Pulp Fiction: The Big Kahuna Burger

Likely the most iconic and quoted scene of the cult classic Pulp Fiction, the “Big Kahuna Burger” scene also offers a perfect example for how minor details in movies affect us subconsciously. Through camera work, prop placement and acting, Pulp Fiction can show the viewer everything they need to know about the characters and the world around them while simultaneously telling the story of the movie. The scene shows two men, Jules and Victor, headed to a rather messy apartment to retrieve goods for their boss, Marsellus Wallace. The walls are unadorned, shelves empty, the furniture bland, suggesting that the men do not live there or haven’t lived there for long, but stayed long enough for their clothes to be bunched in the corner and on the shelves. The boys are dressed casually, obviously not people who make a lot of money or care very much about presentation, unlike Jules and Victor, who wear suits meant to show class, status, and intimidate their victims. When Jules and Victor enter, the boys are tense, but Jules and

Jules claims that their fellow should not have been at fault, and their boss, who had harmed and almost killed him, was wrong, before dropping the subject and telling Victor to get “in character”, which suggests that although their profession is violent, they are not usually violent men. It is a job that they remove themselves from and are not particularly loyal to, which provides context for a latter part of the movie, directly after the scene with the young men, where Jules decides that he will leave the employment of Mr.Wallace. Jules’ dialogue, telling Brett that Mr.Wallace “don’t like to be fucked by anyone but Mrs.Wallace”, which hints at the later fate of Mr.Wallace, who plots a torturous revenge after he is