What Is Pulp Fiction? Quentin Tarantino's Movie Title Explained (2024)

Although Pulp Fiction might be Quentin Tarantino’s most iconic movie ever, the movie never explains its enigmatic title within the film itself. It would be tough to name a ‘90s movie more influential than director Quentin Tarantino’s crime epic Pulp Fiction. Much like director Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather set the tone for ‘70s cinema, Pulp Fiction provided the building blocks for the decade’s indie output. Out of all of Tarantino's movies, Pulp Fiction arguably had the biggest cultural impact thanks to its non-linear storytelling and its unique approach to screen violence.

Telling the story of Pulp Fiction in chronological order makes the movie’s jumbled narrative a lot more straightforward, but even this approach leaves many questions unanswered. Viewers are left wondering what was in Marsellus’ briefcase after the credits roll, as well as how every bullet managed to miss him and Jules early on in the story. Beyond these mysteries, there is the even more basic question of just what the movie’s title means. Most of Tarantino’s titles are relatively easy to decipher, like Kill Bill and Jackie Brown. In contrast, Pulp Fiction has an obscure meaning divorced from its story.

"Pulp Fiction" Is A Reference To An Old Form Of Book & Magazine Printing

Cheap Paperbacks And Magazines Were Printed On Wood Pulp

In the world of publishing, pulp fiction refers to magazines and books that were printed on cheap, wood pulp paper rather than more expensive, higher-quality glossy paper. Popular from the late 1800s until the mid-20th century, pulp fiction was a successor to penny dreadfuls and other forms of sensationalist popular literature. Pulp fiction’s most famous output includes Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, and Black Mask, magazines that featured works by some surprisingly influential authors. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler wrote for Black Mask, while H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Bloch had stories published by Weird Tales.

While all of Pulp Fiction’s many stories are unique, one thing that they have in common is a macabre sense of humor and a taste for gruesome violence. In this regard, they would have fit in the heightened, campy world of pulp magazines. The lurid style of pulp magazines eventually gave rise to hardboiled detective stories, trashy crime novels, gory horror comics, and erotic fiction, but the original magazines combined these elements into a mélange of boundary-pushing content. Similarly, Tarantino’s movie touched on a lot of outre topics without ever focusing on one story for long.

Pulp Stories And Novels Were Infamously Violent And Provocative

Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is an anthology of stories that would have been at home in a pulp magazine, for the most part. Butch’s straightforward boxing drama slowly morphing into a nightmarish psychosexual horror story would be a classic example of the pulp format’s genre-mashing experimentation, while Mia’s gruesome overdose calls to mind the vaguely moralistic, but often openly exploitative depictions of drug use, infidelity, and reckless behavior in pulp stories. Pulp magazines featured stories that were infamously violent and provocative, often earning the ire of censorious moral guardians.

In much the same way, Pulp Fiction’s violence, sexual content, and profanity were highly controversial upon the movie’s original release. While pulp magazines were usually criticized for portraying macabre subject matter in any context, Pulp Fiction was specifically taken to task for its nonchalant portrayal of violence and the amoral attitude of its antiheroes. Pulp Fiction could have been more graphic, but it was the playful movie’s blatant disregard for human life that irked some commentators. This outlook found its roots in pulp magazine stories, where life was cheap and death was always one slip of the trigger away.

Pulp Fiction's Title Makes The Movie's Success Even More Impressive

Tarantino Chose An Esoteric Moniker For His Sophom*ore Effort

There is no denying the cultural impact of Pulp Fiction. Tarantino’s movie was a massive critical and commercial success and, in Pulp Fiction’s seven deaths, the director managed to revolutionize the rhetoric around onscreen violence in the decades that followed. Pulp Fiction’s title makes the movie’s outsized reputation all the more impressive. Objectively, Pulp Fiction’s title doesn't tell viewers anything about the movie, and it refers to a phenomenon that the average viewer might not even be aware existed.

Despite this, Pulp Fiction became not only a success upon release but a breakthrough hit. Earning over $200 million on a budget of only $8 million, Pulp Fiction cemented Tarantino’s status as both an indie darling and a bonafide blockbuster director. Pulp Fiction remains one of the director’s most loved movies and is broadly considered to be his masterpiece. For Pulp Fiction to achieve all of this, even though many viewers couldn’t say for certain what the movie’s title even means, is an impressive achievement on Quentin Tarantino’s part.

Pulp Fiction

R

Drama

Crime

Where to Watch

*Availability in US

• stream
• rent
• buy

Director

Quentin Tarantino

Release Date

October 14, 1994

Studio(s)

A Band Apart , Jersey Films

Writers

Quentin Tarantino

Cast

John Travolta , Bruce Willis , Ving Rhames , Samuel L. Jackson , Uma Thurman , Christopher Walken , Tim Roth , Harvey Keitel , Eric Stoltz , Rosanna Arquette

Runtime

154 minutes