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Getting Medieval Getting Medieval Sexualities and Communities, Fre and Postmodern Carolyn Dinshaw Duke University Press Durkam and London 1999 reserved © z© Duke University Press All rights acidjree paper A Printed in the United States ofAmerica on for Marget Designed by C. IL Westmoreiand Systems, Inc. vpeset in MonoUpe Fournier by Tseng Information Libraiy ofCongress CataloginginPublicati0n Data appear on the lt printedpage ofthis hooP politlcs of essentialized identities—hut rather, as Heather Findlay puts it, because we recognize in these others who we are not; Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe maintain that in any “ overdetermined” Coda social field “the presence of some in the others hinders the suturing of the identity of any of them,” and, as Findlay continues, “this hin- drance is the condition, not the failure, of politics.” 96 Queer history, Getting Medieval: queer medieval studies, queer-friendly scholarship. the fight for pres- ervation of funding for the humanities, the defense of open inquiry in Pulp Fiction, Foucault, and education at all levels—each will be altered once such an articulation has taken place. Even as activism for the humanities and for higher the Use of the Past education gains an energized contingent in queers and the queer- friendly, so queers can demonstrate the value of destabilization, dis- junction, queerness in the projects that most deserve preservation and funding. And (in the spirit of Margery Kempel aD of us—not just the elect—can preach: each of us can embrace the project of building coalitions (those postmodern communities. and we can each partici- pate in building coalitions in which such abjected figures as queers to live in it. I’m proud of my country’s past, but I don’t want and scholars of early periods are armed and empowered in the fray of on a recent effort the culture wars, not merely tolerated as a liberal free—speech cause Tony Blair, in comments or resolutely sunk in some distant, dank past. And in defense of our to update Britain’s image united (but not necessarily unified) interests as queers, as medieval- ists, as proponents of queer scholarship, as humanities researchers, as advocates of higher education, and as supporters of academic free- Quentin Tarantino’s Middle Ages dom, we say to those who would eliminate us: Don’t touch me. deep within Pulp My title derives from some lines in a dark scene part of Mar- Fiction, They are spoken by Ving Rhames acting the underworld of sellus Wallace. the big black boss presiding over the unmoved mover. To this point the movie — that world’s heretofore neck. Due to cir- virtually all we have seen of him is the back of the has been raped cumstances definitely beyond his control, Marsellus and after he has by a sadistic white southerner in an s/M dungeon; Butch Coolidge been rescued by the very man he has been chasing, shot in the crotch (Bruce \Villis, he snarls back to “Mr. Rapist,” now and writhing on the floor: to work on homes L’m gonna call a coupla pipe-hittin’ niggers, who’ll go here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. (to Zed) 182 Getting Medieval Hear me talkin’ hillbilly both! I ain’t through with you tha damn sight. snot i u o tie md’e al t a o Fo’icui . tm gone a cit Medieval on your ass) ic pr ‘eupanon .rv “-‘r im ar ct v h )SL politteal in en r “sc11cai Get Medieval, The phrase caught on like wildfire: street-smart teen e du I re ot ol / F age boys (the “young male viewers” whom Variety pegged as an pla n t, fi 1w ow a obvious primary audience for this movie) could be heard in San Fran ditiona oun cisco slinging the phrase around the neighborhood; Courtney Love, r in the re tor e rrat )un speaking of her dead husband, Kurt Cohain (reluctant idol of such tie ca s in thi v iolenc en rout cause teenage bovsy picked it up to describe how she wanted to treat his si prob1ems (“nv5 ou got a corpse in a car, minus a head, in remains;2 magazine headlines used it: Saturday iViglzt Live created a rage Take me to it.” says Harrey Keitel as Mr. Wolf, who fixes skit around it; Film Threat magazine in early ic voted Ving Rhames ft sse [t28] One hit man’s qualms (in the film’s last scene) cannot “Bastard of the Year” for pronouncing the phrase. and noted approv her the whu” moral economy: killing, maiming, and terrorizing are ingly, “Ving gets bonus points for combining the words mu and mcdi h t app nd