Patrons of the motion picture industry in the US have been voicing in recent years a desire for a more stylistic and technically original aesthetics. This movement has manifested itself most noticeably in fans of the action-adventure genre. A pair of hip, young film directors have responded with stark portraits of a society negotiating its collective attitude about the past. Curiously, the films of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez present allusions to the popular culture of the past juxtaposed with graphically violent images. Theorists have stated that when dealing with the past, “points of uncertainty and ambiguity will inevitably arise” (Davis 79). Tarantino and Rodriguez go much further. The two directors call into question the very extent to which society can trust in the existence of a stable past. They subvert the notion that nostalgia establishes “reassurance and direction” (Harper 27) in the contemporary individual by replacing an idealized past with a pastiche of stereotype and gore.
Traditional conceptions of the past include an idealization, even a glorification, of that which came before. Nostalgia rarely has as one of its features a critical eye. Before the dawn of postmodernism, society looked at the past as signifying the good old days. Fredric Jameson theorizes that several radical changes took place when postmodernism began. In his groundbreaking article, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” Jameson argues that the traditional distinction between high culture and pop culture vanished. Postmodernists ushered in an era in which high modernist artists such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound would no longer be revered with religious vigor simply for existing in an idealized past. The highbrow content of modernist art leaves itself wide open for parody, but the postmodernists, not believing in “the linguistic norm,” use pastiche instead:
Jameson further asserts that originality is no longer possible: “all that is left is to imitate dead styles” (18). As an example, he indicates the nostalgia film, which takes the audience back to a different time, either through blatant subject matter (American Graffiti) or by recalling dead genres (Star Wars), or sometimes even by doing both (Raiders of the Lost Ark). Each of these examples presents the past in a positive light; indeed, they were each (in different ways) part of the nostalgia boom of the 1970s. Adults enjoying Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were happily taken back to the time when they enjoyed serial science fiction at the movies. American Graffiti prompted the success of the television show “Happy Days,” about a time when everything was apparently happy. These films are pastiche in that they imitate dead styles and/or a dead era, but they do so optimistically.
Twenty years later, the nostalgia film is, above all, less nostalgic. We are living in a post-nostalgic era. The films of Tarantino and Rodriguez conceive of the past in a radically different way then, say, those of George Lucas. They connect the past not with hula-hoops and poodle skirts, nor with jet fighters and lasers, but rather with violence and organized crime.
These films, particularly Tarantino’s, have in fact been attacked for portraying gratuitous violence and sensationalizing the criminal life. Critics of this ilk, including the 1996 Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole, fail to realize the mode of spectacle in which Rodriguez and Tarantino operate. These two choose to work in the crime genre, but their combination of outrageous plot twists and mundane diversions may just as well exist within the framework of a comedy or a horror film. The pair allow what Madan Sarup calls “a figural cinema”; that is, the construction of imagery so striking that “the fixed nature of reality is questioned.” Nostalgia serves as an arena in which to subvert the stable ideas of time in plot structure (176).
In the opening scene of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1991), the
story of a jewel heist infiltrated by an undercover police officer, eight
hoodlums in a diner discuss divergent readings of the Madonna video “Like
A Virgin.” Each gangster possesses confidence in the accuracy of his interpretation
of the artist. The conversation, however, quickly turns to a discussion
of the music of the 1970s, a music for which the hoodlums appear to have
a great affinity. Yet one of the gangsters, Nice Guy Eddie, is confused
about the subject matter of a song from that era:
Mr. Pink: Yeah, man, it’s fuckin’ great, isn’t it? You know what I heard the other day? “Heart Beat is a Love Beat,” by Little Tony Frankle and the Frankle Family. I haven’t heard that since I was in the fifth fucking grade.
Eddie: When I was coming down here, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” came on. I ain’t heard that song since it was big and back then I heard it a million trillion fucking times. This was the first time I realized the girl singing the song is the one who shot Andy.
Mr. Brown: You didn’t know that Vicki Lawrence was the one who shot Andy?
Eddie: I thought the cheatin’ wife shot Andy.
Mr. Blond: They sing it at the end of the song.
Eddie: I know, motherfucker, I just heard it.
Throughout the film, characters listen to retro pop music on K Billy’s
Super Sounds of the 1970s, hearing care-free songs such as “Little Green
Bag,” by George Baker Selection, and “Hooked on a Feeling,” by Blue Suede.
