Introduction
You can tell a lot about a film director’s vision by the environments he or she creates.
Consider the Exotica club which gives Atom Egoyan’s latest film its name. It is a visual feast, with lush decor and women in a variety of stages of undress. However, no matter how erotic the dances may get, the club has a strict rule against patrons touching the dancers. This theme of voyeuristic arousal (accentuated by the one way mirrors which allow the staff to watch the guests, but not vice versa) which must ultimately be frustrated, runs throughout most of Egoyan’s works.
Compare this with the description of Jackrabbit Slim’s, a club which appears in Quentin Tarantino’s current film, Pulp Fiction: “Posters from 50’s A. I. P. [American International Pictures] movies are all over the wall (“ROCK ALL NIGHT,” “HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL,” “ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTER,” and “MACHINE GUN KELLY”). The booths that the patrons sit in are made out of the cut up bodies of 50s cars…. The picture windows don’t look out the street, but instead, B & W movies of 50’s street scenes play behind them. The WAITRESSES and WAITERS are made up as replicas of 50’s icons: MARILYN MONROE, ZORRO, JAMES DEAN, DONNA REED, MARTIN and LEWIS, and THE PHILIP MORRIS MIDGET, wait on tables wearing appropriate costumes.” [1] What this club suggests about its creator is that he is deeply involved with popular culture.
In fact, a close reading of Tarantino’s four screenplays (Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, an early version of Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction) reveals a screenwriter who is deeply fascinated by popular culture, in both its mass and obscure forms. Most of the time Tarantino seems to celebrate popular culture, although there are occasions (most notably in NBK) when he seems to be satirizing it. This article will attempt to catalogue some of the many references to popular culture in Tarantino’s work, and indicate what purpose they serve in his narratives.
You are What You Eat (And Watch…And Read…)
“Like a Virgin” is all about a girl who digs a guy with a big dick. The whole song is a metaphor for big dicks.
No it’s not. It’s about a girl who is very vulnerable and she’s been fucked over a few times. Then she meets some guy who’s really sensitive —
— Whoa…whoa…time out Greenbay. Tell that bullshit to the tourists.
(looking through his address book)
Toby…who the fuck is Toby? Toby…Toby..think…think…think…
It’s not about a nice girl who meets a sensitive boy. Now granted that’s what “True Blue” is about, no argument there.
Which one is “True Blue?”
You don’t remember “True Blue?” That was a big ass hit for Madonna. Shit, I don’t even follow this Top of the Pops shit, and I’ve at least heard of “True Blue.”
Look, asshole, I didn’t say I ain’t heard of it. All I asked was how does it go? Excuse me for not being the world’s biggest Madonna fan.
I hate Madonna. [2]
A Silver Surfer poster hangs on the wall of an undercover police officer’s otherwise dingy apartment, ironically identifying him with a tortured superhero. [3] A character is referred to as “Flock of Seagulls” because of his hair cut, identifying him as young, but a little unhip. [4] The hero of one film works in a comic book store, which suggests his emotional development has been arrested. [5] In the films of Quentin Tarantino, pop culture is often used to define the personality of his characters. But Tarantino goes much further than that.
In the first scene of his first produced screenplay (partially quoted above), Tarantino offers a profane (but profoundly funny) argument about the interpretation of Madonna’s song “Like a Virgin.” There is a lot more going on in the scene, however; in Tarantino’s films, what popular culture you know, what you like and how you interpret it become indicators of your character. For instance, Mr. Pink and Mr. Blue, because they lead the argument about the song, come across as hip people who are attuned to the popular culture. Mr. Orange, on the other hand, is ridiculed for not remembering the song “True Blue,” which suggests that he doesn’t quite fit in with this crowd. (Which is literally true: Mr. Orange is a police undercover agent who will be responsible for destroying the jewel robbery the men have been brought together to undertake.)
