Universität Potsdam
Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik
Einführung in die Medienwissenschaft
Sommersemester 2003

The Use of Popular Music in Quentin Tarantino´s "Reservoir Dogs"

Hausarbeit von:
Felix Bellermann
eingereicht am 22.11.2004

Contents

1. Contents 1

2. Introduction 2

    2.1. Why Quentin Tarantino? 2
    2.2. Definition of Popular Music 3
    2.3. The Procedure 3

3. Song Analysis 5

    3.1. General Observations 5
    3.2. The songs 6

        a) “Little Green Bag" 6
        b) “I gotcha" 7
        c) “Stuck in the middle with you" 8

4. Conclusion: The Meaning and Function of Music for Tarantino 10

5. Bibliography 12

2. Introduction

2.1. Why Quentin Tarantino?

Quentin Tarantino´s movies are mostly violent scenarios in the world of American West-Coast gangster bosses and their Hit-Men - Shoot-outs, language as brutal as the action and even cooler quotations.
Almost all of his movies have managed to be at least cult among the younger generations. Is the type of music Tarantino uses in most his films responsible for their popularity, since it is mostly popular music? If it is, what exactly is the effect of the music that Tarantino uses? One may certainly say that in his movies film and music represent two different types of media: There are no movie-themes involved which have been composed only for this purpose.

As a regisseur, Tarantino prefers "chewing gum" music as he calls it, which contrasts the scenes taking place on the screen (Havighorst, Michaltsi, Strauß).
Tarantino´s songs have has an “own life” in the real world of the watchers, apart from the movie. The most famous example is probably the “Pulp Fiction”- soundtrack-album, which in is, in certain circles, mostly of the female gender, even more popular than the movie itself.

Anyway, it seems obvious that Tarantino has a specific style of combining the accoustic and the visual media in his works. I want to find out possible results and intentions of this more or less unique combination.

2.2. Definition of Popular Music

“Popular music, sometimes abbreviated to pop music, is music belonging to any of a number of contemporary musical styles that are broadly popular. A narrower sense of the term, usually "pop music", covers mainstream music that does not fall into any more specialized style such as jazz or hip hop. In the broader sense, "popular music" means any sort of music intended for mass consumption and propagated over the radio and similar media. For the varieties of popular music in this sense, see the list below.” (www.wordiq.com)

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