How Tarantino Uses Generic Thriller Conventions in Jackie Brown

How Tarantino Uses Generic Thriller Conventions in Jackie Brown

Title Sequence:

Firstly Tarantino establishes the character of Jackie Brown as a strong, independent women. He does this by making the camera never go above her shoulder line by using low angle or tracking shots. The affect this has upon the audience is that it shows to the audience that Jackie Brown is her own women. I feel this is a good convention used by Tarantino as it goes against the history of women in thrillers a ditsy people who are only to be seen not heard. By using a women as the main character of a thriller Tarantino does something that has been rarely done before. The way Jackie Brown is stood in the opening 3 minutes shows she is confident with her head up and bold posture, she seems cool, calm and collected when she is going to work. This shows to the audience instantly that she is the main character and that she isn't a typical convention of a thriller as she doesn't need to anyone to take care of her she can take care of herself.

By using a 5 minute tracking shot this enphasises Jackie Brown's calm nature as she takes her time to get to where she needs to be and time isn't an object. This could connote to how she isn't an object in the film like women usually are when they are used in thrillers, and that she is so calm because she has so much control over her life rather than other people doing everything for her. This shows the audience that throughout the film she will not do anything she doesn't feel she shouldn't inside of herself and that she can handle herself without the assistance of anyone therefore making the audience warm too her as a sort of idol in the sense that camera angles are forcing you to always look up to her and never be looking down upon her. I think that this connotation is a very clever one from Tarantino as it shows her to have all the conventions of a male protagonist in a female's body, which challenges what nearly all noir thrillers have in common, a white male lead role.

The character Jackie Brown, a women as the main character for a thriller ,could be argued the inspiration for the main protagonist in the film "The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo". This is because both characters are their own person and that they can look after themselves. Both characters are about challenging the thriller convention of a male lead role and trying to bring in women as lead roles in films. However neither film brings a female character into the limelight as much as Tarantino does with Kill Bill. The lead role in Kill Bill goes to "The Bride" who is a women; she is able to handle herself in a fight and can take enormous amounts of torture. She, like Jackie Brown, is seen as calm under pressure. The audience, especially a female audience, will see how Tarantino created this character to almost lead the way into bringing women into thrillers to be seen aswell as heard.

The tracking shot at the beginning of Jackie Brown is affective as it makes her the complete focus of the film for the first sequence. This helps to establish to the audience who she is and connotes that, aswell as the main focus of the opening sequence, she is also the main foucs of the film.

Opening Sequence Song Lyrics:

I was the third brother of five,
Doing whatever I had to do to survive.
I'm not saying what I did was alright,
Trying to break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight.

Been down so long, getting up didn't cross my mind,
I knew there was a better way of life that I was just trying to find.
You don't know what you'll do until you're put under pressure,
Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester.

Across 110th Street,
Pimps trying to catch a woman that's weak
Across 110th Street,
Pushers won't let the junkie go free.
Across 110th Street,
Woman trying to catch a trick on the street.
Across 110th Street,
You can find it all in the street.

I got one more thing I'd like to y'all about right now.
Hey brother, there's a better way out.
Snorting that coke, shooting that dope man you're copping out.
Take my advice, it's either live or die.
You've got to be strong, if you want to survive.

The family on the other side of town,
Would catch hell without a ghetto around.
In every city you find the same thing going down,
Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town.

Across 110th Street,
Pimps trying to catch a woman that's weak
Across 110th Street,
Pushers won't let the junkie go free.
Across 110th Street,
A woman trying to catch a trick on the street, ouh baby
Across 110th Street,
You can find it all in the street.
Yes he can, oh

Look around you, just look around you,

Look around you, look around you, uh yeah.

From this you can connote that Tarantino wants too give the impression that Jackie Brown has worked hard to make herself into the women she is from her early life living in the slums of America. The lyric "doing whatever I had to do to survive" shows too the audience that Jackie probably got mixed up in some kind of crime before and did criminal acts too make money to keep a house and put food on the table. This makes Jackie come across as a "working class hero" too the audience, someone who had too work themselves up to where they are now.

The Shooting of Beaumont Livingstone by Ordell Robbie:

When Beaumont and Ordell meet each other it is very low ambient lighting, this is a thriller convention used in lots of films such as the opening garage scene in Essex Boys. This is too show that these are two dark and dangerous characters who shouldn't be messed with. The effect this has on the audience is that it shows them that the two are up too no good and that the unknown character Beaumont might be in trouble. 

Tarantino makes the walk way on the flats look a lot like an alleyway. This could connote too the alleyway in The Third Man, when Harry disappears which could lead too the audience believing one of these two characters are about to disappear also. 

The camera angle used when Ordell kills Beaumont is far away and distant from the action, this connotes to Ordell as he is a mysterious and unreadable character who doesnt give too much away about himself like the long high angle shot doesnt give away too much detail about the death of Beaumont.