Nice Guy Eddie’s admission that he doesn’t follow current pop hits, although he is familiar with Madonna, puts him on the periphery of the group. Later in that scene, he and Mr. Pink discuss “KBILLY’s super sounds of the seventies weekend,” where they rhapsodize about songs like “Heartbeat — It’s a Lovebeat” by Little Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco Family, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” by Vicki Lawrence and Cher’s “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves.” [6] This suggests that these two characters are older than Mr. Blue or Mr. Orange, because they have access to older pop culture. (To perhaps accentuate this difference, Tarantino gave Mr. Pink’s lines to Mr. Brown in the actual film, more or less cutting him out of the discussion of Madonna.) In addition, Nice Guy Eddie is gently made fun of for not understanding that Lawrence was the murderer in the song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” which suggests that he isn’t as bright as some of the other members of the group.
Finally, we have Joe and Mr. White, who do not participate in the discussion of pop music. They are the two oldest characters in the scene, suggesting that their cultural referents would be different than those of the younger men. There is also the possibility that, having had a lot of experience with armed robbery, Joe and Mr. White are more concerned with what is about to happen than their younger partners.
Thus, what seemed, at first glance, to be a simple comic scene actually contains a lot of information about the characters and their relationships with one another. And this is done through references to popular culture in the dialogue.
This is not an isolated case, but a narrative strategy which runs throughout Tarantino’s work. When Jules and Vincent are driving to work in the film Pulp Fiction Vincent, who recently traveled through Europe, tells Jules that in France, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a Royale with Cheese. [7] The fact that Vincent has traveled, a leisure activity which is usually associated with the wealthy, seems to impress Jules. On the other hand, the fact that all Vincent brings back from his experience are stories of easily accessible drugs in Amsterdam and trivia about American fast food in Europe, suggests to the audience that he is not interested in the high culture Europe has to offer, but the manifestations of American mass culture which have migrated to Europe.
(References to fast food abound in Tarantino’s work; his characters may be the most malnourished in contemporary cinema. The opening scene of Reservoir Dogs takes place in Uncle Bob’s Pancake House. A later scene in which the undercover policeman rehearses a story he will tell to the criminals takes place in a Denny’s. [8] A shared interest in fast food suggests that the police aren’t that much different from the criminals. In True Romance, a drug dealer eats Chinese food out of cartons [9], while the hero prefers takeout chicken. [10] TV journalist Wayne Gayle’s crew eats at a Denny’s in Natural Born Killers [11], a reminder that, no matter how glamourous their job, they are still basically working stiffs. Denny’s also plays a major role in the opening and closing scenes of Pulp Fiction. In addition, that film contains a very funny scene revolving around Big Kahuna Burgers. [12]
(This emphasis on fast food is a way of foregrounding the lower middle and working class background of the majority of Tarantino’s characters. By way of contrast, the upper middle class character of Jimmie in Pulp Fiction lives in a nice house in the suburbs and talks about buying gourmet coffee “’cause when I drink it, I wanna taste it.” [13])
Jules gets his own back soon after when, walking up to the building where they are about to go to work, Vincent admits he doesn’t know what a pilot is because he doesn’t watch TV. Jules’ subsequent explanation of a pilot is sarcastic, revealing a low culture contempt for people who think they are above it. [14] This is reinforced when Jules asks one of the kids he and Vincent are terrorizing why the Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a Royale with Cheese in France, and is surprised when the kid gives him the correct answer (because they are on the Metric system). “Check out the big brain on Brett,” Jules comments, dripping with contempt. “You’re a smart motherfucker, that’s right.” [15]
In a world saturated with pop culture, shared cultural references create bonds between people, including romantic bonds. For example, in True Romance (which, itself, is a reference to a mass circulation women’s magazine — ironic considering how little the story has to do with traditional notions of romance), the hero, Clarence, tries to pick up a woman in a bar. He starts the seduction with a long monologue about Elvis, which does get the woman’s interest. She agrees to go to a movie with Clarence, but he chooses a Sonny Chiba triple feature; aghast that he wants to take her to a kung fu film festival, the woman rejects him. [16]
Clarence goes to the films anyway, where he meets Alabama (who trips and spills popcorn all over him). After the film, they agree that “Sonny kicks ass,” the beginning of a deep and lasting emotional bond. [17] A little later, Clarence lists Alabama’s good qualities: “You like Elvis. You like Janis. You like comic books. You like the Partridge Family. You like Kung Fu movies…” [18] With so much in common, they decide they are in love, and run off to be married.
