Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (26 page)

There are also more mundane events in the film full of significance that Vincent can’t see. For example, when his Chevy Malibu is keyed in the parking lot, he thinks it’s just bad luck. He complains to Lance: “I had it in storage three years. I was out five days and some dickless piece of shit fucked with it.” In fact, his car was keyed by Butch. This fact is hard to catch in the final cut of the film, but in both the script and a scene filmed but eventually deleted we see Vincent parking his car next to Butch’s while Butch is at Marsellus’s bar. Butch, then, is getting back at Vincent for calling him a “palooka.”

But this fact, like everything else, blows by Vincent. Vincent does exactly the opposite of what the Nietzschean superman is supposed to do. He is blind to the significance of the seemingly random events and doesn’t attend to the danger signs around him. As Nietzsche would say, he fails to become the creator of meaning.

In an unpublished note, Nietzsche calls this condition “passive nihilism.”
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Vincent passively assumes the values of others. He gets his style from imitating Elvis. He wants other people to lavish him with respect without earning it: “A ‘please’ would be nice,” he whiningly complains to the Wolf. And he inherits the values of the gangster underworld without ever questioning them. The Nietzschean free spirit, by contrast, is spontaneous, creative, and continuously questions any values—her own and others. She continually outgrows old values, just as Jules outgrows the gangster values of Vincent.

Nietzsche is often put down as a moral relativist, as someone who thinks that any system of value is just as good as any other because there is no way to adjudicate between them. But this way of thinking about Nietzsche is both a simplification and wrong. While he might think that Vincent’s nihilistic view of life is as bad as a dogmatic or religious one, he also claims that there is a way of going through life that is better than either of them: we can refuse to take any moral system (religious or nihilist) for granted and become the creators of meaning ourselves. Just like Jules does.

All of Tarantino’s films are concerned with ways to end violence, but the theme of the cycle of violence, and of breaking out of the cycle of violence, is perhaps strongest in
Pulp Fiction
. This theme is responsible for the causal structure of the film’s subplots: a violent event in one subplot is the catalyst for another subplot and the violence in it (witness how the killing of Brett sets up Marvin’s death, and how Butch’s killing of his boxing opponent leads to the events with the rednecks).

This theme is also reflected in the film’s cyclical narrative structure: it begins and ends with the same robbery, the rest of the film, in a sense, providing a background and contrast to it so that the audience can understand the significance of the diner-scene climax. In this scene, which stands out from the rest of the film in as much as it is the only sequence in the film that does not end in violence (in spite of the fact that it has the largest potential head-count of all), Jules halts the cycle of violence by giving an interpretation to, by finding meaning in, the chance events of the movie.

In Nietzschean terms, it is discovering meaning in seemingly meaningless and random events that makes one strong, and only the strong can escape the cycle of violence. If you can’t be a meaning-creator, the film tells us, you’ll get killed.
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The reason you get killed is not because you kill: everyone kills. There is no ethical punishment; Tarantino’s is not a religious moral
universe. Rather, you get killed because you take the world at face value and hubristically fail to attend to the danger signs around you. You’re blind to the significance of seemingly random events. Jules does see the signs, and he is strong enough to stop. Vincent is blind, and ends up dead.

We don’t want to suggest that there’s a perfect fit between Nietzsche and
Pulp Fiction
. If there were, the film would probably not be as enjoyable as it is. It would be a dry illustration of some abstract philosophical theses, which rarely makes for good drama.

There are several aspects of Jules’s mystical experience, for example, that might not fit the superman model. For one thing, Jules calls his experience religious, and says it was the “hand of God” that came down and stopped the bullets. That doesn’t sound very Nietzschean at all. Furthermore, his new interpretation of the Ezekiel 25:17 passage still seems to be religiously inspired—he says he’s “trying real hard to be the shepherd.” How does that square with our claim that Jules is a Nietzschean superman?

Firstly, the fact that Jules uses religious imagery and concepts shouldn’t surprise us. He doesn’t have any other way to express the deep existential realization he’s just had. We shouldn’t expect him to start spouting Nietzschean terminology when he has no inkling of it at all. After all, Jules is a real, three-dimensional character rather than a cardboard-cutout philosophical mouthpiece.

Nietzsche himself was well aware that there is no creation in a vacuum; one can create new values only by using the broken materials of the old values one is familiar with. For example, Nietzsche himself often uses Christian imagery in discussing the superman or free spirit. In his work
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche created the fictional character Zarathustra, which is the closest Nietzsche comes to giving us of an extended illustration of what the superman is like. And in that work Nietzsche actually calls Zarathustra a shepherd.
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He also continually uses
redemption language to characterize Zarathustra and the superman.
¹³³
So the fact that Jules uses religious concepts and imagery should not bar us from seeing him as embodying a Nietzschean free spirit.

As Nietzsche urges, what we need to do is look beneath the surface-level imagery Jules employs and try to figure out the significance of the values he is espousing. When discussing the significance of the “miracle” with Vincent in the diner, Jules says it actually doesn’t matter whether it was an “according-to-Hoyle” miracle. What matters is the significance of the experience as he felt it: it was “a moment of clarity.” Jules’s experience was inherently personal, rather than dogmatic: he is not tempted to think that, through his “miracle,” he discovered some kind of universal meaning everyone should live by. This fits nicely with Nietzsche’s claim that meaning is always perspective-relative: what Jules is saying is, relative to his perspective and experience, it was a miracle. The “objective” question that Vincent is obsessed with is irrelevant.

What this experience lets Jules do is question the value system that has structured his life, and the process of re-evaluating the importance of values is a very Nietzschean reaction. But, critically, Jules does not do this by lapsing into a religious metaphysics—he doesn’t claim that meaning is provided by an infinitely important heavenly realm. And there’s no hint that he is now dogmatic, thinking that everyone has to see the world his way.

