The Philosophy of Film Noir by Mark T. Conard

Author:Mark T. Conard
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky

SYMBOLISM, MEANING, AND NIHILISM

IN QUENTIN TARANTINO’S PULP FICTION

Mark T. Conard

Nihilism is a term that describes the loss of value and meaning in people's lives. When Nietzsche proclaimed that “God is dead,”1 he meant that Judeo-Christianity has been lost as a guiding force in our lives and that there is nothing to replace it. Once we ceased really to believe in the myth at the heart of Judeo-Christian religion, which happened after the Scientific Revolution, Judeo-Christian morality lost its character as a binding code by which to live one's life.2 Given the centrality of religion in our lives for thousands of years, once this moral code is lost and not replaced, we are faced with the abyss of nihilism. Darkness closes in on us, and nothing is of any real value any more. There is no real meaning in our lives, and one way of conducting oneself and one's life is just as good as another, for there is no overarching criterion by which to make such judgments.

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) is an odd film. It's a seemingly complete narrative that has been chopped into vignettes and rearranged like a puzzle. It's a gangster film in which not a single policeman is to be found.3 It's a montage of bizarre characters, from a black mobster with a mysterious bandage on the back of his bald head to hillbilly sexual perverts; from henchmen dressed in black suits whose conversations concern what fast-food items are called in Europe to a mob problem solver who attends dinner parties early in the morning dressed in a full tuxedo. So what is the film about? In general, we can say that the film is about American nihilism. First, a quick rundown of the film.

The Vignettes

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