Another example occurs in Pulp Fiction: when hood Vincent Vega arrives to escort Mia, his boss’ wife, to dinner, she turns a camera on him and begins an interrogation:
Now I’m gonna ask you a bunch of quick questions I’ve come up with that more or less tell me what kind of person I’m having dinner with. My theory is that when it comes to important subjects, there’s only two ways a person can answer. For instance, there’s two kinds of people in the world, Elvis people and Beatles people. Now Beatles people can like Elvis. And Elvis people can like the Beatles. But nobody likes them both equally. Somewhere you have to make a choice. And that choice tells me who you are.
I can dig it.
I knew I could. First question, Brady Bunch or Partridge Family?
The Partridge Family all the way, no comparison.
On “Rich Man, Poor Man,” who did you like, Peter Strauss or Nick Nolte?
Nick Nolte, of course.
Are you a “Bewitched” man, or a “Jeannie” man?
“Bewitched,” all the way, though I always dug how Jeannie always called Larry Hagman “master.”
If you were “Archie,” who would you fuck first, Betty or Veronica?
Betty. I never understood the Veronica attraction. [19]
We never find out if Vincent “passes” this examination, but Mia does go to dinner with him.
At dinner, however, a simple subject comes up which indicates a crucial difference between the two of them, a difference which would make any relationship between them impossible. Mia orders a milk shake for five dollars; Vincent, who can’t believe a milk shake can cost that much, makes a big deal out of it. [20] The discussion suggests a class difference (in which Vincent would compare unfavourably) and a personality difference (Mia is used to the extravagance, while Vincent is not). When, later in the scene, Mia talks about the part she had in the pilot for an unproduced television show called Fox Force Five, [21] it becomes clear that they are not in the same class, making any sort of romance between them unlikely.
Ultimately, because popular culture is such an important part of their lives, Tarantino’s characters define their dreams and goals in terms of the cultural artifacts with which they are familiar. When Clarence tries to describe his idea of romance to Alabama, for instance, he tells her the plot of a Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos comic book. [22] Later in the film, Clarence talks about wanting to get out of the United States, where he’s lived all his life; but, when asked what he would do in another country, the most concrete thing he can think to say is, “I wanna see what TV in other countries is like.” [23] Alabama, getting excited about Clarence’s dream of escape from their lives (which, after all, are filled with dreariness and potential violence), suggests they run away to Cancoon. Why? “It’s got a nice ring to it. It sound like a movie, ‘Clarence and Alabama go to Cancoon.'” [24]
Another instance occurs in Pulp Fiction. Jules, Vincent’s partner, is increasingly disenchanted with their criminal life, and slowly comes to the decision that he has to get out. When asked what he will do, Vincent says he will walk the earth “like Caine in ‘KUNG FU.’ Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.” [25] In this way, popular culture becomes the vehicle by which otherwise largely inarticulate characters are able to express their deepest desires.
Popular Music
“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” [26]
A close reading of Quentin Tarantino’s screenplays won’t give an appreciation of the full range of his use of popular music in his films; songs are only intermittently suggested, likely because he had no way of knowing if he would be able to get the rights to use them. Nonetheless, in both the screenplays and what I recall of the use of music in the actual films, Tarantino uses popular music primarily as an ironic comment on what is happening in a scene.
Steeler’s Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You,” for instance, plays over a scene in Reservoir Dogs where a sadistic thug brutalizes a bound and gagged police officer. The song is an ironic comment on the policeman’s predicament, made all the more ironic because it is basically upbeat. To underline the point, Tarantino has the thug mouth the words to the song.