the tinue to happen in the in- olded narra eva/in the same sentence,” Even after this first flush of publicity, the vents h eget’ 1 occur after th fi s las phrase stuck: Altoids in the spring of 1997 launched an ad campaign the dark which I bega t ement featuring mint-green billboards reading menacingly, “Get Medieval Pawnshop,” with dom hi m and its on Your Breath.” The phrase has entered American public culture. e n etors, there is what Time azine, pi kin up on the Why has it proved so popular? What exactly makes it so useful? To n’ priort es. called “a fate worse than death”: not only rape. but, get a clue. I want to look first at what it means in this film: why this ilcially. sodomitical rape.’ Butch, having freed himself from the it hesitates; word here? Does perform any function other than to inflict a slight I t ‘ bonds and fleeing the perverts’ pawnshop. suddenly sting on the medievalist, buried in the past hut finally getting out to lu decides cannot leave Marsellus, his mortal enemy, “in a situa see a movie? n like er. 105), a elects the largest weapon the pawnshop The phrase is not repeated in the fast-talking film; the Middle Ages o er to nem from being sodomized: not the are not mentioned again. But medievalists, especially queer mcdi not 1 0 1 il slugger, but a “mag evalists, instead of sinking even lower beneath the pop_culture sur en m r sw ( B h stealthily returns to face, might instead conceive of ourselves as specially equipped to b e nd “THR it nto of the brothers (scr. 107), view this rnovie.With a whole armature of narratives, discourses, and \l ,rsellus i treed from th other startled brother, shoots him in the images that look in fact much like Pulp Fiction — sodomitical insults itch, and makes his medieval plans: as was the provision of a secu (such as we saw in chapter i). Arthurian romances and the discourse lar law in France in 1270 (discussed above, in chapter i), the punish of normative heterosexuality (in chapter z), Christian expressions of ‘nt tot sodomy was castration for the first offense, death by fire for a desire for transcendence (in chapter 3) —we can suggest ways in epeat offenders—rather like pliers and a blow torch.i which what was seen to be Hollywood’s latest, from the hot-hot- I he sodomitical violence in this scene is different from any other hot Quentin Tarantino, turned out indeed to be an old, old story— ence in the film, and it calls for a different remedy: it is ritual even as the temperature around Tarantino subsequently cooled.6 We d exual torture, it is dark and perverse, and it must be met by a can train our long, queer gazes on Pulp Fiction’s use of the medieval rson I eance that is itself ritualized, torturous, dark, and per to understand the film’s concomitant construction of the postmod_ erse.I hi is the realm of the medieval in Pit/p Fiction.’ it isn’t exactly em present. and to open up other options for thinking not only the 3nothcr tow in thF movie in which time is peculiarly flattened out past but the future. In this final chapter 1 play the movie’s idea of the ith 1w the manipulations of narrative and by the drenching of 184 Getting Medieval Coda 8 everything in postwar cinematic and pop culture references; Marsel Ins’s line about “a pair of pliers and a blow torch” is in fact a• direct quotation from the 1973 cult gangster movie /iarZev Varrick,9 The h, medieval, rather, is 1ff “: •‘i 1 n::l the space iii, - of the rejects—realiy the abjects—of this world, Despite the New York Jmes’s liberal claim is that the film “completely and amicably integrated,” we can see what must be eliminated: sodomy, sadomasochism southerners)° Even the status rç of black men of -.:cionv: ‘p ob.:o’-. !‘h’ C,L - is degraded by this scene, despite the fact that it is a L, black man who speaks these lines • .-: lUflk 1’ ;4!-o!1tc:rjpk.- not ]r’:ur Lo’e: p and who clearly participates in the process of abjecting those country pemlerts. At the end of this se quence we’re left with the jOL, J..i- iiT ‘‘ -, vision of the triumphant Butch, roaring away on the Harley owned by the —n iol’ic’ lai;tliabi di’a..tu’iinL. S ‘d’.:’v i homo whose medieval torture is being both ‘-,i’e,cr-.rt’d ,it tinr -:‘c! j::t planned — white hypermasculine aid —ane cit-tle Butch, drawing on the sexu ally powerful look of a macho gay ‘0 .!‘. man but whose ass, we know for • i’t ,,- 1 - , sure now, is straight. male, modern.
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