should something bad happened to jimmy?
he seem like he deserved something bad to happen to him.
shareJimmy saved the day! Why do you wish ill upon him?
sharehe was whining and saying the n word.
shareWhining? He was upset that his friend Jules came to his house in the early a.m. with a car he wanted cleaned. Oh, yeah, and there was a body missing half its skull in the backseat, brains all over the upholstery and everything.
His wife was coming home soon and would divorce Jimmy if she found Jimmy's buddy Jules there with the dirty car, and let's not forget the dead body in the backseat.
So, maybe he's not whining? His level of temper is actually pretty reasonable.
As to the n-word, Jimmy's wife Bonnie is black, his friend Jules is black, and I'm guessing Jimmy was the one white friend in his social circles. In the '90s, he probably absorbed a certain way of talking which utilized that language. I wouldn't personally condone it, but given that Jules doesn't even comment on it, I'm guessing it's par for the course and not a big deal among them. Maybe they have an understanding. Is Jimmy a racist? I don't think so. Do you think Jules would tolerate any racist BS coming his way? Neither do I.
i figured jules was holding back because of the situation he was in and jimmy was understandably upset. but i think for the audience sake jimmy was annoying and using the n word and should have had a football thrown at his nuts at the end of the scene.
shareMaybe Jules was, but that's why I included the bit emphasizing their general friendship. Jules knew Jimmy already and felt comfortable enough in their friendship to bring a corpse to his house. So, my guess is that they're tight and have known each other for some time. This is relevant because it means that Jimmy probably isn't running around being a big ol' racist; Jules would've chewed him out and cut ties. My point is that Jimmy isn't a racist. Again, with his friend group and Jules' reaction, Occam's Razor suggests that he knows he's not crossing a line with Jules. This is just how these two mates speak around one another.
The only other explanation is that Jules is afraid to cross Jimmy. So, the gourmet coffee bathrobe guy is a badder wallet-word than Jules? Uh-uh.
As to the audience:
First, 1994's audience didn't care the same way the audience today cares. Second, audiences shouldn't always get what they want. Focus groups often push studios for happier endings, even when those endings wreck movies. Long-term, the merits of the story are almost always better than supplying an audience what they want. Finally, if an audience can't understand that Jimmy and Jules are tight and have an understanding, and if Jules doesn't have a problem, then maybe they shouldn't either, well...why would I want that audience dictating to Tarantino and Roger Avery what to do?
you're right, jimmy probably isn't a racist, just very upset and being colorful (no pun intended) with his quip.
i was pondering this because a friend of mine told me that amazon? die hard 3 has cropped out the sign mcclane wears in the beginning of the film, and wondered how the black audience or the audience of today would feel about this scene in pulp fiction.
i've lent black people copies of true romance and they weren't disturbed about the hopper scene, as far as i know.
also i remember katt williams says he will kick quentin's ass or maybe kill him if he ever was in the same location as him.
shareSeveral people had this reaction. Spike Lee's was the most vitriolic, I think.
Here's Samuel L. Jackson making a good point about Quentin and his verbiage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBg-1WPRtQs
Tarantino writes a certain way, heavily influenced by a lot of '70s Blaxploitation movies, so that word comes up. Proof of the pudding and all that, he's done stuff like given Pam Greer a starring role in a movie, she a middle-aged black woman. Even today, how many directors (white, male directors) are at the height of their game and are making an action-thriller centred around a middle-aged black woman? He even race-swapped the character from the novel (with Elmore Leonard's blessing), so he was doing that before it was woke.
TV versions of Die Hard 3 have certainly censored that scene, yes, apparently to the extent that it doesn't even make sense anymore.
I think a lot of audiences today would react poorly to this scene in Pulp Fiction, but I also am of the opinion that a lot of audiences today can be quite babyish. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be offended by something like this, but they react in a babyish manner. For instance, a previous audience might watch Pulp Fiction and go, "I hated the Jimmy character because he uses this language," but today it seems the audience goes, "Jimmy used the n-word, so the movie is bad and they shouldn't have made it. They should change that scene or pull the movie." So, that's what I mean by "babyish".
My feeling is that a lot of the time this outrage isn't directly tied to race. I see white people up in arms about this stuff as often as other races.
i was thinking, if this was shown at cannes nowadays that it would't had won the awards and praise it won back then.
shareTough to say. Movies to this day are influenced by Tarantino's work here with Pulp Fiction, so assuming it hadn't shown up in 1994 and movies still hadn't seen anything like this, then I think there's a good shot they'd still have loved it. The n-word usage would have sewn seeds of controversy and it likely wouldn't have become a total bonanza like it was, but I think it still would have made "best of the year" lists and most negative reviews would have zeroed in on that word and its use (ignoring the movie itself, as per the "babyish" thing I was talking about).
Of course, if it were made today, he might not have included those words anyway.
Saying the n word is impolite, not a mortal sin.
share