Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film “Pulp Fiction” contains many WTF moments, one of them being the famous scene involving ‘The Gimp’.
The movie sees Marcellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) chase Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) into a gun shop where the two are taken captive by the owner (Duane Whitaker) and his security officer friend (Peter Greene).
The pair sexually assault Marcellus, leaving another captive man, clad entirely in head-to-toe leather bondage gear, to keep watch over a tied-up Butch. Butch escapes from his restraints and punches the Gimp in the face with the man left unconscious and swinging from his own restraining ropes.
Over twenty five years later, Tarantino has offered an explanation for the Gimp to Empire (via Movieweb) in terms of both the character’s back story and his ultimate fate:
“It doesn’t quite play this way in the movie, but in my mind when I wrote it, the Gimp’s dead. Butch knocked him out and then when he passed out he hung himself. In terms of backstory, he was like a hitchhiker or somebody that they picked up seven years ago, and they trained him so he’s the perfect victim.”
That suggests the Gimp may not have been a willing partner in events, and has effectively been held captive for nearly a decade to a point that goes beyond Stockholm syndrome. On top of that he dies just before potentially having the chance to be free of his captors which makes it ultimately a tragic story.
