Pulp Fiction to Mia Wallace's heart is on "Premiere"s list of "100 Greatest Movie Moments". The scene of Travolta and Thurman's characters dancing has been frequently homaged, most unambiguously in the 2005 film "Be Cool", starring the same two actors. The image of Travolta and Jackson's characters standing side by side in suit and tie, pointing their guns, has also become widely familiar. In 2007, BBC News reported that "London transport workers have painted over an iconic mural by 'guerrilla artist' Banksy ... The image depicted a scene from Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction", with Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas
Pulp Fiction intensity of the action, the prowling, confronting, perverse, confined, and airless nastiness of the world Tarantino creates. Henry A. Giroux argues that Tarantino "empties violence of any critical social consequences, offering viewers only the immediacy of shock, humor, and irony-without-insight as elements of mediation. None of these elements gets beyond the seduction of voyeuristic gazing ... [t]he facile consumption of shocking images and hallucinatory delight." Regarding the violence and nihilism in the film, Pamela Demory has suggested that "Pulp Fiction" should be seen in light of the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, which likewise feature "religious elements, banality, and violence