Makes me wonder if over-protecting children from negative feelings backfires. Pulp Fiction was a risk-free and simple way to make vivid the risks of heroin.
I would put Pulp Fiction near the top of the list for "films with surprisingly wholesome moral examples". The overdose, Butch coming back to help Marcellus and their subsequent parting ways, Jules' acknowledgement that he's "buying" not "giving"... to top it off, nobody is trying to moralize or patronize the viewer. Jules was getting close enough to agitate Vince but that just strengthens the film; it's okay to feel Vince's side more and not feel what someone else does despite witnessing the same thing. I was probably late teens when I first saw it but pretty sure if I saw it as a kid that I'd have gotten the good with the bad.
> over-protecting children from negative feelings backfires
it definitely hit differently to "see it myself", versus having it introduced by a parent/guardian, who probably would shy away from making the lesson so graphic
Mia's OD scene in Pulp Fiction definitely scared me away from drugs
even though I wasn't supposed to be old enough to see it >_>