Tarentino’s vision of violence
violence. The couple kiss passionately before robbing the bank establishing love and crime as key themes throughout the film.
These series of frames are mirrored in the following scene in which John Travolta and Samuel Jackson's characters, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield engage in a somewhat normal or banal conversation. Vince makes the following casual observation from his European visit ‘they have the same shit that they have over here . . . In Paris you can buy a beer in McDonalds . . . You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese . . . They call it a Royale with cheese!’ 4 Subsequently, as they exit the vehicle, it becomes clear that their intentions are somewhat dark: weaponry is shown which implies impending violence. In the following scene love is shown being linked to violence as the protagonists discuss their boss throwing another man off of a balcony for giving his wife a foot massage. At the centre of this conversation are the themes of love and violence and throughout the film the question of the role of love as the motivation for violence is continually posed. The next section of the film concerns a boxer named Butch Coolidge (played by Bruce Willis) and the fight which Vince and Jules’ boss, Marcellus Wallace (played by Ving Rhames) , paid him to fix. The profession of the boxer conflates violence with entertainment as people endure pain in order to put on a show. This is also combined with the excessive amounts of money that are associated with boxing conjuring themes of the commodification of violence. This triggers comparisons between the hitmen Vince and Jules shown earlier in the film and the Boxer, Butch. The main narrative surrounding the boxer concerns a missing watch which Butch attempts to retrieve because of its sentimental value: a value established when the character is introduced to us as a child being lectured by an army man named Captain Koons (played by Christopher Walken) who fought with his father. The story which the captain tells the boy is that he comes from a long line of people who have fought in wars. Violence is therefore prominent in his lineage causing him to respect his forefathers by becoming a boxer. This establishes violence as a dominant theme in his life. After the fight (which the character played by Bruce Willis was paid to lose), it becomes apparent that not only did he win, but he also killed his opponent. He is made aware of this in the taxi home when the driver asks him whether he feels remorseful about the death. He replies that he has no regrets which therefore adds to the theme of the normalization of not only violence but death. When they return to his room Butch and his French girlfriend named Fabienne (played byMaria de Mediros), engage in fellatio. The implication here is that he is rewarded for his ruthlessness this introduces the concept that not only the normalization of violence but also its glorification which is being examined. This normalization is further shown in the subsequent scene when Butch wakes to the sound of gunshots: the soundtrack to a film being aired on the TV in his hotel room. This again expresses the commodification of violence in the form of entertainment while also portraying how violence has been normalized in popular culture: perhaps a justification of the film's stance as it is already commonplace in the film industry already. Butch gets angry and throws a fit as he comes to realize that the sentimental watch has been returned to his apartment. For the first time here aggression as the dark side of violence is expressed. The boxer is then forced to return to his apartment where he finds a gun which he realizes belongs to Vince Vega
4 Royale With Cheese - Pulp Fiction (2/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pkq_eBHXJ4&t=90s.
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