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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.
At a time when right wing moralists in the US and Britain are trying to impose their stifling values on popular culture it seems odd for a socialist to ask a film maker to tone his material down, for fear of providing ‘fodder for the law and order lobby’. But this is just what Sabby Sagall does in his review of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (December SR). Surely Sabby should be asking why a director like Tarantino should find himself so reviled by certain sections of the ruling class that his work is denied a video release in Britain and he is condemned as a corrupter of youth on both sides of the Atlantic.
This has got nothing to do with violence in itself, after all Arnold Schwarzenegger’s True Lies has a body count which leaves Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs standing. It is because Tarantino’s characters, and the violence they perpetrate, do not conform to the stereotypes favoured by the establishment that Tarantino is held up as a bad example. His hit men are articulate and witty and they kill with a sense of professional detachment. In Pulp Fiction this takes place in a world painted in the garish colours of cheap crime and horror novels. It is also a vision of American society trapped in a morbid fascination for its own past culture of rock stars, movie idols and gas guzzling automobiles.
This is clearly a troubled world and whilst Tarantino can’t make up his mind whether to be mesmerised or appalled by this vision, he certainly gives us some fascinating insights into the real state of American life.
His eccentric style is certainly not naturalistic, nor is it meant to be, but it is close enough to the truth to upset his right wing critics.
Of course Tarantino isn’t the perfect film maker. His casual acceptance of the prejudices of his characters, for instance, lapses into an uncritical acceptance of the sickness he so brilliantly portrays. But why condemn him for not shooting a remake of Goodfellas or The Godfather? He refuses to rehash the predictable dramatic forms which Sabby obviously admires, but his irreverent and critical perspectives on contemporary life and modern culture are to be applauded.
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Ian Goodyer |
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