Tarantino’s actions are the epitome of what someone in my sorority deems “dilly swag.” Now, what does dilly swag mean exactly? I asked the same thing the beginning of my freshman semester at UGA. A girl in my sorority said she used the term all the time back home, I had never heard of it until she was walking and talking about how she didn’t care and she was just like, “Ehh whatever dilly.” The term dilly swag is so foreign that it is not even in the urban dictionary, so the fact that I used it in a sentence the next week dumbfounded me. Then I began to use it again and again, soon it was normal for me to say such a weird and out there phrase; thankfully it seemed to help me out because I stopped cussing, which is nice because it allowed me to seem more ladylike.
Mind my language, but the first time I ever watched one of Quentin Tarantino’s movies I realized that he honestly did not give a single fuck about details. He was living the dilly swag lifestyle, and he was living it HARD. I learned that he didn’t like school but liked to watch movies, so instead of finishing his high school degree he dropped out and decided to work at a movie rentals store; that is a dilly swagger action if I ever saw one. His dilly swag style is portrayed in all of his movies because he passes the bounds of what a majority of people would deem “socially unacceptable” and just puts whatever he wants to on the big screen. He is Quentin Tarantino, AKA dilly swagger.
Now, of course Tarantino cares a little bit about his actions and how they affect his work, and I love how he cares more about how the audience feels about his work as a whole than the minor details. After watching Pulp Fiction was when I had my Quentin Tarantino “moment” per say. I watched that movie three times in three days and was amazed at how many new things I picked up on each viewing. It was when I was watching interviews with Tarantino about Pulp Fiction in the extras section that I realized Quentin Tarantino is living the dilly swag lifestyle not because he does not care about what other people think, but because he is confident in his work and in himself. He appears to not care about what other people think because he knows that the movies and scripts he creates are amazing.
The scene that affected me the most in Pulp fiction was the one centered around Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega. As I was watching this scene, I could not help but love the tension created between the two characters and how in such a short period of time Tarantino was able to create such a pivotal scene for the movie. My heart was in my throat when Vincent was screaming for his friend to get the epi-pen and his “little black medical book.” From that scene on I was forever envious of Tarantino and I will forever respect his work.
Tarantino living the dilly swag life through his work has made me want to not care so much about the minor details of my own writings, but the theory in which I am trying to portray to my audience. I realized in the middle of the semester that I was starting to care too much about what other people thought of my writing and not necessarily as much as how I viewed my pieces. After watching Pulp Fiction and realizing Tarantino’s pride in his work and doing things his own way I reverted my writing back to its old ways and that caused me to write my papers the way I see fit. I am working on being the Tarantino “dilly swagger” of my English essays.
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