Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (2 page)

Are movies like
Pulp Fiction
and
Kill Bill
themselves disposable, or do they rise above the cultural products to which they refer? Are these movies truly thoughtful, or are they merely elaborate superficial gestures that generate the illusion of theoretical depth through a canny wink? Does Tarantino have a philosophy? Has he ever even read any?

Although Tarantino has a quick and often wicked intellect, his favored genres—the gangster flick, the martial arts epic, the “B” car-chase movie—are ones whose familiar conventions emphasize action over contemplation. One of his pet strategies is to undermine these conventions by indulging in extended sequences of dialogue about topics external to the plot: topics as trivial as fast food and as ponderous as divine will.

Even in the latter case, however, the terms in which “heavy” issues are discussed are often borrowed from mass media representations. The contract killer Jules in
Pulp Fiction
announces his intentions of renouncing worldly pursuits to “walk the earth, like Caine in
Kung Fu
”; the Asian philosophy in
Kill Bill
is no more intensive than what anyone could absorb from watching a few Bruce Lee films. Although an acknowledgment of the conspicuous talkiness of Tarantino’s scripts may be key to philosophical readings such as the ones gathered in this volume, whatever significant insights there are to be gleaned from such readings will most likely not come out of straightforward interpretations of “content.”

This is not to say that Tarantino is unconcerned with questions relevant to traditional philosophical practice. Three particular fascinations recur throughout the body of his work:

At different points in
Pulp Fiction
, hit man Vincent Vega pontificates on the immorality of damaging another man’s car (in the middle of scoring some heroin from his dealer), acknowledges that the gossip he’s repeating is “not a fact” but “just what I heard,” and gives an elaborate account of the different names given to fast-food hamburgers in France. Taken by themselves, these are amusing bits of colorful dialogue; perceived as a pattern throughout fifteen years’ worth of films, they begin to suggest that Tarantino has some interesting philosophical preoccupations.

Nonetheless, much of Tarantino’s appeal to intelligent viewers has less to do with any positive beliefs or values evidenced in the films than with their exemplifying a larger trend in pop culture towards texts (movies, music, books, images) that flaunt their knowing enmeshment in and dependence on a multi-layered network of other texts. Part of what makes these films interesting to look at is the way they themselves “look at” prior films, sometimes through explicit repetitions (for example, the visual quoting in
Pulp Fiction
of set design from John Boorman’s 1967
Point Blank
). This play of surfaces renders any literal-minded consideration of, say, criminal ethics in Tarantino’s work problematic: the commentor must deal not only with what the characters think, say, and do, but with the way in which they recall similar characters who have thought and said and done it all before. This presents a formidable challenge to the writers in Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy, a challenge they take on from various angles and with different intellectual modes of attack.

Enough preambling; “Let’s go to woik,” as Joe Cabot would say. Sit back and enjoy the ride, confident in the knowledge that despite the sudden eruptions of random and bloody violence that happen without warning in Tarantino’s world, you are safe with this volume’s gang of thinkers behind the wheel—unless your name happens to be Marvin.

BRUCE RUSSELL

 

 

In the
Symposium
(line 221e), Alcibiades says of Socrates that he couches his arguments in the most mundane terms, talking of pack asses, blacksmiths, shoemakers, tanners, and the like, and “he always seems to be saying the same old thing in just the same old way.” On the surface this seems mistaken since Socrates talked about piety, justice, courage and a host of different issues including the “Why be moral?” question. But we could see all of Socrates’s inquiries directed toward just one question: “How should we live?”

In an interview in 2004, Quentin Tarantino said: “I’m kind of making the same movie again and again and again.” On the surface this seems mistaken since his films are about a jewelry heist gone bad (
Reservoir Dogs
), the lives of two “low-rent hitmen” and their boss (
Pulp Fiction
), a woman’s clever plot to take money from a dealer in illegal arms (
Jackie Brown
), and a woman’s revenge against her ex-lover (
Kill Bill
). What do these films have in common?

The first and most obvious thing is that in all the films something goes awry in the life of some cruel, brutal, and violent man due to the intentional actions, or negligence, of other people. In
Reservoir Dogs
the jewelry heist goes bad because an undercover cop has tipped off the police. In
Pulp Fiction
, some young criminals have failed to pay off their debt to a crime boss, and later a prizefighter double-crosses him. In
Jackie Brown
, two
employees of the arms dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) are caught by the police in illegal activities, which makes the gunrunner fear that they will testify against him in order to go free or receive a reduced sentence. In
Kill Bill
, the girlfriend (Uma Thurman) of Bill (David Carradine), the leader of a group of paid assassins, tries to start a new life away from him by marrying the owner of a small-town used record store, which makes Bill very angry.

The second thing that these films have in common is that brutal and violent behavior ensues as a result of what goes awry in the lives of the violent men. As Bill says at the end of
Kill Bill Volume 2
, “I’m a killer. I’m a murdering bastard, you know that, and there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard.” Once the rage of these violent and brutal men is unleashed, people suffer terribly, innocents and non-innocents alike. Often the actions of these men ultimately result in their own deaths, but not always. Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and his boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), do not die in
Pulp Fiction
, and neither does Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) in
Reservoir Dogs
, though he is arrested. What happens to the good (or at least, better) people in the films is often a matter of luck, both good and bad, and the cruel intentions of the angry, evil men. Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) is lucky that one of the hitmen out to get him is on the toilet when he returns to his apartment to retrieve a treasured watch. The undercover cop Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) in
Reservoir Dogs
is unlucky that the woman from whom he tries to commandeer a car carries a handgun in her glove compartment and uses it to shoot him in the stomach. Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is lucky that Ordell’s associate, Louis Gara (Robert De Niro), is not more curious as to why bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster), who knows Jackie, is at the dress shop with her when a money pick-up is to take place. She is also lucky that Louis kills Melanie (Bridget Fonda), Ordell’s girlfriend, because that prevents her from telling Ordell what she knows about the pick-up.

