'K.

So the first thing about Pulp Fiction is that it's an insipid and flat story in which nothing really happens... but you only notice that if you consider it in linear time. Film Theory 101 will teach you that if your story is boring and nothing's really happening, you re-cut it in non-linear time. Broken down this way it's basically Jackie Brown.

The next thing to consider is that

A) all principal actors commit some sort of crime

B) those that seek redemption find it

C) those that don't die.

It's about as monosyllabic a morality play as you could hope to find.

Finally, the whole thing is basically brief interludes of shockingly unjustified violence to separate grandstanding profane monologues. People love the quotables from Pulp Fiction because the whole thing flows like one long sketch comedy. "Royale with Cheese." "Does he look like a bitch." "Zed's dead, baby." "Ezekeil whateverthefuck."

Okay, fine. Quentin Tarantino grew up with this:

He grew up with this:

he grew up with this:

Shit, he WROTE this:

Pulp fiction is not that great of a movie. It's not even that great of a tarantino movie. But it's got John Travolta dancing to your parents' music in an awkward sort of way and there's so much cussing and drugs that they still hate it, so it must be good, right?

In 1994, every college freshman male had a Natural Born Killers poster and a Pulp Fiction poster. The girls, bless their hearts, skipped the NBK. Pulp Fiction is not a bad movie, but it's not a good movie. Everybody loved it then and loves it now. NBK is a bad movie, so nobody really remembers it now.

I'll bet you can sing "double rainbow all the way" even now. "Chocolate rain?" You'd have to look it up. Both were memetic, only one of them stands (sort of) on its merits.