Rather, what is Jules’s new plan for his life? “I’m just going to walk the earth. You know, like Caine in
Kung Fu
.” Walking the earth and seeking new adventures is actually just what Nietzsche’s fictional hero Zarathustra does. Vincent, of course, would be just as negative about Zarathustra as he is about Jules: “They got a name for that, Jules; it’s called a bum.” But Jules is strong enough to shrug off Vincent’s negativity. Jules no longer relies on others’ approval or values in deciding how to live his life. In effect, his experience has given him a new kind of freedom, precisely of the kind that Nietzsche would be proud:
“Whoever has attained intellectual freedom even to a small extent cannot feel but as a wanderer upon the face of the earth—and not as a traveler toward some final destination; for that does not exist.”
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LUKE CUDDY and MICHAEL BRUCE

 

If you’ve ever studied Buddhism, we know what you’re thinking. How could we even dream of associating a movie series by the infamously violent director Quentin Tarantino with such a peaceful, spiritual, and joyful practice? How can the pitiful, bloody mess Beatrix Kiddo makes of the Crazy 88 be explained in any Buddhist system?

We admit, you might have a point. But we want to bring a couple of things to your attention. First, take note of the “could” in our title. The word implies that Beatrix is not yet enlightened. As we will see, in Buddhism there is never a reason to dwell on the past, since the world and everything in it is impermanent. So if it’s possible for Beatrix to put her murderous past behind her, who’s to say she can’t one day reach enlightenment? Second, the Dalai Lama himself tells us that the Buddha forbade killing, but he indicated that under certain circumstances it could be justified. Is the revenge story of Beatrix Kiddo one of those circumstances?

There are several schools of Buddhism. Some schools are detailed, like Tibetan Buddhism, while others, like Zen Buddhism, don’t have grueling, laundry-list-like instructions. Luckily for us, there are core concepts underlying every school.

What does it mean to be enlightened? Enlightenment (also known as “Nirvana”) is, normally, the culmination of the entire Buddhist practice. Enlightenment is a sublime bliss, the end to
all suffering, the highest spiritual attainment. What we mean in English by the word “happiness” is not enlightenment. In fact, Western reviewers of Eastern thought often miss this point.
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The theatrical joy of a nineteen-year-old whose father just bought her a 2007 Mustang is not happiness in the Buddhist sense. Enlightenment is a higher experience of existence, the climax of a lifetime of practice in most Buddhist systems. It’s not the fulfillment of a desire but the release from desire, the un-learning of attachment and deluded ideas about the world.

The path out of suffering is the path to enlightenment. Buddhism tells us that human beings seek an escape from suffering. Suffering can be psychological or physical. In the psychological case, you might lose your copy of
Kill Bill Volume 2
and feel sorrow as a result. Physical suffering is the pain of being whipped, burned, hit, or, of course, having your arm chopped off by a Hattori Hanzo sword. The psychological can impact the physical: when you are depressed or stressed, you feel it in your gut, shoulders, and forehead. Your psychological state has a bearing on your actions. Depending on this state you treat people differently. And other people, depending on their respective states, treat you differently. Beatrix’s state of anger, for example, makes her a more hostile person in general, despite the fact that the object of her anger is only Bill’s assassination squad.

To a Buddhist, all aspects of existence are
interconnected
. In the interconnected world, causes and results are linked and therefore interdependent. Think of an ecosystem. Every part of the ecosystem plays a specific and interdependent role. If there is a change in one aspect of the system, then every other facet changes in a causal response. The river is the home of the fish, crawdads, water spiders, and beavers. The river is cut into the bank of the surface of the earth. Plants and shrubs grow in the top soil and their roots grow down to drink from the river and water below. Deer and other animals consume the vegetation, fruit, and river water, and there is a whole life-dependent cycle of predator and prey which seeks a balance of sustainability. If one aspect of the system is off, then all other aspects are
affected. In other words, an ecosystem is a collection of interdependent causes and results, existing in an interconnected world.

Another way to understand interconnectedness is through the principle of Karma. To a Buddhist, Karma is the law of causation and is dependent on the interconnectedness of phenomena. Karma does not deal with any notion of justice. It deals with what is, with what causes what. Simply stated, all the actions a person undertakes have consequences.

Think of the “Butterfly Effect.” The Butterfly Effect goes back to nineteenth-century mathematicians and chaos theory, but some of us remember it from the movie with Ashton Kutcher.
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Like Karma, the Butterfly Effect is based on the idea that all causes are interconnected. The Butterfly Effect typically deals with time travel, and the idea that changing something of seemingly miniscule import (like killing a butterfly) can have drastic consequences in the future (like a completely altered world). While the Buddhist does not advocate building a time machine, the principle of a single event having future consequences is the essence of Karma. But a Buddhist’s understanding of Karma and suffering is deeper than any notion of time travel, so while a fictional Sci-Fi character goes back in time to keep the butterfly from being killed, the Buddhist never kills the butterfly to begin with.

A Buddhist recognizes the cause of suffering and puts an end to it. She recognizes that causes and results are interdependent and to stop a result, she must stop its cause. Let’s say you are getting ready to watch your DVD of
Kill Bill Volume 2
. You put the DVD in the player, turn on the TV, and hit
play
. But you see static rather than the
Kill Bill
menu. What is the cause? Eventually you realize you forgot to hit “
TV/Video
” so the TV is not reading from the proper input. You hit the appropriate button, and,
voilà
, you can watch
Kill Bill
in peace! You have also just understood and utilized the Buddhist principle of Karma:
you recognized the cause (your failure to hit the
TV/Video
button) of a specific result (a screen of static instead of the
Kill Bill
Menu). And you changed the result at the cause.