Tarantino hints at his reasoning for including the music in Reservoir
Dogs:
As the audience gets inundated with allusions, the blood flows from Newendyke, who is shot during the heist and taken to an old warehouse by the gangsters who are not aware of his true identity. The present action surrounds the conflict over what to do with the dying Newendyke, but flashbacks to the robbery, Newendyke’s plan to infiltrate the job, and Cabot’s recruiting of the crooks give further exposition. Newendyke lies on the floor of the factory in a pool of blood while a fellow officer who had been taken hostage is tied up and beaten brutally. Reservoir Dogs viewers, watching the juxtaposition of disturbing violence and 1970s allusions, begin to feel as confused and bewildered as Nice Guy Eddie is about the past. The non-linear narration itself causates in the viewer a lack of awareness about exactly what ‘the past’ signifies.
Tarantino brings this confusion to a climax when Mr. Blonde, left alone in the factory with Newendyke and the tied-up officer, tortures the latter. “I don’t want any information from you ... I think it’s fun to torture cops,” Blonde says. He turns on the radio, takes a knife out of his boot, and slowly unfolds the blade. “You ever listen to K Billy’s Super Sounds of the 70’s? It’s my personal favorite,” he goes on to say. He proceeds to cut off the officer’s ear and douse him with gasoline as “Stuck in the Middle With You” plays happily. Sarup would call this scene “a presentation of the unpresentable” (177). Visually, the viewers observe “unpresentable” torture. The soundtrack, however, takes them back to another place and time, like viewers watching American Graffiti twenty-years ago.
Tarantino gives his audience one further subversion of the past with Newendyke’s fake anecdote about going into a men’s room with a large container of marijuana only to find the bathroom full of police officers. Newendyke, during a flashback, is coached by a veteran undercover officer, and told that he needs to have a believable but false anecdote to legitimize his undercover identity. The audience watches Newendyke rehearse the story and slowly grow more and more believable, until finally, the film shows Newendyke telling the story to the mobsters. The viewer watches falsehood slowly appear more and more realistic. By the time Newendyke nears the end of his story, the viewer is watching a live-action dramatization of the fake story. As Paul A. Woods puts it:
Tarantino’s 1994 offering, Pulp Fiction, also opens with hoodlum characters in a diner revealing that there will be a subversion of the past. A neurotic British couple decides to rob the diner, acknowledging that robbing banks and liquor stores, which they apparently have been doing for a very long time, has become too dangerous. Characters in Pulp Fiction appear to understand the invalidity of the past. Thus the viewer sees Pumpkin and Honey Bunny make a conscious decision to break with their traditions. The film is narrated in a nonlinear order, like Reservoir Dogs, further suggesting a confusion of the order of time.
Crime boss Marcellus Wallace verbalizes this recognition of the unstable past as he instructs Butch, the aging boxer, to throw his match in order to collect a large sum of illegal money:
He double-crosses Wallace and wins his boxing match. Fleeing the venue to escape from Wallace and his gang, his Columbian taxi driver asks him what his name means. Butch responds with the pointed and biting comment, “I’m American, honey, our names don’t mean shit.” When he discovers his fiancee Fabienne forgot the watch at their apartment, he returns to their home, knowing that he is risking his life, to retrieve it. This cements Butch’s decision to win the fight as an attempt to establish nostalgic order. Predictably, his return to the apartment proves an ill-fated venture. Enemies Butch and Marcellus Wallace find themselves the prisoners of a pair of bumbling rapists and their gimp. Once again Tarantino presents his audience with the unpresentable. Butch, who appears to be eternally lucky, escapes from this bind as well, only to return to rescue Wallace—who, again, is his enemy. Butch plays the eternally nostalgic hero. Wallace vows revenge on Zed, one of the rapists:
Wallace’s hit men, Vince Vega and Jules Winfield, provide myriad allusions to the 1970s, reminiscent of the allusions that filled Reservoir Dogs. Vega drives a vintage Malibu convertible, Jules a ‘74 Nova. They listen to Kool and The Gang and Al Green, as well as surfer music, on the radio. Jules has gheri curls and, when he decides to quit the criminal life, says he will “walk the Earth like Cain in [the 1970s television show] Kung Fu.” Calming the excitable Yolanda, he tells her to “act like Fonzy” and be “cool.” Also like Reservoir Dogs is Tarantino’s striking juxtaposition, in this film, of these allusions with violence, causing in the viewer a similar disillusionment with the past.
Vince Vega, instructed by his boss, takes Marcellus’ wife Mia out for an evening. They go to Jack Rabbit Slim’s, a 1950s nostalgia diner, staffed by Ed Sullivan, Ricky Nelson, Buddy Holly, Marylin Monroe, and Mamie Van Doren impersonators. The milkshakes are available in two flavors: Amos ‘n Andy or Martin ‘n Lewis. “It’s like a wax museum with a pulse,” Vince says. Mia coquettishly tells Vince, “I tell you what. I’m going to go powder my nose. You think of something to say.” She goes to the bathroom and snorts cocaine. The evening ends with Mia overdosing. Once again, a connection with the past turns sour.
