lives in, why he must abandon his role and leave this universe. <font size="3"><b>A FINAL NOTE / ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, OR: ACTO RS' LIVES</b></font> The previous point I raise as a possibility to be entertained, not a certainty t hat one might fit with incongruities in the script. I connect this last with a p lay where the examination of such roles is its explicit motivation, Tom Stoppard 's well-known play <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rosencrantz-Guildenstern-Are-D ead-Stoppard/dp/0802132758/"><i>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead</I></a>. I imply no lineage between Tarantino's movie and the play, only bring it up becau se whatever their many differences, we can point to similarities in approach and effects.

Stoppard's play focuses on two of <i>Hamlet</I>'s peripheral characters, his goo d friends in the opus, whose only "business" in the play is to deliver Hamlet to the sanctuary of the english king, along with a letter which, unknown to the pr ince, commands his death. The prince switches letters, resulting instead in the execution of the pair. This is all the action in Shakespeare's play in which the y are involved in. They barely register as characters, existing almost entirely to perform their task, crucial to the plot. In Stoppard's work they are now the title characters, but they do not exist in the verisimilitude of "reality" of <i >Hamlet</I>, but as men trapped in a strange void who occasionally are called in to action whenever characters from Hamlet appear on stage and their presence is needed. They then snap suddenly into their required roles and deliver their line s. The play is explicitly "meta", a work that can only be taken as something out side our reality, literary characters puzzling over the strange nature of existi ng as characters. However, these meta concerns converge with our own in their ex istential questions. When Rosencrantz or Guildenstern demand answers for the puz zling universe they exist in, where their actions seemingly has no purpose, thei r death none either, their questions echo our own about our own lives. They are defined by their task, yet their task is seemingly meaningless, leading them onl y to their own doom. The play's concerns, and this overlap, might be best exemplified by these lines near the end: <blockquote> <b>Guil</b> Our truancy is defined by one fixed star, and our drift represents merely a slig ht change of angle to it: we may seize the moment, toss it around while the mome nts pass, a short dash here, an exploration there, but we are brought round full circle to face again the single immutable fact - that we, Rosencrantz and Guild enstern, bearing a letter from one king to another, are taking Hamlet to England . </blockquote> For obvious reasons, this play is often likened to <i>Waiting for Godot</I>. <i>Pulp Fiction</I> shares many of the play's attributes, without ever explicitl y moving outside of itself. It might play with our expectations of forms, but no character ever speaks about being a fictional character or the strange circumst ances of being in a narrative. It is not explicitly meta, but I think it is this sharing of attributes which causes many, perhaps wrongly, to describe the movie as "meta". Let us start with the detail brought up earlier, the bullets that fa il to strike the killers. I raised the possibility that Jules' reaction to this is not simply that of a man who takes the role of a penitent after a religious m iracle, but a man who slowly realizes that the impossibility of the non-fatal bu llets means that he's actually in a movie. However, there's nothing like any str ong hint, implicit or explicit, that this is so. Where the non-fatal bullets com e near the end of the film, the opening moment of <i>R &amp; G</I> has the two c haracters focused on an impossibility which implies that they are not in reality . They flip a coin over and over again, yet somehow it always ends up heads, sev enty six times in a row so far. <blockquote> <b>Ros</b> <i>(raises his head at Guil)</I> Seventy-six love. <i>Guil gets up but has nowhere to go. He spins another coin over his shoulder w ithout looking at it, his attention being directed at his environment or lack of it.</I> Heads.

