O exercício do acontecimento: estetização da violência em Pulp Fiction

Abstract

Based mainly on the tensive theory developed by Claude Zilberberg, this paper aims to investigate what cinematographic procedures are adopted in Pulp Fiction to modulate the effects of sense caused by the violence, in order to examine the ways in which extensity and intensity are articulated in the construction of the tensive space of the filmic utterance and how this affects the aesthetic experience of the spectator. Initially, it is perceived that the violence is immersed in a system based on the regularity, so that intensive variations are controlled by the extensity dimension, hardly a saturation of intensity occurring and, therefore, never being attributed to the violence a status of event. Tarantino seems to invest in tempos, tonicities, temporalities and spatialities adequate for the exercise of intelligibility, that is, he uses procedures that promote more the cognitive apprehension of the violent scenes than his affective experience, which would enable the viewer to enjoy the work in the rational dimension predominantly. In this way, from very recent semiotic studies and, in our view, extremely adequate for our purposes, we intend to expand the field of discussion about a very peculiar aspect of Quentin Tarantino's works and shed light on issues that can – and should – be developed in future researches.