#94 ‘Pulp Fiction’
Tarantino, Time Loops, and the Art of Making Misogyny Look Cool in a Black Suit
Pulp Fiction (1994) is Quentin Tarantino’s postmodern mixtape masterpiece: a nonlinear, needle-dropped celebration of violence, pop culture, and the kind of overwritten male dialogue that passes for profundity if you say it while pointing a gun. It’s brash, stylish, endlessly quotable—and like all great cinematic grifts, it convinces you that you’re watching something revolutionary while it reaffirms every tired gender cliché in the book.
The film braids three-ish narratives together: hitmen Jules and Vincent waxing poetic about foot massages and divine intervention; washed-up boxer Butch running from mobster Marcellus Wallace after a double-cross; and the infamous overdose dinner date between Vincent and Mia Wallace, who remains the film’s most iconic female character despite barely existing outside of eyeliner, mystery, and the ability to collapse artfully on a living room carpet.
Let’s be honest: Pulp Fiction is a film about men performing coolness under pressure. Whether they’re quoting the Bible before execution, cleaning brains off upholstery, or negotiating a samurai sword standoff in a pawnshop rape dungeon, the men here are always the story. They get nuance. They get monologues. They get redemption—or at least a well-scored exit.
And the women? Props, mostly. Mia (Uma Thurman) is the embodiment of the manic mob wife muse—sexy, aloof, doomed to be misunderstood and mishandled by the narrative. Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros) exists only to misplace a gold watch and talk about pancakes in a baby voice. Honey Bunny, in the opening diner scene, flips out adorably while her man plans the heist. It’s not that women aren’t present—it’s that they exist to orbit the emotional arcs of men, never their own.
Tarantino’s style is unmistakable: whip-smart dialogue, sudden violence, and pop culture references stacked like a Jenga tower of VHS tapes. But for all its surface brilliance, Pulp Fiction is less a critique of pulp storytelling than a celebration of its most adolescent instincts. The film doesn’t deconstruct masculinity—it fetishizes it. Every man is a philosopher with a pistol. Every woman is a mirror, a prize, or a problem.
Still, there’s no denying the craft. The structure is bold. The pacing is electric. The performances—especially Samuel L. Jackson’s righteous fury and Travolta’s greasy cool—are burned into cinematic history. But beneath the swagger is a film that reenacts the same stories pulp fiction always has: men making messes, cleaning them up, and getting the last word.
4 out of 5 Royale-with-Cheeses
(One for Jackson’s delivery. One for the fractured timeline. One for the soundtrack that made Dick Dale cool again. One for the sheer audacity of it all. The missing star? OD’d on the bathroom floor of a film that still thinks women are most powerful when they’re silent, stylish, or shot.)
