Tarantino Versus the Viewers
At the heart of Pulp Fiction is the joke that, just like Butch’s watch being concealed from the guards, Tarantino is concealing a timepiece (a time machine) from viewers. Instead of a traditional movie, where the director is attempting to convey a meaning, Tarantino would seem to be doing something rather different – setting a problem which viewers, humorously conceived of as the enemy, are provoked to try and solve.
Consider that rant by Honey Bunny, just before the cut to the opening credits – ‘Any of you fucking pricks move and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of you’. Isn’t there a sense that, as much as it’s Honey Bunny to restaurant customers, this is Tarantino addressing the viewer? And Honey Bunny’s bright idea to add the customers’ wallets to the plunder – isn’t this Tarantino exulting at how he’s extracted the price of admission from viewers? And as well he’s the proud artist, who has come up with this masterpiece, and is demanding that viewers give it due motionless attention (and it is indeed a crucial moment in the film, where timelines diverge). Just to impress on viewers that he’s not to be messed with, Tarantino even inserts himself into this opening scene as a gangster – that is in the Hitchcockian cameo where, back to camera, Vincent walks by in the clothes Tarantino’s character Jimmie has given him.
He gives himself another intimidating moment when, as Jimmie with the three gangsters in the kitchen, he’s shot to appear crowding the ceiling, peering down like a god upon his creation. Complicating matters the film also portrays Jimmie as something of a dork. As Jules reminds him, when Jimmie uses that term to refer to the freshly-clad gangsters – ‘They’re your clothes, motherfucker’. At times Tarantino seems to be saying: ‘Look what a no-hoper I am – surely you’re not going to let yourself be baffled by me’.
But if he presents himself/Jimmie variously as god, gangster and dope, the film remains a challenge he’s putting to the viewer. Tarantino isn’t saying – ‘Here resides all wisdom’ – but rather – ‘Can you figure out the briefcase, you gimps?’ There’s no meaning, just the contest, the game. And no point suggested to life, except possibly that the one who dies having made the greatest number of badass witticisms wins. And the main point to the briefcase containing a time machine, just as it’s the main reason for the film’s jumbled chronology, to foreground time, the one sure thing.
October 31, 2025
