Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Pulp Fiction" (1994). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

Was 1994 a pinnacle point for Generation Xers?  Four years into the 1990s, moving into their mid 20s, dumping their parents counterculture ways into the dustbin of history, yet filled with confusion with smatterings of angst, but relishing how they were brought up on VHS, video games (coin operated), and shopping malls, whilst trying to figure out if capitalism and entrepreneurism could be rejigged and be "cool" again, admiring first of the so called relatable maverick Billionaires, like Richard Branson.  Then, no doubt, if you were a Gen X Twenty something in 1984, you also began to hear about one of the most relatable filmmakers of the time, a young Quentin Tarantino, after seeing his 1992 "Reservoir Dogs" on VHS, and thought to yourself, this is the movie I could have made (with every 1970s and 1980s pop culture reference attached), and when "Pulp Fiction" (1994) hit the screens, you were floored again, and thought, this is the movie, so coolishly risque, I probably could not have made.

"Pulp Fiction" is very much that nostalgic trip for a many of Gen Xers, who began to look back on the 1980s, as mentioned, to be a popular culture reference point, identifying with what it was like to get hold off a 'video nasty', be it some bizarre 1970s grindhouse movie, that freaked you out, long before Hollywood began to corpertise and politicize into a more conservative element of filmmaking, Tarantino snuck in with Pulp Fiction, within that slight sweet spot between 1990 and 1995, before sex on screen was regulated, then it was all action, gunfights and blood, which later became the norm.  Co-written by Tarantino's friend Roger Avary, when they both worked at the Cali based "Video Archives" store in 1989 (closed in 1995, when Tarantino bought the whole shop, videos and all, and moved it into his house).  Avary had already co-written with Tarantino the 'other' Gen X Tarantino-esque  primer "True Romance" (1993), to which Avary was uncredited for, but was credited for Pulp Fiction.

And after 30 years since its release, and you haven't seen "Pulp Fiction", which is unlikely, you wouldn't be spoilt by any spoilers which would give away the plot, as Pulp Fiction was filmed and edited in a chopped up, jumbled, out-of-order chronological way, within a circular narrative, yet, it all comes together at the end of the movie, which was the start of the movie, with every sequence aligning itself within its cause and effect.  But it is the dialogue, the soundtrack, and the homage to 1960s, 1970s grindhouse, 1980s sleeze/crime cinema, Martin Scorsese (Tarantino's idol), ensuring that plagiarizing, when done correctly is cool, masked within pushing boundaries, i.e., one of the main characters shooting up Heroin as a 'recreational' drug, and a male rape scene, despite the comical connotations, you would never see that from a Hollywood production again, despite Tarantino utilizing the now disgraced Harvey Weinstein "Miramax" pictures at the time.

"Pulp Fiction" from the backlog of current Quentin Tarantino productions, does indeed stand alone as cult classic, which in all of its three decades of irony, pays homage to the cult classics of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.  So, as a hint when you have your next participatory 'cult' cinema night and you choose Pulp Fiction, and the infamous adrenaline needle scene comes up, for a heroin overdosed "Mia" played by Uma Thurman, we usually hold up massive injections, no needles in them of course, whilst reciting the lines for that scene.

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(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema