Dangerous Dames. Heather Hundley
· 1 · SUPERFICIAL POSTFEMINIST AND POSTMODERN PORTRAYALS: HEGEMONIC AND HYPERMASCULINE IDEOLOGIES IN KILL BILL, VOLUMES 1 & 2
We begin this book where Bad Girls (Owen, Stein, & Vande Berg, 2007) left off at the turn of the 21st century. In their analyses of media representations of transgressive women, Owen, Stein and Vande Berg argue that women and people of color are transgressive by their very nature because they are not at the top of the “rhetorically crafted…irrefutable social hierarchy” (p. 3). We agree, and we take this a step further. We claim that media representations of women and people of color not only are transgressive—they are also dangerous. The characters studied here are action heroes and villains, hence we embrace the polysemic nature of the term “danger.” Literally, the characters we examine are dangerous to other characters by virtue of their superior abilities to fight, use weaponry, and outwit their enemy. Simultaneously, the characters are dangerous to society as they transgress the boundaries of gendered expectations and offer alternatives to traditional roles. Yet, we offer another conception for the term dangerous. At a cursory glance, the strong characters we examine in this book suggest we are in a postfeminist era, in which feminist aims of equality between men and women have been achieved.1 Upon further investigation and deeper analysis, however, we find this superficial view dangerous to the millions of audience members and fans who approach these texts with an uncritical eye. The fierce females featured in our analyses ←23 | 24→transgress norms of femininity, and by disrupting societal expectations of the alignment of gender, sex, and sexuality, they trouble these relationships and reveal their social construction. At the same time, they also reproduce certain norms and codes of gender performance. Thus, the transgressive characters we feature are dangerous because they simultaneously threaten and reaffirm the established patriarchal status quo.
Considering that media maintain the ability to discipline feminist politics (Owen, Stein, & Vande Berg, 2007), that producing meaning is not a politically neutral activity (Hall, 1980), and that “the battles over gender in this country are never over, but only episodic” (Gronbeck, 2007, p. xviii; also see Phillips, 2004), we hear the concern voiced in Bad Girls about younger feminists forgetting the past when assaulted with numerous postfeminist depictions of “ass-kicking” female-bodied characters in television, film, gaming, digital spaces, and other mediated contexts.2 As such, we continue this line of inquiry to explore dangerous mediated women in the first quarter of the 21st century, beginning with Quentin Tarantino’s box office successes, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (Fusion, 2003; “Kill Bill” director, 2004).3
Released in October 2003 and April 2004 respectively, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 were originally conceived of as one film. However, after realizing its lengthy run time, director Tarantino decided to split it into two films, releasing them six months apart (Fusion, 2003). The films, a box office success with a combined income of over $332 million worldwide (“Quentin Tarantino plans,” 2009), tell the tale of an ex-member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DVAS),4 Beatrix Kiddo, codename Black Mamba, known primarily throughout the first film as The Bride. Played by Uma Thurman, The Bride is a highly trained martial arts assassin adept with a katana.5 After a romantic involvement with the organization’s leader, Bill, she learns she is pregnant while on a mission. Within minutes of gaining this knowledge, she is confronted by another assassin. She pleads for her life and the life of her unborn child, promising to end her mission and walk away from her profession. Upon seeing the positive pregnancy test, the assassin spares their lives. Soon thereafter, Beatrix retreats into hiding and begins life anew, planning to marry a man unaware of her past. At the wedding rehearsal, however, Bill and the DVAS enter the chapel and kill everyone present. One final blow comes to The Bride; as she informs Bill it is his child, he shoots her in the head. Four and a half years later, she awakens from a coma and enacts her wrath as revenge, systematically killing all the DVAS members and anyone else who gets in her way, ending with Bill. The films detail her vengeance.
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We examine these films because the number of powerful female-bodied characters they feature far exceeds most earlier cinema. Four of the six DVAS members are women. As they split up, one of them employs a female-bodied bodyguard, and a female-bodied assassin was tasked with killing Black Mamba before learning she was pregnant. Notably, upon the films’ releases, the popular press highlighted the femaleness of the films’ violence (Brown, 2006; Corliss, 2003; Medved, 2003; O’Brian, 2003). Although powerful and violent female-bodied characters existed prior to Kill Bill (Ripley in the Alien series [1979, 1986, 1992, 1997] played by Sigourney Weaver, Sarah Connor in The Terminator [1984] played by Linda Hamilton, Le Femme Nikita [1990] played by Anne Parillaud, Tank Girl [1995] played by Lori Petty, M played by Judi Dench in the James Bond series [1995–2012], G.I. Jane [1997] played by Demi Moore, and Lara Croft [2001] played by Angelina Jolie), they acted as solitary female-bodied characters. Given the large number of dangerous dames they include, the Kill Bill films pique our interest.
On the surface, Kill Bill presents postfeminist and postmodern messages and aesthetics. The films’ visual elements establish a nostalgic, fragmented, intertextual, and non-linear spectacle of female-bodied power that seemingly celebrates multiculturalism. In doing so, the films stray from typical expectations of hegemonic femininity. The lead female-bodied characters are unflinchingly brutal as they engage in human death and destruction. By enabling the performance of transgression and gender deviance, these visuals serve to distract viewers from more restrictive patriarchal ideologies embedded within the texts. Postfeminism is markedly different than postmodernism, but the postmodern aesthetics in the Kill Bill films undermine the potential feminist and postfeminist messages. Specifically, women’s power and strength proclaimed in feminism and postfeminism are essentially mocked with excess and spectacle vis-à-vis the excessive carnage, use of Japanese anime and characters’ impossible feats defying gravity and the laws of physics. Ultimately, the films convey modern, patriarchal ideologies enshrouded in postfeminist and postmodern glitter.
Superficial Postfeminist Ideals
As a result of second wave feminists’ quest for women’s equality, “women are assuming lead roles in action narratives on a fairly regular basis” (Brown, 2015, p. 4; also see Jones, Bajec-Carter & Batchelor, 2014). We witness this ←25 | 26→increase beginning in 1979 with Ripley in the Alien series and continuing through contemporary texts; however, while many action movies incorporate one or two women who remain surrounded by male characters, the Kill Bill films are particularly rife with powerfully dangerous female-bodied characters. The members of DVAS include Beatrix Kiddo codename Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), Vernita Green codename Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), Elle Driver codename California Mountain Snake (Daryl Hannah), and O-Ren Ishii codename Cottonmouth (Lucy Liu). Such prominence of leading female-bodied characters who are strong, capable, in control, and mirror typical male hero and villain behaviors clearly supports the idea that we live in a postfeminist era.
Not only are the films’ antagonists