Faith and (Pulp) Fiction


Abstract:
Jules believes that it is a sign from God, a miracle, and he resolves to quit being a hitman and "walk the earth," like Cain from Kung Fu, seeking out adventures, trying to find out what God wants to tell him.

Body:


The frametale of Pulp Fiction is familiar to most people of my generation. In the opening act of the movie, two hitmen (Jules and Vincent, played by Samuel Jackson and John Travolta) nearly miss being shot to death by one of their panicked victims. The two friends differ in their interpretation of events. Jules believes that it is a sign from God, a miracle, and he resolves to quit being a hitman and "walk the earth," like Cain from Kung Fu, seeking out adventures, trying to find out what God wants to tell him. Vincent is appalled at Jules' decision, telling him he's going to be "a bum."

In the closing scene of the movie, Jules and Vincent argue about the meaning of their near miss. Jules says (to paraphrase) that "it doesn't matter whether or not this was an honest-to-Hoyle miracle," that God could do mundane things such as "helping me find my car keys, or turning Coke into Pepsi." Then Jules says what I think is one of the most important lines in the movie: "It doesn't matter. What matters is that I felt the presence of God. God got involved."

I'm not a huge Tarantino fan, and I'm not going to go into my next Bible Study and recommend to the little old ladies that they rent Pulp Fiction for deep spiritual insights. But I think he hits upon something here. It is not the randomness or statistical improbability of the event that matters - what matters is the meaning we assign to it. Again, I don't think Tarantino is a devout Christian, but I think he understands faith better than many Christians do. (Actually, I think Tarantino is a moralist in much the same way Alfred Hitchcock was - you'll notice there are certain kinds of people who wind up dead in his movies. In spite of the fact that both directors play with the boundaries of black and white, there is a kind of rough justice in the movies of each. One of the saddest parts of Pulp Fiction is when Vincent dies, and we see the paperback novel lying there - which he will never finish. I think it's pretty clear what the writer/director believes is the better interpretation.)

Miracles are, in part, dependent upon our interpretation of them. I read a Discover magazine article long ago about how a researcher "reduced" the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea to a geophysical explanation. The article actually used the word "reduced." A researcher had theorized that a gale-force wind or a seismic event could easily shift water across a large expanse, exposing a land bridge for a period of time. What I couldn't understand was why anyone would think that explained anything, much less reduced it. The word reduce tells it all.

Similarly, our biology textbook in college would "explain away" the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the unit on evolutionary biology, the introductory page was about how seismic events caused the destruction of an ancient city, and how "superstitious people" (this is actually how the editors put it) attributed such events to an angry, wrathful God. This textbook was published by a major publisher. I winced as I read it. Did the editors really need to give creationists any more evidence that they were pushing an atheistic, anti-religious, anti-homophobic message? How was this relevant to the discussion of evolution, apart from antagonizing the creationists? And again - did they really think they had explained anything? (Later on, after reading archeological research about the possible whereabouts of Sodom and Gomorrah, I realized exactly how far the editors had stretched the truth, presenting extremely hypothetical research as history).

When PBS aired the Question of God, the roundtable participants couldn't help facing the same chimera. When one athiest in the group challenged one of the believers, he chose to approach it this way:
1. Do you believe in the resurrection?
2. Don't you want to know how it happened?

He didn't get to finish his argument, but the idea was to push toward a naturalistic explanation of how the resurrection happened. Even if you could do such a thing, would you really have explained it? And yet, if you do believe in the resurrection, wouldn't you love to know how?

So we are faced with two sides of a statistically improbable event: 1) Life, miraculously, exists. 2) How did it happen?

Then, perhaps, 3) If you find out how, does it cease to be miraculous?

Sure, you can quibble about what miraculous means, but plop Jules and Vincent down beside Moses when that wind blows and the land bridge appears. Jules says, "God got involved." Vincent says, "It's just a strong wind."

When you get down to the question of what we should actually teach in schools, I can't help but remember wincing at the poor decision of the editors of my college textbook. Any theory of origins is going to be loaded. To say that evolution is "random" and "uncontrolled" may not necessarily be anti-religious. It may be one way of correcting the idea that there are naturalistic processes that operate according to a telos, some end goal. The idea that evolution has some "point" of superior development has been destructive both scientifically and socially. But it can also be a way to short-circuit discussions of meaning, religious or otherwise.

My opinion on the subject? Don't teach Intelligent Design in biology class. But do teach kids philosophy and rhetoric! Show them Pulp Fiction! (Okay, maybe not.) The travesty in education is not that kids are subject to religious or anti-religious bias, but that they aren't taught philosophy and rhetoric at all. They are not given the tools to make meaning, either individually or as communities. In such an environment, Jules/Tarantino is the hero - splicing together a religion of old TV shows, gangster films, martial arts movies, and a few misquoted Bible passages. I'll take that kind of faith over some school board's dusty prejudices any day.

Posted: Sat - December 17, 2005 at 10:03 PM           |

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