Stories, Frames, and Objects: Pulp Fiction as a Transitional Work

Abstract: This paper considers the bygone American independent film media landscape, of which Pulp Fiction (1994) was an essential part, and explores how the film has aged in light of the present media environment and the trajectory of Tarantino's career. I compare Pulp Fiction with the Coen brothers' Barton Fink (1991), another American independent film that preceded it by a few years. Then, I illustrate how Pulp Fiction synthesized classical and post-classical filmmaking styles and operated according to a visual minimalism that is one of the film's strengths. The primary outcome of revisiting Pulp Fiction as a product of both its time and its filmmaker's penchant for excavating material from older movies and stories is to conclude that the groundbreaking Pulp Fiction is, in many ways, a transitional work that often reduces its human characters to objects. I argue that later features from the filmmaker are more substantial in their human characters and a concern for social reality and consequences beyond the immediate frame.