In an early scene of El Mariachi (1993), directed by Robert Rodriguez, a man dressed in black and carrying a guitar case, strolls down a dirt road. A voice-over is heard:
The viewer shares this sense of trust and nostalgia with the mariachi. After all, Rodriguez presents scenes of a tranquil, idyllic Mexican village. Men get shoe shines and take advantage of the free coconut stands. The streets are quiet, dusty and lined with taverns. Soon, however, the tranquility turns ugly. A crime boss named Moco mistakes the mariachi for Azul, a ruthless criminal who happens to carry his guns in a guitar case and wear black. Azul had double-crossed Moco and Moco now wants him dead. The mariachi spends the remainder of the film dodging the bullets of Moco’s henchmen, who think he is Azul. The peaceful imagery turns violent.
The mariachi realizes that times have changed and mourns the death of nostalgia throughout the film. He can no longer depend on the past he had trusted:
The clash of old and new is particularly devastating to the nostalgic mariachi, who can not find a tavern to hire him. Rodriguez hyperbolizes his dilemma in a scene in which a tavern owner refuses to hire the mariachi because he, the tavern owner, already has an electronic keyboard player. “Why would I want one mariachi when I have an entire band?” the owner says. “I only pay one guy and I have a whole band. If you want a real job, get a real instrument.” The mariachi’s guitar becomes a symbol of his nostalgia. “I wanted to die with my guitar in my hands,” he says, “I am an innocent mariachi.” The mariachi’s guitar is as gentle as he is; in contrast, Azul’s guns—which are also carried in a guitar case—are as violent as Azul.
The mariachi realizes nostalgia is ineffectual as a means of survival. Moco shoots him in the hand, rendering him unable to play the guitar, and kills the woman he loves.
Robert Rodriguez later directed a big-budget sequel to El Mariachi, the 1995 Desperado. Pieces of the dialogue of Desperado further hint at the death of nostalgia. “There’s not that much work for a mariachi these days, mostly we just watch tv,” a young boy tells the mariachi. Imagery of the clash between old and new also carries over from El Mariachi. The gangsters use closed-circuit televisions to monitor action in the old-fashioned taverns. A secret, electronic sliding door is hidden behind a dirty bathroom stall. The mariachi, in his new, violent mode, has an automatic machine gun built into his guitar case.
If El Mariachi concerns itself with a character coming to terms with the ineffectuality of nostalgia, then Desperado concerns itself with the construction of a narrative of the end of nostalgia. The film opens with an unnamed partner of the mariachi walking into a seedy Mexican bar and telling the bartender about a “mysterious man in black” who carries a guitar case. Viewers who have seen El Mariachi know the mysterious man to be the protagonist of that film. This unnamed partner proceeds to tell the bartender about the mariachi moving from tavern to tavern causing violence. The mariachi has apparently changed from the gentle character the viewer met in Rodriguez’ first film. He has accepted the post-nostalgic lifestyle as a means of survival. The sensational story told during the opening scene signifies the formation of a narrative surrounding this new lifestyle.
Significant is Rodriguez’s use of storytelling during the beginning of Desperado. The movie opens with a narrative telling the viewer that the mariachi has changed. This technique hints that a narrative mythology has been built concerning the post-nostalgic mode. If storytelling is Rodriguez’s manner of conveying this idea, then equally significant is his inclusion of a bookstore as the location of much of the action of the film. The mariachi’s new love interest is the proprietor of the store, which is filled with very old books. “No one reads, though,” she informs the mariachi. The ancient books at the store represent nostalgia; as the proprietor explains, no one reads those books anymore. In the post-nostalgic world, narratives of the past can no longer be trusted.
The films of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez are currently all the rage. Their trendiness may prove a passing fad, generated by little more than the hype with which the media has showered these directors. Yet the post-nostalgic longing consumers expressed by their patronage of these films may be as strong as nostalgia itself. Jameson suggests that our society is more concerned with contemporary perceptions of the past than it is with the past itself:
Davis, Fred. Yearning for Yesterday. New York: Macmillan, 1979.
Harper, Ralph. Nostalgia. Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1966.
Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” Postmodernism and Its Discontents. Ed. E. Ann Kaplan. New York: Verso, 1988. 13-58.
Rodriguez, Robert, dir. Desperado. Columbia Pictures, 1995.
-----. dir. El Mariachi. Columbia Pictures, 1993.
Sarup, Madan. An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Tarantino, Quentin, dir. Pulp Fiction. Miramax Films, 1994.
-----. dir. Reservoir Dogs. Miramax Films, 1991.
Woods, Paul A. King Pulp: The Wild World of Quentin Tarantino. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1996.