The soundtrack to Reservoir Dogs is peppered with songs from the 1970s, most of which are musically up-beat and (somewhat) lyrically innocent. In this way, the soundtrack is constantly at odds with the tone of menace and impending violence which saturates the rest of the film.
A subtler use of popular music occurs in Natural Born Killers. Mallory Knox, one of the mass murderer/lovers who have been caught, does not speak the entire year she is incarcerated. The first time we see her in jail, she’s singing “Long Time Woman” (“99 years is a long, long time. Look at me, I will never be free, I’m a long time woman…”). [27] A little later, we are told that she sings songs like “He’s a Rebel,” “Leader of the Pack” and “I Only Want to Be With You” (references to her husband, Mickey) while in jail. [28] The songs can be seen as having ironic intent, but, if so, it is not an expression of the irony of author, but an ironic statement made by the character to address her situation. On the other hand, the songs can also be interpreted as a straight expression of Mallory’s longing, without ironic intent.
Violence in Pop Culture: Natural Born Killers
Here she is…you know her, you love her, you can’t live without her…Mallory Knox. [29]
As has been widely noted, Quentin Tarantino’s screenplay for Natural Born Killers is substantially different from Oliver Stone’s film. Generally, Tarantino’s version is subtler and less confused than Stone’s version, and displays Tarantino’s excellent grasp of story structure to brilliant effect. For purposes of this paper, it should be noted that Tarantino’s criticism of violence in American popular culture is also more complex and interesting than Stone’s.
Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers is dominated by a recreation of a tabloid news show called American Maniacs; unlike the film, which deals with it in only a handful of scenes, fully one third of Tarantino’s script is devoted to the television show. [30] In Tarantino’s version, Mickey and Mallory Knox are captured at the beginning of the film; their three week killing spree is seen only in retrospect through the prism of the tabloid news show. Unlike the film, where we follow Mickey and Mallory through some of their exploits (which, even with the directorial tricks Stone employs, has a pretence to objective reality), the screenplay shows us their crimes only through their portrayal in the media. In this way, Tarantino shows us how the media become complicit with the murderers (rather than hitting us over the head with the point, as Stone does), and asks the audience to question how much of what it is seeing reflects what actually happened.
One part of American Maniacs, for instance, features a clips from a film based on Mickey and Mallory’s killing spree called Thrill Killers, as well as interviews with the actors who play the couple. The film-within-a-film offers laughably simplistic motivations for the mass murders and ends with Mallory committing suicide (rather than simply being caught) because the director felt “an operatic love story needed an operatic ending.”
The Film version of American Maniacs includes a sequence where the murder of a police officer is cheesily recreated, a staple of tabloid news shows which appears in the original screenplay. It does not, however, include clips from a Red Kross video for a song called “Natural Born Killers: The Saga of Mickey and Mallory,” which is a very funny, and very telling, comment on how violence enters the mass consciousness through the popular media.
In the end, with all of the different representations of Mickey and Mallory in the various media, it is easy to agree with the psychiatrist who claims that “the media has done a tremendous job of turning the husband and wife mass murderers into celebrities.”
In the screenplay, this is literally portrayed as a pact with the devil. Mickey and Mallory’s past lives are not explored, and no pat psychological motivation is given for their behaviour (the television parody I Love Mallory and the scene where Mickey, as a child, watches his father commit suicide were Stone’s inventions). The screenplay does contain a very powerful scene not in the film, however: Mickey, at his trial, cross-examining one of the witnesses to one of the slaughters. In the course of the cross-examination, Mickey gets the witness to admit that her brother, one of his victims, was a martial arts expert whose hands were registered lethal weapons. At one point, the victim kicked Mickey in the head four times, but Mickey shrugged it off and proceeded to throw him against a wall and tear him apart.
In your opinion, Miss Mulberry, how was I able to murder your brother Tim Mulberry in the manner you described?
(softly)
You’re not human. I thought about it a lot. And the only thing I could figure is that you’re not human. You’re a vampire, or the devil, or a monster, or cyborg, or something like that. But you’re not human.