<b>Guil</b> A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing e lse at least in the law of probability. </blockquote> What's of greater interest is the way <i>R &amp; G</I>'s approach to its charact ers illuminates how those of <i>Fiction</I> are written. In both, the characters are part of a larger, unseen story. In the case of the play, it is the plot of Hamlet. The movie's action is part of some other, offstage story involving the t heft of the briefcase from the kingpin. Only for brief moments do we intersect w ith this larger plot, and that's when the killers retrieve this prize. Just as R osencrantz and Guildenstern flip into their roles and say their lines when Hamle t's people walk on stage, the killers must "get into character". The door opens on the room with the students, and the killers walk into this particular movie. We may then see something in what I've always found a puzzling moment: the kille rs need to wait for a particular moment to enter the room, with Jules stating th at it's not time yet for their entrance. Given what we see later in the room, I' ve never understood this dialogue, as it seems that given there's no communicati on or signals between them and their inside man, entering the room at one point is as good as any another. The only way this dialogue makes sense to me is in th e context of a stage entrance. These characters come into the movie at <i>this p oint</I> to do their tasks, threaten the students, kill them, retrieve the brief case, not earlier or later. Most importantly, is that in both works this approach to character allows for a freedom in dialogue that would not exist if they were restricted to the codes of verisimilitude. In Hamlet, the two friends are insignificant, of little depth, notice, or introspection. Stoppard's play has them speaking in long passages abo ut free will, death, and all matter of subjects in great detail. We have a vague sense of Rosencrantz distinct from Guildenstern, with the latter smarter and mo re knowledgeable, yet they are in other ways indistinguishable in terms of trait s, with the two often getting themselves mixed up as to who is who. Similarly, t he distinctions between the two killers are almost insignificant. One is racial, the other is that Jules is smarter than Vincent. Vincent has a drug problem, bu t for all we know, so does Jules. That both sets of characters remain unmoored f rom reality allows them to speak about anything. The dialogue of the killers has already been mentioned. Here would be an example of one of Guildenstern's many erudite speeches: <blockquote> <b>Guil</b> Wheels have been set in motion, and they have their own pace, to whi ch we are...condemned. Each move is dictated by the previous one - that is the m eaning of order. If we start being arbitrary it'll just be a shambles: at least, let us hope so. Because if we happened, just happened to discover , or even sus pect, that our spontaneity was part of their order, we'd know that we were lost. <i>(He sits.)</I> A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty - and, by which definition, a philosopher - dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never qui te sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security. </blockquote> That this minor character speaks in a way entirely unlike his dialogue in Hamlet , that he has this extraordinary knowledge of things involving probability, phil osophy, chinese history, is always accepted by the audience, because they accept that these lines are unconnected with anything like life. A similar acceptance, I think, takes place with the dialogue of the characters of the movie. When Jul es gives a formal analysis of how TV shows are developed and produced, we do not try to link this analysis to anything that might have taken place in the charac ter's previous off-screen life, a brief writing career, say, anymore than we try to link Guildenstern's line with a possible time as a chinese scholar.

Though these effects are possible for the same reason, they do not take place en tirely in the same context. <i>Fiction</I> might occasionally be mistaken for so cial realism, while the pair in <i>R &amp; G</I> act in a propless cosmic void. That they have even greater freedom in dialogue then those in <i>Fiction</I> sho uld not understate the fact that both sets of characters have far more freedom i n what they might say than those in a story that attempts "realism". A final note in this final note. Though I find attempts to link what takes place in a work with a creator's biography often tiresome, I will make a small one he re. As said previously, that the movie's characters are able to speak so freely outside of a role, in ways that they would not were they required to conform to the role's context has nothing to do with any existential inquiry or investigati on into the qualities of art, as is the case of <i>R &amp; G</I>. That there are no such questions in the movie is obvious, and as I said before, is not a liabi lity. The freedom of dialogue, I think, lies with Tarantino's background as a st ruggling actor, trying out for audition after audition, along with hordes of oth er struggling actors, all competing for small roles of killers and girlfriends i n huge commercial movies. You do your best to give some musical, imaginative del ivery to a paltry number of trivial lines, always dreaming of what you could do with the great dialogue rolling around your head, all the things you say to your interesting, intelligent actor friends who vie for one- and two- line parts of hitmen number one and two. <i>Fiction</I>, I think, is some fulfillment of this actor's fantasy. The small role of killers retrieving a briefcase expands in lex ical richness to roam a territory greater than most movies, all the wonderful wo rds, all the wonderful tones and wordplay bursting out of an actor's head, just burning to get out. <i>"Pulp Fiction" Images and screenplay copyright Miramax Films. "American Boy" images and dialogue excerpt copyright New Empire Films and Scorsese Films</i>