Pulp Fiction Macro Analysis

Macro Analysis Pulp Fiction

Approaches

Genre              Narrative         Contextual      Spectatorship              Auteur

Genre  Two types of analysis

Descriptive

        The distinctive textual properties of a genre typically listed by film and television theorists include:

       

narrative - similar (sometimes formulaic) plots and structures, predictable situations, sequences, episodes, obstacles, conflicts and resolutions;

characterization - similar types of characters (sometimes stereotypes), roles, personal qualities, motivations, goals, behaviour;

basic themes, topics, subject matter (social, cultural, psychological, professional, political, sexual, moral), values and what Stanley Solomon refers to as recurrent 'patterns of meaning'

setting - geographical and historical;

iconography (echoing the narrative, characterization, themes and setting) - a familiar stock of images or motifs, the connotations of which have become fixed; primarily but not necessarily visual, including décor, costume and objects, certain 'typecast' performers (some of whom may have become 'icons'), familiar patterns of dialogue, characteristic music and sounds, and appropriate physical topography;

filmic techniques - stylistic or formal conventions of camerawork, lighting, sound-recording, use of colour, editing etc. (viewers are often less conscious of such conventions than of those relating to content).

Functional Genre analysis

Placing Gangster films in Context

Prohibition 1920-1933  -  outlawing of alcohol offered opportunities for Criminals

The Depression 1929 – the American Dream appeared broken. Many who had worked hard ended up with nothing. People still wanted the dream but there was no legal means for them to achieve it.

Gangsters became heroes – fulfilled American dream but not by conventional route.

Crime Pays

Early Gangster films were given a realist feel. Drawing upon events that were actually happening and sometimes interweaving stock footage as well as having journalists working on scripts

Semi-documentary style of film-making including stock footage

Golden era of Gangster films 1930-34 

Little Caesar 1930

The Public Enemy 1931

Scarface 1932

Function of Films was to reinforce the view that Crime doesn’t pay. Functional genre analysis allows the student to place the film in context and ask yourself what did the film ‘do’ to society. It was understood that these films had to have a rise and fall narrative structure. The ending of the film had to make it clear that Crime doesn’t pay.

Narrative

Linear         Todorov

Rise and Fall – functional analysis- see above

Propp's Character theory

Vladimir Propp (1969) developed a character theory for studying media texts and productions, which indicates that there were 7 broad character types in the 100 tales he analysed, which could be applied to other media:

        The villain (struggles against the hero)

        The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)

        The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)

        The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)

        Her father

        The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)

The hero or victim/seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess

Narrative in Pulp Fiction

Coffee Shop Hold-up

Retrieving the case part 1

Jack Rabbit Slims

Your father’s watch

Zed’s pawnshop

Retrieving the case part 2 the bonnie situation

The coffee shop hold up

Place in chronological order then draw a line from one scene to the next. You will see the film has a spiral like narrative structure. It begins in the middle, moves to first the end then the beginning then works its way back to the middle – one could say the film was anti narrative.

Auteur theory – see separate post

Intertextuality – Pulp Fiction makes lots of popular cultural references to many other films amongst other things.

Decontextualised scenes

Some scenes appear simply because of the directors desire to construct a particular scene. Consider the dancing in Jack Rabbit Slims or the rape scene in Zed’s Pawnshop. How important to the narrative are these films?

Spectatorship

Active male/passive female