The Meaningful Expressions In The Narrative Form Of Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino,with his highly stylized film texts,has become one of the most illustrious cinema director in the world;his road to fame is almost another typical example of "American Dream",which arouses a great deal of interest among medium and academia.Pulp Fiction,as the top of Quentin form text,not only contributes significantly to the development of global movie industries,but also greatly influences on Chinese film-making.In this paper,I will further study the meaningful expressions in the narrative form of Quentin's masterpiece,Pulp Fiction,from the perspective of narratology and within the context of postmodernism.The first chapter will serve as an overview of this dissertation and an introduction about the research of Pulp Fiction nowadays.The studies of this movie abroad mainly focus on offering movie assessments,which are usually script-based.And the domestic researches,however,are inclined to emphasize the aesthetics of violence and the characters of postmodernism in Quentin's film texts.Even so,these two essential elements are just roughly discussed and researched.So,the lack of detailed studies about Pulp Fiction inspires the author to start relevant studies of it,and enables the author to show the value of this paper.The second chapter makes a thorough exploration of the narrative form of Pulp Fiction,which contains three parts as follows: the unique structure of the plate spliced,the time pattern of staggered return,and the varied focus on the subject.The three sides of the narrative form interact with each other.The structure of the plate spliced contributes to the time pattern of staggered return and the change of the focus subject;the polyphony caused by the subject changed precisely forms a natural plate changes and staggered return of the narrative time.Therefore,staggered return of the narrative time adds an unique sense of maze and absurdity into the splice plate structure and polyphony.The third chapter will discuss the characteristic narrative content of Pulp Fiction,which mainly values in three aspects: depicting the violence in a playful way,marginalizing the characters in the story,and applying the life elements vulgarly.The movie is permeated with violence,which are vividly against rationality,but and just for fascination and entertainment.The text of Pulp Fiction aims to unfold the lives of marginal people who are caught in the violence and to overturn the stereotype of gangster in commercial films in an ordinary way.The whole movie is full of popular elements of life,which are even made to be vulgar on purpose.The violence becomes casual and generalized owing to the latter two aspects which are actually to support the first one “depicting the violence in a playful way”.The fourth chapter focuses on the narrative significance of Pulp Fiction's narrative form on the basis of the former two chapters.Firstly,the narrative intents implied in this text,including digesting meaning,anti-hero and revealing the absurd,will be analyzed to reveal how the narrative form fortifies and enriches the contents.Secondly,by contrasting with the significance which the film has conveyed,the significance and functions accomplished the form independently will be argued.The three forms not only show puzzling strange effect of the text,but also repel the audience to participate in the construction of the text meaning,which will have the text significance hugely proliferated.In the conclusion,the significance and achievements of Pulp Fiction will be generated briefly at first.That is,the Pulp Fiction has not only promoted the development of American independent cinema,but established an excellent template for post-modern form of film narrative.Additionally,by reference to the Pulp Fiction,considering the situation of Chinese film within the postmodern context at present,we will get enlightenment and inspirations for the further development of Chinese film-making.