Tarentino’s vision of violence
who is using the bathroom. Vega is subsequently shot by Butch as he exits the bathroom. This is somewhat comic due to the careless mistake he has made and therefore leads to violence being again normalized. After he gains possession of the watch, he has a violent altercationwithMarcellusWallace. They end up in a sex dungeon where Butch manages to escape while Wallace is being sodomized in the other room. Butch then returns to the basement with a samurai sword and kills the rapists. In this instance killing is deemed acceptable as it prevents further crimes against the criminals. This illicits audience empathy. The third act cuts back to John Travolta’s character Vince, who accidentally kills someone in a somewhat comic fashion, hence again normalizing violence. The final section of the film summarizes the main theme; violence is cool. Jules Winnfield acts both heroically and calm as he successfully stops the robbery suggested in the opening scene with no loss of life: ironically in the end pacifism prevails In conclusion, an exploration of the way in which one of my favourite film directors has chosen to display and subvert violence, has made me consider the pros and cons of the normalization of violence within the media. Unfortunately, we live in a digital age where graphic images of war are constantly circulating the internet and the news channels on television. In the words of Lisa Coulthard ‘Tarantino roots his violence more firmly within a filmic fantasmatic space of artifice and r eflexivity’. 5 While it is a sad reality that such suffering exists perhaps it is necessary for violence to be shown in ways which are not so brutal in order to help us cope with the sad reality of the damaging effect which violence has on the real world.
Bibliography
Berger, J. (1980) ‘Turner and the Barbershop’, from About Looking . London Coulthard, L. (2009) ‘Torture Tunes: Tarantino, Popular Music, and New Hollywood Ultraviolence’, Music and the Moving Image 2.2: 1 - 6 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/musimoviimag.2.2.0001) Tarantino, Q. ‘Why His Films Are So Violent | On Directing’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SytTJzhhwOA&t=268s
5 Coulthard 2009: 5.
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