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Stylistic Innovations in Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction:” Toward an Aesthetics of Violence

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The influence of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction on contemporary American cinema has been profound in the last two decades. It was actually Tarantino’s second film after his already groundbreaking debut Reservoir Dogs, both of which he wrote and directed, though it was Pulp Fiction that ultimately established its creator as an influential filmmaker and made him legendary around the world. Tarantino’s affection for different film genres can be noticed throughout all of his films. He usually pays tribute to them by using his distinct knowledge of their conventions and blending them into his own films. It is not that he just replicates them; in fact, he adds refreshing stylistic elements and recreates them into completely new shapes. His films also are full of references to a variety of different movies as well as diverse pop cultural minutiae. The assembly of numerous generic influences in one single movie, which Tarantino consciously practices, can be identified as characteristic of his distinctive style. These features as well as the filmmaker’s novelistic approach to narrative construction have become his own, artistic signature. As in Pulp Fiction, conventions of classical gangster films are incorporated and reworked so that it becomes something fresh and innovative.

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