(softly)
Thank you. Grace, there is one other thing…
(softly into her lap)
What…
Mickey smiles.
You’re right.
Mickey then brutally plunges a pencil into her chest several times.
This is in keeping with the theme of the film (that Mickey and Mallory are “natural born killers,” a fact which needs no explanation or elaboration). Tarantino’s version strongly suggests that there is some evil that simply cannot be understood by normal people. More to the point, Tarantino suggests that the popular media propagate this evil by focusing so clearly on it, even as they reduce it to the banality of a video for a pop song.
(One element clearly missing from Tarantino’s vision, on the other hand, is the idea that the mass media are responsible for creating mass murderers. The scene in the native shack, where “Too much television” is front-projected onto Mickey’s chest, does not appear in the screenplay. By trying to have it both ways, Stone attempts to create complexity, but instead merely succeeds in creating confusion.)
Opposed to this vision of the killers is that of Wayne Gayle, the host of American Maniacs. Crowing about his coup in getting an interview with Mickey, he blurts “Am I God or what?” [31] In one sense, Gayle (and others like him in network news departments) is exactly that, a person who creates reality for his viewers. Another way of looking at it is that Gayle, as God, is in conflict with Mickey, a self-confessed demon.
If that is the case, though, Gayle is a capricious and untrustworthy God. As Tarantino portrays him, he has contempt for his subject (he admits he manipulated Mickey to get him to agree to an interview [32]) as well as his audience (“Rape and pillage the first episode, just change the order a bit,” he tells his editor. “Those sons of bitches out there ain’t gonna know the difference.” [33]), and is more interested in fixing his place in journalism history than anything else. In the end, when Mickey and Mallory train their guns on him after he helped them escape, Gayle begs for his life in unheroic fashion. In the end, they kill Gayle but leave his camera behind, emphasizing the inhuman nature of tabloid news shows in particular and the mass medium of television in general.
Conclusion
You know, most movies that win a lot of Oscars, I can’t stand. “Sophie’s Choice,” “Ordinary People,” “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “Ghandi.” All that stuff is safe, geriatric, coffee table, dog shit.”
I hear you talking, Clarence. We park our cars in the same garage.
Like that Merchant Ivory claptrap. All those assholes make are unwatchable movies from unreadable books.
Clarence, there might be somebody somewhere that agrees with you more than I do, but I wouldn’t count on it.
They aren’t plays, they’re not books, they certainly ain’t movies, they’re films. And do you know what films are? They’re for people who don’t like movies. “Mad Max,” that’s a movie. “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,” that’s a movie. “Rio Bravo,” that’s a movie. “Rumble Fish,” that’s a fuckin’ movie. And “Coming Home in a Body Bag,” that’s a movie. [34]
Other aspects of Tarantino’s use of popular culture in his screenplays are hard to pigeonhole. There are occasions, for instance, when the references are used for simple (but devastatingly effective) comic relief. There is a scene in True Romance, for example, where the hero, who has stumbled across a large shipment of drugs, tries to sell it to a successful Hollywood film director. The term Dr. Zhivago is used to describe the drugs, and the deal itself is carried out using film terms. [35] In a similar vein, a dealer in Pulp Fiction, when confronted with the accusation that his drugs aren’t as good as the ones that can be found in Amsterdam, says he’ll take “the Pepsi Challenge” to prove the quality of his drugs. [36]
To be fair, it should also be pointed out that Tarantino sometimes quotes from high culture, rather than popular. In True Romance, an actor who has been a middleman in a drug deal, quotes from the famous balcony scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, a subtle comment which is lost on the police officers who are testing the wire he’s wearing. [37] In Pulp Fiction, one character quotes a passage from the Bible three times; it becomes a central motif of the film, connecting two segments in time and ultimately becoming the basis for the character’s spiritual renewal. [38]
But it is here, as much as I enjoy Tarantino’s work, that I begin to have problems with his treatment of popular culture. In celebrating popular culture, Tarantino equates it with high culture: Baretta is as worthy of popularity as the Bible, Sonny Chiba is equivalent to Shakespeare. Sorry, but it just ain’t so. The reason Shakespeare has thrived for the last several hundred years is not because an artistic and intellectual elite is trying to keep his plays alive (although that may be partially true); it is because at their heart, Shakespeare’s plays contain wisdom about human nature and the human condition with which modern audiences can still empathize and relate. The reason Sonny Chiba is largely forgotten, no matter how good his martial arts films may be, is that they have nothing profound to share with audiences.
