Dangerous Dames. Heather Hundley

DVAS are competent, capable, decisive, determined, skilled, and strong. These positive portrayals align with the postfeminist suggestion that gender is no longer a limiting factor for women’s career advancement, achievement, or strength.⁶ Indeed, in creating these characters Tarantino aimed to provide role models: “I actually want 13-year-old girls to see this movie. I think this will be very empowering for them” (quoted in Medved, 2003, para. 12). These women were certainly at the top of their elite profession, with only two men—the leader and his brother—among the DVAS. In fact, female-bodied characters are just as likely as male characters to work in white collar and professional occupations (Children Now, 2004; Signorielli & Bacue, 1999; Signorielli & Kahlenberg, 2001; Steinke, 2005). The character Vernita Green (alias Mrs. Bell) was successful enough to retire at a relatively young age (in her 30s), and to marry and have a child as her second career. Elle Driver continued working as an advanced assassin, killing her and Beatrix’s mentor, Pai Mei, a revered and feared martial artist, as well as her former colleague, Budd, their leader’s brother and former DVAS member.

      The second most successful member of DVAS, only behind Beatrix, was O-Ren Ishii. She built her professional reputation by avenging her father’s death, killing a Japanese mafia-style boss, Matsumoto, and his two henchmen. According to Beatrix’s voiceover, “By 20 she was one of the top female assassins in the world.” Upon leaving DVAS, Ishii became her own boss and the leader of the mafia bosses in Tokyo. When Tanaka, a mafia boss, questioned why they should take orders from the half-Japanese, half-Chinese American, she decisively responded by cutting off his head with one swipe of her katana and said

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      As your leader, I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic. If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so, but allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo. Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage as a negative is… I collect your fucking head. Just like this fucker here. Now, if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say, now’s the fucking time!

      Notably, her ethnicity and nationality, not her sex or gender, generated concerns in her leadership. This particular intersection of interlocking power and oppression unlocks gender as a possible contributing factor to read her as a leader. The undertone supports postfeminism in its suggestion that race, not sex or gender, is the only constraint O-Ren faces on her path to success.

      The strong and decisive character Gogo Yubari, O-Ren’s 17-year-old bodyguard also draws on postfeminism, and especially its embrace of femininity and sexual power (Arthurs, 2003; Atwood, Brunt, & Cere, 2007; Lazar, 2006). Gogo’s girlish youthfulness was emphasized and eroticized as she wore a Catholic school girl outfit complete with a white button-up blouse, short plaid skirt, long white socks, and Buster Brown shoes. She was further infantilized (and sexualized) with her hair in pig-tail style braids and often seen sucking on a lollypop. Rather than associating her age with innocence, it was connected to her ruthless power, sexual desirability, and deficient self-control. As Beatrix described: “what she lacks in age she makes up for in madness.” In one exemplary scene, Gogo propositioned a man at a bar, asking if he wanted to “screw her.” Surprised and excited, he answered “yes.” She responded by stabbing him in the gut, and as she pressed up against him with a firm grasp on the impaled knife, thereby not allowing him to double over as he bled to death, she challenged, “Do you still want to penetrate me or is it I who penetrate you?” This postfeminist scene reconfigures patriarchal notions regarding who wields phallic (and deadly) power. Yet, her “madness” aligns with how female-bodied power is subsumed within a patriarchal structure, positioning her outside of masculine norms of rationality. Portraying her as out-of-control limits her power as she is unpredictable and, therefore, untrustworthy. As with Lorraine in Atomic Blonde and Mary in Proud Mary (Chapter 4), she aligns with the femme fatale/Eve figure who lures in men through (sexual) deception causing him to face his mortality (Hallissy, 1987). Nevertheless, audiences may hastily view her as a dangerously powerful teenage girl who can easily measure up to or surpass adult male characters’ abilities, thus suggesting postfeminism has arrived.

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      The strongest and most successful dangerous dame is clearly the protagonist, Beatrix, who undoubtedly serves as a sign that postfeminism is part of our contemporary culture. Surrounded by formidable opponents, Beatrix’s ability to defeat them positions her at the pinnacle of career success as a powerful, and unconquerable, assassin. Indeed, Elle noted her respect for her ex-colleague, describing her as “the greatest warrior that I have ever met.” Viewers witness her survive being shot in the head, buried alive, and numerous other assassination attempts. Not only did she slay her former colleagues Vernita, Elle, O-Ren, and Bill, but she killed Gogo, a rapist, a potential rapist, and approximately 38 members of the Crazy 88 (O-Ren’s assassin squad). Although she experienced hardships, she ended triumphant. This hearkens postfeminist heroism; these “heroines are sometimes simultaneously worshipped as goddesses, reviled as villainesses, raped and beaten as victims, lusted after as sex objects, [and] placed on pedestals as positive role models” (Jones, Bajec-Carter & Batchelor, 2014, p. ix).

      Clearly, the Kill Bill films present strong, powerful women who are extremely competent in their dangerous profession. After the release of the first film, the New York Times reported women’s favorable opinions; they deemed it empowering to women and claimed they would take their daughters to see it (Leland, 2003). Despite being trained by or lead by men, these assassins ended up killing the men, demonstrating not only their equality to men, but appearing to dominate and surpass the men’s abilities. Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 illustrate “the perception that we now live in a postfeminist era—where women can be heroic and independent, where they can do whatever they want, and where they can overcome oppressive patriarchal systems” (Brown, 2015, p. 11). These films make arguments about women’s empowerment via a strong female-bodied lead who fights against strong female-bodied adversaries. By demonstrating that women can be just as heroic, successful, and powerful as men, if not more so, the films convey the postfeminist myth that equality has been achieved and that feminism is outdated and no longer necessary.

      The Façade of Postmodern Imagery, Excess and Spectacle

      In addition to postfeminism, the Kill Bill films embrace postmodernism in Tarantino’s auteur style rife with intertextual references. Marked by excess and spectacle, postmodern films may include nostalgia, fragmentation, intertextuality, non-linearity, and the apolitical embrace of difference (Borchers & Hundley, 2018; Denzin, 1991; Hodkinson, 2011; Turner, 1990). From ←28 | 29→the opening credits which pay homage to kung-fu films and appropriate the Shaw Scope logo, to its intertextual winks to a soundtrack spanning multiple decades, the Kill Bill films exemplify postmodern aesthetics.

      Excess and spectacle are apparent in the films’ bloodshed, death, and carnage. The lead character killed approximately 45 characters on camera, and the other characters combined killed an additional 16 on camera and 1 off camera. This totals 62 deaths in the 4 hours and 10 minutes of the films’ total run time; this is roughly a death every 4 minutes. Beyond the number of deaths, the blood and gore