Finally, what is common to all the Tarantino films is that there are glimpses of compassion and morality among the tough, cruel, and immoral people that populate them. Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) takes pity on Mr. Orange when Orange is shot. He holds Orange’s hand, and encourages and comforts him, as he drives toward the warehouse where he is to rendezvous with
the others involved in the heist. When they arrive, Mr. White holds Orange in his arms, again comforts and encourages him, and assures him that he is not going to die. After a night out on the town with Marsellus’s girlfriend Mia (Uma Thurman), Vincent Vega (John Travolta), one of the “low-rent hitmen” in
Pulp Fiction
, tells himself in her bathroom that he must have just one drink and then go home because he is facing a moral test involving loyalty and “being loyal is important.” In that same film Jules Winnfield spares the couple who try to rob the restaurant, and its patrons, in the coffee shop where he is having breakfast with Vincent Vega. In
Kill Bill Volume 1
, Bill tells Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) not to kill “The Bride” (Uma Thurman) because to “sneak into her room in the night like a filthy rat and kill her in her sleep” would “lower us.” In that same film The Bride and Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox) postpone their fight to the death when Vernita’s daughter comes home from school so the daughter won’t be traumatized. In addition, he clearly loves his daughter and is very gentle with her.

The “good guys” also sometimes show great courage and a strong moral sense in Tarantino’s films. In
Pulp Fiction
, Butch goes back to save Marsellus, the crime boss who is trying to kill him, from some perverts who want to rape and torture him. Butch does this because he thinks it is the right thing to do and even though he thereby puts himself back at risk. In
Reservoir Dogs
the cop that Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) has captured refuses to disclose that Mr. Orange is the undercover cop that tipped off the police, even under severe torture and when facing the prospect of immolation. So within a sea of brutality and immorality, Tarantino still depicts some people, both good and bad, acting admirably and displaying admirable human emotions.

Can we learn anything about what real people are like by watching Tarantino’s films? We might learn that Quentin Tarantino thinks that cruel and evil people eventually get their comeuppance (even Marsellus gets raped and beaten, though not killed, and Mr. Pink gets arrested) unless they have had a change of heart (like Jules Winnfield in
Pulp Fiction
and Beatrix Kiddo in
Kill Bill
). Even that is doubtful, however, for there is no reason
to think that the message a series of films delivers reflects what the writer and filmmaker thinks about real-life people. He might just be offering a point of view that he does not share.

Further, even if Tarantino did hold that view about real people, would his films help to establish its truth? Noel Carroll argues that no one could justify the view that humans are taller than monkeys through a fictional film that shows them to be taller.
¹
So how could a fictional film justify the view that it is usually not in the long-term self-interest for bad people to act badly? Such a film might remind us of something that we have forgotten, or that is not at the forefront of our minds, that would support such a view. Perhaps it reminds us of statistics we have read that support the idea that the “bad guys” often get caught by the authorities, or suffer at the hands of other “bad guys.” But just as likely, it will remind us of instances that we have read of in the newspaper about some bad guy getting his comeuppance, and that sort of anecdotal evidence will not support the view that crime doesn’t pay. Such evidence does not include cases where the bad guys get away with their heinous crimes and so does not constitute a representative sample.

Perhaps Tarantino’s films can impart some practical advice: think twice before you engage in cruel and brutal behavior, for it may not pay in the end; the suffering you ultimately experience, or your loss of life, will outweigh whatever satisfaction revenge, and the feeling that justice has been served, might afford you. But even here, how good that advice is depends on the probability in the real world that you will be caught, or feel remorse for, your evil deeds. That all the bad guys in Tarantino’s films pay in some way for their evil deeds is not evidence that all, or even most, of the bad guys in real life do the same.

But is there some philosophical point that Tarantino’s films make or question that they raise? As I’ve argued elsewhere, a film without explicit philosophical argumentation cannot justify
some general philosophical proposition.
²
Examples can serve as counterexamples to philosophical theses, but they cannot by themselves establish such theses. A film of some philosophical dialogue could establish some general philosophical theses, but, of course, it would contain explicit argumentation. And fictional films can raise philosophical questions, as, say,
The Matrix
does, but this is different from justifying some general philosophical proposition. These general points apply, of course, to Tarantino’s films, which, I will argue, raise philosophical questions about miracles and morality.

In
Pulp Fiction
, there is what might pass for a philosophical conversation between Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield about the nature and justification of a miracle. One of the young men from whom Jules and Vincent come to collect steps out of a bathroom and fires six shots at them from a “hand cannon,” at point-blank range, without hitting either of them. Jules thinks that their not being hit was a result of “divine intervention”; Vincent, that it was “luck.” Later at a restaurant Vincent and Jules discuss what happened earlier that day. When Jules asks Vincent what a miracle is, he responds, “When God makes the impossible possible, but this morning I don’t think qualifies.”

Generally, philosophers think of a miracle as a violation of a law of nature, like the law of gravity, by a divine being. So a miracle would involve God’s making something
actual
that is physically, though not logically, impossible. There is no contradiction in the idea of water’s turning into wine, unlike in the idea of a circle’s being square, but its turning into wine is contrary to the laws of chemistry. So if some divine being really turned water into wine, or brought someone who was really dead back to life, that would be a miracle.