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Pulp: “A soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter” or “A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough ...paper.” In the beginning frame of the film Pulp Fiction, director Quentin Tarentino provides the audience with these two definitions of the word pulp. This alone, ladies and gentlemen of the International Film Festival provides us with the fundamental principle Tarentino has produced to help audiences appreciate and understand a cultural perspective different from our own.
The film itself can be a little difficult to comprehend when first viewed as there are multiple storylines running simultaneously throughout the fill; with complete disagreed for a chronological order. The story runs along three divided stories in which are broken up into seven segments about firstly; two hit men and a mysterious briefcase, secondly; a boxer named Butch and his golden watch and finally two armed maniacs, respectably called “Pumpkin” and “Honeybun” whom decide to rob a diner. This apparent division however seems to find a unified conclusion with no apparent moral message. However this only makes its cultural meaning more powerful.
Quentin Tarentino; who is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and actor, is known for films with storylines with no chronological order, full with the adoration of violence and his social views are represented through the satire shots and format, Pulp Fiction is no exception. Tarentino’s film delivers its social culture through a late 20th century style; that is, in regard to its arts and social reception. Known as postmodernism, this represents the mix of trends and movements of earlier traditions in the rejection to the practises and principles of mode...
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...f the movie. Pulp fiction is the works that are being continuously spurned out on cheap paper, the film itself represents the pulp of little substance that is spurned out to the public as the new and entertaining material to amuse the public. This fundamental “pulp fiction” has become the foundation to the underbelly of American society. Tarentino’s views in relation to the Modern American culture shape the structure of the film; and the true meaning is found in the nihilism of its culture. The clash of genres and nonlinear order have shown the ingenious way in which Tarentino has trivialised society, this in all represents just how we can come to understand it. I would like to leave you with a clip of the film that illustrates the way in which the film Pulp Fiction has given the audience an appreciation to a cultural understanding of substance without meaning.
In the piece “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” Jean Luc-Comolli and Jean Narboni define the critic's job as the discernment of “which films, books and magazines allow the ideology a free, unhampered passage, transmit it with crystal clarity, serve as its chosen language” and which films “attempt to make it turn back and reflect itself, intercept it, make it visible by revealing its mechanisms, by blocking them” (753). Through their examination, seven film categories are outlined. Clue falls into the “E” category, which is defined as “films which seem at first sight to belong firmly within the ideology and to be completely under its sway, but which turn out to be so only in an ambiguous manner” (75...
The only real way to truly understand a story is to understand all aspects of a story and their meanings. The same goes for movies, as they are all just stories being acted out. In Thomas Foster's book, “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”, Foster explains in detail the numerous ingredients of a story. He discusses almost everything that can be found in any given piece of literature. The devices discussed in Foster's book can be found in most movies as well, including in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic, “Pulp Fiction”. This movie is a complicated tale that follows numerous characters involved in intertwining stories. Tarantino utilizes many devices to make “Pulp Fiction” into an excellent film. In this essay, I will demonstrate how several literary devices described in Foster's book are put to use in Tarantino’s film, “Pulp Fiction”, including quests, archetypes, food, and violence.
The film starts with an uprising after a white storeowner kills a black teenager. This incident Highlights Prejudices. The teenager was labeled a thief because of the color of his skin and the unjustifiable murder causes racial tensions that exist as a result of the integration of the high schools.
Quentin Tarantino’s film, Pulp Fiction, uses words to the fullest of their meanings. Words in the film amplify meaning through their duplicity. Characters call one another names wherein the names’ meanings enhance our understanding of what the character is saying. Even if the author or speaker does not consciously intend the meaning, the language that this paper analyzes contains meaning of psychological importance. Characters’ actual names in the film are also of particular significanc e. Nearly every character’s name reflects his personality or role in the film. Because people are human and integrating a name and personality is difficult, it is only genius for every name to be significant and meaningful. Yet, it may be surprising ho w well thought out the naming of the characters is. Pulp Fiction also touches on the interpretive value of words. Oftentimes, a person or group of people may understand the same definition of a word but interpret it differently. Language is prim arily a means of communicating ideas. The film makes an interesting point of how the actual words used may be irrelevant to the idea being portrayed. In sum, Pulp Fiction demonstrates how the meaning of speech can depend either on the choice of w ords used or on the prescribed reaction to word’s usage.
Throughout time, literature—including films which are culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant—has reflected the cultural psyche of a particular society in the sense that it brings attention to and defines conditions which exist within a particular society. Fight Club is a postmodern drama that examines the impact of a post-industrial society (within this paper, the terms “postmodern” and “post-industrial” are used interchangeably and assume the same meaning) on masculinity within American culture. Postmodernity, according to David Macey’s Dictionary of Critical Theory (307-309), began with the period of accelerated growth that immediately followed World War II, and the era is characterized by increased growth in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Thus, as Macey paraphrases economist Ernest Belgian, “…in the postwar period, market capitalism…[has] been superseded by a third technological revolution that gives rise to an era of…late capitalism;” that is, the technologi...
