Tarantino’s
Pulp Fiction
, which the class had recently studied on assignment, could not compete with the emotional impact of real violence striking close to home, Dave reflected. Many of the students in his class had known the murdered girl, if only casually. Dave had known her himself. It had taken him a while to place her among the two hundred or so students who enrolled in his classes each year, but he remembered her now through association with the girl sitting in the front row to the right of his lectern, Sheri Kuttner. Kuttner and Edith Foster had both taken one of his courses in the last spring semester. They had sat together in the front row.
The Edith Foster Dave Lindstrom remembered had been a strikingly beautiful girl, very aware of herself, supremely confident. Bold glances and warm smiles, always a lot of leg showing. Frequent excuses to linger after class asking questions she already knew the answer to, or stopping by his office …
He would never have cast her as a victim, Dave thought.
He shook off the distraction, not liking the direction of his thoughts, which seemed to him uncharitable.
“So,” he said, “is
Pulp Fiction
too violent?”
His question caught their attention. Mention of the title of Quentin Tarantino’s film was the motion picture equivalent of a buzz word.
“Heck no!” one student said firmly.
“Why not? There’s casual violence, gratuitous blood all over the place.”
“No there isn’t. Everything in that movie is appropriate to the situation and the characters. Hey, it’s not like
Natural Born Killers
or one of those.”
“That picture was gross,” a girl said.
Playing devil’s advocate to stimulate the discussion, Dave said, “Isn’t that a little like the female leads who are always saying that baring their breasts and having sex on the kitchen counter are essential to the revelation of the character they’re playing? Isn’t that what Tarantino is doing with violence?”
There was laughter, followed by instant protests. “It’s not the same.” “No way.”
“What’s wrong with bare breasts?” another student asked.
“When was the last time you saw a guy’s dong on the big screen in living color?” a coed retorted.
Dave let the discussion run a minute, until it threatened to digress completely. Pulling it back on track, he said, “In England the script for
Pulp Fiction
is the best-selling script ever published in that country. How do you account for that?”
“That’s what I mean,” one of the movie’s defenders argued. “It’s the language that makes it great. I mean, you have to pay attention. You read it, the violence isn’t bad at all. What you have on the page is the dialogue, quirky characters, the humor.”
“But isn’t that the problem?” Dave persisted. “The impact of visual violence on the big screen? Isn’t that simply too easy a way to grab your audience’s attention? Dole out a little violence to make them squirm?”
“Tarantino’s sending it up—that’s the point!”
“He doesn’t give us that Peckinpah slow-mo business,” another student said.
Dave listened as the debate took hold. The students—a generation younger than he was—had a different reaction to film violence than he did. The way Dave saw it, younger filmgoers had become desensitized to violence, inured to a steady diet of severed limbs, flying heads, blood-soaked sheets and spattered walls. The graphic images no longer meant as much to them as they had to an older generation.
They no longer meant as much as they
should
. Violence had become a matter of indifference.
He thought of Glenda’s accusation—that he didn’t want to face the evil, ugliness and violence of the real world. Not true, he insisted to himself—he didn’t want to glorify or exploit it.
Or was he hiding his head in the sand? America
was
a violent society.
“It’s always against women,” one of the students was saying.
Dave glanced at her. Sheri Kuttner. An
Pulp Fiction
, which the class had recently studied on assignment, could not compete with the emotional impact of real violence striking close to home, Dave reflected. Many of the students in his class had known the murdered girl, if only casually. Dave had known her himself. It had taken him a while to place her among the two hundred or so students who enrolled in his classes each year, but he remembered her now through association with the girl sitting in the front row to the right of his lectern, Sheri Kuttner. Kuttner and Edith Foster had both taken one of his courses in the last spring semester. They had sat together in the front row.
The Edith Foster Dave Lindstrom remembered had been a strikingly beautiful girl, very aware of herself, supremely confident. Bold glances and warm smiles, always a lot of leg showing. Frequent excuses to linger after class asking questions she already knew the answer to, or stopping by his office …
He would never have cast her as a victim, Dave thought.
He shook off the distraction, not liking the direction of his thoughts, which seemed to him uncharitable.
“So,” he said, “is
Pulp Fiction
too violent?”
His question caught their attention. Mention of the title of Quentin Tarantino’s film was the motion picture equivalent of a buzz word.
“Heck no!” one student said firmly.
“Why not? There’s casual violence, gratuitous blood all over the place.”
“No there isn’t. Everything in that movie is appropriate to the situation and the characters. Hey, it’s not like
Natural Born Killers
or one of those.”
“That picture was gross,” a girl said.
Playing devil’s advocate to stimulate the discussion, Dave said, “Isn’t that a little like the female leads who are always saying that baring their breasts and having sex on the kitchen counter are essential to the revelation of the character they’re playing? Isn’t that what Tarantino is doing with violence?”
There was laughter, followed by instant protests. “It’s not the same.” “No way.”
“What’s wrong with bare breasts?” another student asked.
“When was the last time you saw a guy’s dong on the big screen in living color?” a coed retorted.
Dave let the discussion run a minute, until it threatened to digress completely. Pulling it back on track, he said, “In England the script for
Pulp Fiction
is the best-selling script ever published in that country. How do you account for that?”
“That’s what I mean,” one of the movie’s defenders argued. “It’s the language that makes it great. I mean, you have to pay attention. You read it, the violence isn’t bad at all. What you have on the page is the dialogue, quirky characters, the humor.”
“But isn’t that the problem?” Dave persisted. “The impact of visual violence on the big screen? Isn’t that simply too easy a way to grab your audience’s attention? Dole out a little violence to make them squirm?”
“Tarantino’s sending it up—that’s the point!”
“He doesn’t give us that Peckinpah slow-mo business,” another student said.
Dave listened as the debate took hold. The students—a generation younger than he was—had a different reaction to film violence than he did. The way Dave saw it, younger filmgoers had become desensitized to violence, inured to a steady diet of severed limbs, flying heads, blood-soaked sheets and spattered walls. The graphic images no longer meant as much to them as they had to an older generation.
They no longer meant as much as they
should
. Violence had become a matter of indifference.
He thought of Glenda’s accusation—that he didn’t want to face the evil, ugliness and violence of the real world. Not true, he insisted to himself—he didn’t want to glorify or exploit it.
Or was he hiding his head in the sand? America
was
a violent society.
“It’s always against women,” one of the students was saying.
Dave glanced at her. Sheri Kuttner. An
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