Clarence’s defence of popular culture in True Romance (quoted above), although spirited, isn’t especially well-argued. He makes a distinction between “films” (presumably the high culture version of cinema) and “movies” (the low culture version). [39] Beyond that, his argument seems to be based on the fact that he likes low culture films and doesn’t like high culture films. From the character’s point of view, this is not unreasonable. As a statement of the writer’s values (as supported by the pop cultural references in his body of work), it is arguable.
Ultimately, in the swirl of pop culture at the heart of Tarantino’s films, there is an emptiness: nothing recognizably real with which an audience can identify. All of the characters in Pulp Fiction, for instance, are not based on real people, but on stereotypes out of pulp magazines (the dumb goon who has to look after his boss’ wife for an evening, the boxer who has to throw a fight, etc.). To give credit where credit is due, Tarantino turns all these stereotypes on their head with surprising twists. But, as with a photocopy, the further away films get from the original reality, the less satisfying the quality of the work.
Quentin Tarantino is an intelligent, entertaining screenwriter. He is brilliant at fracturing narrative structure, and his dialogue is a pleasure to listen to. He has a lot to say about popular culture. But, as good as his films are, he won’t create a true masterpiece until he is able to take his concerns and act them out through realistic characters with whom the audience can identify.
Notes
1) Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction (unpublished, May 1993 last draft), page 39.
2) Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs (unpublished, October 22, 1990 draft), 1.
3) The poster, not mentioned in the screenplay, appears in the film.
4) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, page 21.
5) Quentin Tarantino, True Romance, (unpublished, REVISED, August 1, 1991).
6) Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs, pages 5 and 6.
7) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, pages 8 and 9. Tarantino has mentioned in interviews that many of Vincent’s observations of Europe were his own, made during a trip featuring a stopover for Cannes for the film festival.
8) Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs, pages 58 to 61.
9) Tarantino, True Romance, page 37.
10) Tarantino, True Romance, page 50.
11) Quentin Tarantino, Natural Born Killers (unpublished, Draft Three (Rev.), March 12, 1991), pages 20 to 25.
12) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, pages 19 and 20.
13) ibid, page 122.
14) ibid, page 11.
15) ibid, page 21.
16) Tarantino, True Romance, pages 4 to 6.
17) ibid, pages 11 to 14.
18) ibid, page 28.
19) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, pages 37 and 38.
20) ibid, page 40.
21) ibid, pages 42 and 43.
22) Tarantino, True Romance, page 21.
23) ibid, page 99. Of course, TV in other countries is becoming increasingly like TV in the United States, but there is no way Clarence could know this.
24) ibid.
25) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, pages 146 and 147.
26) Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs, page 55.
27) Tarantino, Natural Born Killers, page 12.
28) ibid, page 18.
29) ibid, page 12.
30) The following references to American Maniacs can be found in Natural Born Killers, pages 26 to 68.
31) ibid, page 22.
32) ibid, page 23.
33) ibid, page 24.
34) Tarantino, True Romance, page 114.
35) ibid, pages 77 and 78.
36) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, page 32.
37) Tarantino, True Romance, page 102.
38) Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, pages 25, 112, 157 and 158.
39) For an discussion of differences between high and low culture, and the antagonism between proponents of both camps, see Herbert J. Gans, Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste (New York: Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins, 1974).
This article first appeared in Creative Screenwriting, Volume 1, Number 4, Winter 1994.