Soon after this movie, police narcs noticed a sizable uptick in heroin useage.
Does anyone know of QT s response and if he was even asked a question about the movies role in re-popularizing the drug?
It's kind of funny that Pulp Fiction would have made heroin cool again considering the non-heroin user who uses it nearly dies.
IMHO, "heroin chic" was a larger phenomenon driven by grunge music, Kate Moss's modeling and other social phenomenon before this movie came out. It's open to debate whether this movie was just part of that trend or whether Tarantino picked up on it.
Plus, it's kind of fitting that heroin worked into this world of gangsters, killings, and so on, so it may just have been something that happened and not meant to tag along with the other forms of heroin chic.
Soon after it's release, heroin use increased worldwide.
Even if QT was picking up on a trend, the visual scenes of the use and arguably the coolest character using it, no doubt increased awareness of the drug.
I guess he never commented on it, being a young man in his mid thirties, perhaps he was unaware of the effect the drug scenes would have on young minds that are easily influnced.
The coolest character was either Jules or Winston. The one major character who used it was constantly fucking up and was eventually killed due to his stupidity. If someone wanted to emulate his lifestyle, they only have themselves to blame.
shareYou're over-stating how much heroin use was in the the movie and how it was portrayed. Vincent shoots up at Lance's after buying a ridiculous quantity, and Mia Wallace doing lines and nearly dying, along with her outrageous revival.
It's not really an advertisement for how awesome heroin is. I kind of doubt it contributed much if anything to heroin's appeal in the 1990s. I think heroin was already making its own revival based on the cocaine/crack tide finally receding and various geopolitical changes that boosted global heroin supply.
The latter can't be overstated -- the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989, leaving the country in a power vacuum and turning loose its farmers and traffickers to become the world's largest base of opium farming and heroin production, pushing down global heroin prices and increasing supply. And heroin production was on the upswing in Latin America, partly as a result of the glut of cocaine and the push to slow cocaine caused by the crack wars of the 1980s.
The whole world was going to see an increase in heroin use in the 1990s mostly due to it becoming cheaper and more plentiful, and broadly embraced throughout the edgier, bohemian side of the culture.
Further, heroin has always been cyclical, rising and falling in use/popularity in tandem with supply and cultural attitudes. The 1970s saw a big surge in heroin use, probably because of the war in Vietnam created a lot of people familiar with it as well as creating smuggling opportunities (see "American Gangster" for the story of Frank Lucas).
The 1990s was just another example of culture and the market economics of heroin dovetailing.
Movies like Pulp Fiction merely represent that the
The exact amount of correlation between this movie and the increase of herion use is impossible to know.
To make the argument that there is NO correlation is absurd.
This movie was a HUGE pop culture hit.
Tens of thousands of young men and women watched this film and were influenced to some degree about the drug.
I thought heroin-use was already heavy in the 90s ?
Maybe as a medium film could advertise (see Trainspotting) but blaming QT for idiots using the drug is kind of unfair. He just shows that, yes, people use the drug. The characters were all scum anyway so if people watch the film thinking anybody was "cool" are wrong.
I think I remember Roger Avery saying the robbers in Killing Zoe were modeled after the kind of lifestyle they were in at the time and Avery co-wrote Pulp Fiction. Killing Zoe was full of heroin usage.
shareWhatever your views on censorship and artistic freedom, there is no way this film would have been released as is in the 1950's for the very reasons I cited above.
You are right,blaming QT fully for the rise is unfair, he could not have imagined the popularity of the film and he was too young and not wise enough to see the effects of the drug use scenes.
So what I am asking is, knowing now how immitative young minds could be, would he have done anything different in making the film?
Are we now to think that since the release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood we will see a spike in the use of LSD?
shareThat movie is good, I loved the character Pitt portrayed, but Once Upon will have no where near the cultural impact Pulp Fiction had.
I don't know just how popular QT is with gen y and z. My generation x has moved past the stage of life where the mind is easily influenced and those who are bound to try it already have.