Pulp Fiction is a film that is structured around three story-lines. Vincent Vega is the lead in the first story. In the second storyline, Butch Coolidge is the lead, and Jules Winnfield, is the lead of the third. Each storyline targets a different series of incidents but they connect and intersect in numerous ways. “The film starts out with a diner hold-up staged by "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny," then picks up the stories of Vincent, Jules, Butch, and several other important characters. It finally returns to where it began, in the diner: Vincent and Jules, who have stopped in for a bite, find themselves embroiled in the hold-up”(Tarantino). There are seven narrative sequences:
In the classical Western and Noir films, narrative is driven by the action of a male protagonist towards a clearly defined, relatable goal. Any lack of motivation or action on the part of the protagonist problematizes the classical association between masculinity and action. Due to inherent genre expectations, this crisis of action is equivalent to a crisis of masculinity. Because these genres are structured around male action, the crises of action and masculinity impose a crisis of genre. In the absence of traditional narrative elements and character tropes, these films can only identify as members of their genres through saturation with otherwise empty genre symbols. The equivalency between the crises of genre and masculinity frames this symbol saturation as a sort of compensatory masculine posturing.
What is sociological imagination? Our textbook describes sociological imagination as the ability to see our private experiences, personal difficulties, and achievements as, in part, a reflection of the structural arrangements of society and the times in which we live. The movie entitled Forrest Gump is a great example of sociological imagination. In this paper, I will cite examples from the movie and tell how they correlate with sociological imagination. Sociological imagination allows us examine the events of our lives and see how they intersect with the wider context of history and tradition of the society in which we live. (Hughes/Kroehler, The Core, p. 7)
The Narrative or storyline is much the same as any other film noir movie. It has a ‘hard boiled’ cop (Russell Crowe) who we grow attached to. The narrative of any film must have certain ‘key conventions’ which are apparent for the audience to tell the genre of the film. The narrative can be used to provide an explanation as to why the film contains certain things, or why a character does something.
“ It’s crazy, all that blood and violence. I thought you were supposed to be the love generation”. Conservative mother, Estelle Collingwood says to her daughter Mari in the beginning of Wes Craven’s cult classic The Last House on the Left (1972). With the war in Vietnam in full swing and the long term effects of the Manson family murders, the peace and love counter culture was at the end of an era. American society had become more violent and corrupt, as were the films Hollywood was starting to release. And with the new generation’s style of filmmaking and recent MPAA rating system, filmmakers were pushing the boundaries of their films and shocking audiences and critics to the core. With new filmmakers kicking down the door of Hollywood every year, it’s no surprise that soon-to-be horror icon Wes Craven would fit perfectly into the new generation of Hollywood. Craven’s early films fall into the exploitation category. They were severely gruesome, repulsive, appalling, and ended up being banned in several countries. Craven would go on to make films that reflect on contemporary society by using a number of recurring themes and formal filmmaking aesthetics that included:
In film, many times the auteur often uses the medium to convey a moral or make a social commentary. In the case of Howard Hawkes’s original version of Scarface, there is more being portrayed through the characters then merely the story. Hawkes makes a statement about the façade of organized crime, and the farce of the American Dream.
Like most things captured on film for the purpose of being marketed, the richness of gangster life, with sex, money, and power in surplus, is glorified, and thus embraced by the audience. And as a rule, if something works Hollywood repeats it, ala a genre. What Scarface and Little Caesar did was ultimately create a genre assigning powerful qualities to criminals. Such sensationalism started with the newspapers who maybe added a little more color here and there to sell a few more copies, which is portrayed in Scarface’s two newspaper office scenes. Leo Braudy denounces genres as offending “our most common definition of artistic excellence” by simply following a predetermined equation of repetition of character and plot. However, Thomas Schatz argues that many variations of plot can exist within the “arena” that the rules of the genre provide.
There are movies that make you laugh, that make you cry, that blow you away with jaw-dropping, ever-so-satisfying action sequences. And there is Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, an homage to the old Pulp Magazines and crime novels popular in the 1950s. Known for their incredibly dense and complex dialogue and excessive violence, Tarantino adds his trademark nonlinear chronology and thorough character development to create a movie that celebrates the fact that chance governs all of our lives. The film consists of multiple stories that tell of the criminals, gangsters and outliers of Los Angeles, the underbelly of society. It follows Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield as they embark on their mission to recovering a briefcase that
The film Pulp Fiction was an immediate box office success when it was released in 1994 and it was also well received by the critics, and celebrated for the way it appeared to capture exactly a certain pre-millennial angst and dislocation in Western capitalist societies. The term post-modernist, often used to refer to art and architecture, was applied to this film. The pulp fiction refers to popular novels which are bought in large numbers by less well educated people and enjoyed for their entertainment value. The implication is that the film concerns topics of interest to this low culture, but as this essay will show, in fact, the title is ironic and the film is a very intellectual presentation of issues at the heart of contemporary western culture and philosophy.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.