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Needless to say, there's been a lot of conjecture about the strange, glowing contents of the briefcase in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. The Yahoo! Pulp Fiction category is bustling with interesting theories. The Gimp's Box devotes an entire sub-page to this thorny question. Opinions vary widely: a portable television, gold bricks, heroin, a pack of Chiclets, the aliens from the trunk of Repo Man's car, pure evil, the Ark of the Covenant, Marsellus Wallace's soul. The Pulp Fiction FAQ features a quote from Tarantino
stating that he had no intention of making actual contents for the case. But the issue refuses to die: a giant Royale with cheese? an Oscar statue? the diamonds from Reservoir Dogs? Gwarv's Briefcase page quotes Samuel Jackson in a 1995 Playboy interview, "When I looked inside, between scenes, I saw two lights and some batteries. What I would have wanted to see are the next ten films I'm going to do and hope that they're all as good as Pulp Fiction." What's the final verdict? It doesn't matter. Alfred Hitchcock coined the term "McGuffin" to refer to a diversionary plot device -- the bone thrown by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. Like
the statue in The Maltese Falcon, or the stolen money in Psycho, the briefcase in Pulp Fiction serves to set the characters in motion and throw some added intrigue into the mix. It's a great trick and, obviously, it worked.
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