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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 182 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 182, January 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Sabby Sagall’s attack on Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino, would in our view be more at home in the pages of the Daily Express than a socialist journal.
To claim that small time gangsters in Pulp Fiction are ‘portrayed as rather dashing figures’ does betray rather a dubious concept of ‘dashing’. After all, Vincent is a hopeless heroin addict who after a trip around Europe can only talk about the French name for Big Macs! He eventually dies in anything but a glamorous way!
Who ‘trivialises violence’ in capitalist society? Is it the film maker daring to show it on screen or the capitalist media, which denies the reality of violence imposed economically, socially and politically on working class lives.
In our view the quality of Tarantino’s films lies precisely in his ability to expose the full horror of gun toting violence.
Reservoir Dogs is set in a warehouse with a diamond robber bleeding to death in real time. His spasms of pain are the recurring theme of the film. In Pulp Fiction the accidental shooting of a teenager in the back of Jules and Vincent’s car disturbingly shows the consequences of loaded weapons. Both characters are splattered with blood and have to try to clean brains and skull out of the car. Glamorising this is not!
The idea that Tarantino has nothing to say, other than that America’s ‘inner cities have become cesspits of violence’ is simply wrong. Firstly, a common feature of his films, including True Romance, for which he wrote the screenplay, is that they are located in the white suburbs as opposed to the inner cities. The alienation, social dislocation and sheer corruption woven into his films reveal a society disintegrating at all points.
Sabby decries the ‘snappy dialogue’ which is the whole point of these films. The screenplay is so sharp that you identify each character as completely human. So just as Vince and Jules are about to execute some youths, they walk to the room discussing foot massage and then continue their discussion realising that they are 11 minutes early – just doing their job, like any worker. Equally, it is easy to identify with Honeybunny and Pumpkin(!) who panic wildly whilst committing a robbery. If a Tarantino has a genius, it is to contrast vicious scenarios with thoroughly believable dialogue and to alternate the comic with the horrific very quickly.
The final point of Sabby’s attack that we contest is his yearning for the good old days of The Godfather. Reality has moved on from the old style Mafia families.
The whole emphasis of Tarantino films is that organised crime is fragmenting in the US as much established ruling class organisation is.
Both Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction have caught the imagination of working class people in Britain because they say a lot about the 1990s. If Sabby Sagall recoils from films that confront reality head on, perhaps he should seek refuge in Forrest Gump and its beloved ‘feel good factor’!
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Tony Chilvers |
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