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Pulp Fiction
Dana Polan
Paperback, 96 pages
ISBN 0-85170-808-0

Thelma & Louise
Marita Sturken
Paperback, 94 pages
ISBN 0-85170-809-9 

Review by Judy James (2000)

The BFI’s Modern Classics series is so patchy. The films seem to be chosen at random. Presumably this is something to do with getting books written; allowing the critics to choose the films. More forethought could have been utilised before starting this process. The critics don’t seem well-chosen, and the choice of films for the range is weird too. Is James Cameron’s Titanic a modern classic? He may be a talented director, but that’s an evil film, and apart from having been made recently and covered in computer generated effects there isn’t anything modern about it. Independence Day, that’s low too. If the BFI wanted an SF film there are innumerable alternate choices.

Iain Sinclair’s Crash might be the exemplar of the range, beside Anne Billson’s smart view of The Thing. Two contrasting approaches, two interpretations by appreciative yet critical writers who know what they’re writing about. But now, in their footsteps, come these. 

Pulp Fiction is a very important film, very influential, very 1990s. It isn’t a classic. And Thelma and Louise isn’t a classic either. Couldn’t we have had Desert Hearts instead? Pulp Fiction and Thelma and Louise are very popular films and worthy of examination, but I don’t see why they were included in this particular series. Maybe the BFI want to attract a larger readership by means of populism. If so then that is not what they should be doing. They should be curating. 

And this isn’t the only difficulty I have with this pair. There may be plenty to say about these big, mainstream films, but Polan and Sturken don’t say much. The BFI ought to be the home of intelligent writing about film, but what we have here is worlds away from Sight and Sound. This is just filler; it’s almost as if the authors’ Film Studies essays were late. 

Polan managed to raise my hopes with his consideration of Tarantino’s popularity and massive fandom. But he compares the film to the internet, for some reason, claiming that to be net literate is to understand the film better. And he meanders off to discuss Samuel L. Jackson’s hair. What next, Travolta’s footwork? He does at least discuss Pulp Fiction’s macho attitudes and considers Tarantino’s allusions to other films, but then goes into meta-fictional territory. And he complains of a lack of message when, surely, Tarantino simply intended the film to be fun. 

As for Thelma and Louise, it’s worse. Sturken is painfully feminist and politically correct, in some kind of misguided attempt to avoid offending women. Well, I’m offended, so it didn’t work. This is just vague and all over the place, and instead of analysis it skates about over the surface.

Sorry! I really wanted to be nice about these. There are some fine books in this range. I don’t consider Thelma and Louise a great film, but I do like it, and Pulp Fiction deserves better than the vitriol sometimes heaped on it in these pages. But there’s nothing to see here apart from the usual great design and stills.