Pulp Fiction and Drug Use in Films, Essay Example

During one morning in a Los Angeles restaurant called Hawthorne Grill, a young British couple who go by the names Pumpkin and Honey Bunny discuss the benefits and drawbacks of robbing liquor stores versus banks. They also take restaurants into consideration, concluding that they could make the most money taking the wallets of the customers in the restaurant than they would in other locales. As such, they stand up on the seats of the booth they are in and promulgate that they are robbing the diner. Prior to this “robbery” announcement, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, two hitmen working for Marsellus Wallace, had paid a visit to a small apartment building in the San Fernando Valley to get a valuable object from a small group of drug-dealing criminals led by the naïve Brett. The hitmen retrieve the object in question, which is placed in a briefcase, and when people gaze and it, the object glows and transfixes all of those who see it. Jules quotes the bible phrase from Ezekiel 25:17 prior to shooting and killing Brett, a passage that Jules recites at the end of the film as well. Such senseless violence permeates the entire film, the majority of which takes place in broad daylight, including Vincent murdering Marvin in the car, which spews blood everywhere. Pulp Fiction is a multi-layered and self-reflexive film that forces viewers to extract meaning in a variety of ways. Various narratives take place in the film out of chronological order, which further complicates the ideas that the director sought to convey to the audience. Ultimately, mobsters, hitmen, and wannabe artists navigate through the suburban world of Los Angeles with impunity, as the police are seemingly absent from this corrupt underworld. Such an aura of violence that characterizes suburban America amplifies how vulnerable modern America is to reckless and senseless violence.

The most disturbing scene in pulp Fiction is the one in which Mia overdoses on heroine, which forces Vincent to stab her in the heart using a hypodermic needle in order to revive her. Heroine overdose is a serious effect of consuming too much heroine and is one of the main causes of illness and premature death in the United States. The impact of ephemeral shifts in behaviors evinced by heroin users are consequences of abuse of the drug (Deitze, 2005). The physiological process of heroin overdose enhances the meaning of this scene as a whole. Once a drug user injects themselves with the synthetic drig created from opium, heroin, the liquid swiftly moves through the user’s bloodstream and makes its way into the limbic system of the brain. This system controls pleasurable feelings and emotions. The opiates latch onto the receptors in the brain that produce endorphins. Once the mu receptors are inundated with the heroin, the metabolism of the morphine takes place, thereby creating a warm rush of pleasure. The morphine also enters the spinal cord, thereby nullifying the body signals sent to the brain. Once the drug enters the autonomic system that controls a person’s breathing, the user has entered the danger zone. As breathing slows down, muscles are relaxed while the body struggles to respond to carbon dioxide that builds up. Tolerance to the euphoric feeling can build up, but people cannot build a tolerance to the effects of the depression of the respiratory system, which is what  causes death from heroin use. The duration of the heroin overdose and death varies on an idiosyncratic basis caused by hypoxia. The shot administered to Mia was filled with Nalaxone, which is often used to counter opioid overdose. Opioid slows a person’s breathing, so if too much is ingested the respiratory system will completely shut down. As such, Nalaxone counters the suppression of breathing in order to prevent death.

There is an ongoing dialogue about the currency of drug use in films such as Pulp Fiction and whether or not featuring drug use as a central theme encourages viewers to engage in the same types of behaviors. Movies function as cultural scripts that shape popular perceptions about drugs and other cultural forces, as the frequency of drug use in films often mirror various political and cultural trends that characterize the epoch in which the films were made. Drug use in films often cause hallucinations in characters who seek an escape from reality through numbing the pain with drugs. In addition, embracing a radical lifestyle by breaking the law through the consumption of illicit drug use is prominently featured. However, films often fail to showcase the potential harm posed by consuming drugs such as heroine in vast quantities. The scene in which Mia was injected with the hypoxic shot in order to revive her most likely made audience members cringe. Learning about the physiological process involved in drug use caused a paradigm-shift in how people view drug use. While drug use in films may influence people to copy such behaviors, it also retains a didactic function in teaching viewers the adverse ramifications that consuming drugs such as heroin entail.

References

Dietze, P., Jolley, D., Fry, C., & Bammer, G. (2005). Transient changes in behavior lead to heroine overdose: Results from a case-crossover study of non-fatal overdose. Addiction, 100(5), 636-642.

Myers, D. G. (2008). Exploring psychology in modules (7th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.