1. 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.