Food in Film Part V

Pulp* Fiction 

*It's a food pun without any augmentation of the title. Ha-ha - get it? 'Cause oranges? Pulp? Get it? Right? 

Sexy Uma Thurman drinking a Sexy 5-Dollar Shake in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction 

Admittedly, Pulp Fiction is my favorite movie of all time. Not unlike one-third of the American population, I even have a poster of it in my room. In Film classes, I always feel like I have to footnote this sensibility, because my homeboy Quentin is kind of a pig, and scholars of film tend to take to him ambivalently, if not angrily. But whatever way you spin it, food plays a huge role in the unfolding the film. The scene pictured is one of four scenes from the film, off the top of my head, where not only are characters shown eating, but their meal gets brought up in the dialog. (See also, Samuel L. Jackson's devouring of the Hawaiian burger in the opening scene, Quentin Tarantino's coffee-pedantry, and Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta's discussion about pork consumption.) 

In this scene, John Travolta has to take his mob-boss' wife (Uma Thurman) out to dinner, as a favor to his boss when he's out of town. So she stays out of trouble or something? Yeah, it's weird. Uma Thurman totally flirts with John Travolta the whole time (it's like she's trying to get him in trouble), they eventually enter a twist contest (because why not), and then (spoiler alert) right before they may or may not have theoretically consummated their totally punishable by mob-death sexy feelings, Uma overdoses on Travolta's heroin, thinking it's cocaine. 

Before all this unfolds, however, they make eyes and really awkward and stilted chit-chat across the table at Jack Rabbit Slim's, a cheesy diner/dive which appropriates 50's pastiche. Not unlike the rest of Pulp Fiction. Meta. 

Uma orders a five-dollar vanilla shake, which Travolta thinks is exorbitant. (It's 1993. Adjust for inflation, I guess. I'd love to find a shake nowadays that isn't $5.00.) In his shock, he inquires "They don't put bourbon in it or nothin'?"

She offers him a sip, and he goes to sip from the rim of the glass, rather than her straw. To which she says "You can use my straw. I don't have cooties." To which he says "Well, maybe I do." So, not unlike the sex dinner scene in "Tom Jones," rather than feeling up John Travolta's pant-leg, Uma offers him some milkshake, in a super raspy, sexy voice. Her milkshake definitely does bring this boy to the yard.

So the milkshake, really, is a device to manifest their sexual tension. Quentin Tarantino could have just shown the folk's making out, but their uncertain banter and exchange of milkshake sips is much more tense, suspenseful, and evocative.

Furthermore, (and maybe I'm analytically reaching, here) his disbelief about the price of the milkshake may mirror married-to-the-mob(-boss) Uma's unavailability. She is just as hard to get, even expensive, as that five-dollar milkshake. And he is as reluctant to drink this girl's milkshake as he is to sleep with her, potentially incurring his boss' murderous rage.