PULP FICTION and CLUTCH CARGO

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

At the risk of starting another extended debate of the (lack of) merits of
PULP FICTION, I did want to mention one thing that occured to me recently.

In the flashback scene,
[SPOILERS FOLLOW, if anyone cares]

when Christopher Walken visits young Butch, the boy is watching CLUTCH
CARGO on tv.  Clutch, for those who don't know, was a sort of experimental
show that featured "animation" so minimal it hardly deserves the name.

The moving lips of actors were superimposed on figures that were mainly
otherwise static, as a sort of reductio ad absurdum of the Hanna-Barbera
school of Less is More (money) cartoon-making.

At any rate, the inclusion of this in PULP FICTION was nudging me until
I remembered (from my misbegotten childhood) the particular episode that
 Butch is watching.  It features Clutch and his youthful sidekick and loyal
dog in an adventure with an Eskimo.  That episode was no less racist than
most of Clutch's adventures (and so melds into the whole Tarantino/race
discussion that's been going on), but I remember a tagline from the show.
The Eskimo keeps saying something like "Ooggle-oogle!" at various times, and
at the end of that particular story arc, Clutch's young pal decides that
the word means "whatever you want it to mean."  I suspect this may have
some bearing on the discussions about the "meaning" of the briefcase,
the Gimp, the use of "nigger," and even the movie as a whole!

--Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN