Path of the Righteous Man

Feetnotes Part 1 – Pulp Fiction

J. K. Tang

FLICKING THROUGH MY BLU-RAY DVDS and touch-screen phones, I struggle to resonate and often become disillusioned by the extreme superficiality of 2000s film. Straight into the new millennia, we began our cinematic journey overhyped by the development of Computer-Generated Imagery (CGI) and IMAX 3D. Our self-destructive excitement inflated the egos of film studios and their creators to satisfy the wants and needs of a spectacle-hungry audience. By bending our technological limitations, we deviated from our core existential narratives that brought our human experience, its meaning and value.

So, I searched further into the nooks and crannies of my TV cabinet. Past the dust-balls and cobwebs, I found a strange apparatus, and I dusted it to read the letters, V-C-R. Like I had just discovered fire, my Neanderthal paws felt its sharply-defined corners navigating around its chrome sturdy frame. Determined to cure my boredom, I pressed an iridescent disc into the mouth of this VCR apparatus but something just wasn’t right. After multiple failed attempts, something told me to go deeper into the TV cabinet. “More meaning, more depth,” I murmured to myself. Monolithic figures arranged themselves behind the Nintendo, and with each labelled ‘V-H-S’, I assumed they were to be returned to some sort of ‘Blockbuster’. With cables attached and VHS ready, the VCR player and I binged speechlessly through the age of happiness, hope, and triumph. A time where we cheered for the lowest of lows to be better and overcome the restraint of stereotypical expectations.

One of the standout visionaries in the film world, Quentin Jerome Tarantino, devoted his works to challenging and redefining modern metanarratives. As the pinnacle of his directorial ethos, the 1994 blockbuster, Pulp Fiction, explores the postmodern multiplicity of grand narratives, specifically the way of the anti-hero. By dissecting Campbell’s ‘Hero’s Journey’, Tarantino subverts the hero-villain dynamic and reassigns the role of protagonist to America’s most heinous individuals.

Comparably, the framework for late 20th century anti-heroes mirrors the epiphanic journey of Saul’s redemption in the Bible. The film’s biblical parallels pave the path to righteousness and furthermore establishes true evil to be found in the world we live and breathe, not in a singular individual. Possibilities for redemption are manifested into the film’s primary protagonists, Jules and Vincent (Wallace’s henchmen), and their duality of thought and expression contrast existential attitudes towards change and conservation. In their conversational interactions, Wallace’s henchmen attempt to escape their criminal lives through trivial exchanges, further hinting to the normality of violence and injustice in 90s America. Specifically, Jules’ recurring recitations of Ezekiel 25:17 address the ethical complexities of justice and question the notion of redemption in the ill-intent world.

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides
By the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men
Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will
Shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness
For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children
And I will strike down upon thee
With great vengeance and furious anger
Those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers
And you will know my name is the Lord
When I lay my vengeance upon thee.” (Ezekiel 25:17)

Gradually, their fates start diverging as Jules decides to retire from his lawless ways whilst Vincent remains under Marsellus Wallace’s hand. By satisfying the film’s opening scene, the diner scene showcases Jules’ existential growth, from lawless criminal to virtuous vigilante, and emphasises the potential for redemption in this cruel, forsaking world.

Conversely, Vincent’s conserved nefarious ways affirm Brantingham’s Crime Pattern theory, which states that the occurrence of a crime is influenced by the spatial and temporal movement of the offender and their victim. With Willis’ Butch in search of his father’s watch and Travolta’s Vincent continuously serving our deuteragonist crime lord, the director marvellously syncs two parallel plots to seal the fate of our unchanged protagonist. Simultaneously, the convergence of plots critiques the habitual nature of 90s American crime and establishes moral permanence to be adversarial to our ideological growth – into finding our virtuous self.

Classic films, like Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, remind us of what we are capable of, and tell us that we are limitless in our potential. The hero is not always the morally good, but the one who embraces their flaws and imperfections to strive for higher levels of self-improvement. As its amber title card concluded the masterpiece, the VCR handed me back a memory of what film could and should be. With my eyes lost in my television set, I wonder: will I find a film that challenges and redefines grand narratives as well as Pulp Fiction?

I am yet to know.