Dangerous Dames. Heather Hundley

law enforcement officers sent to investigate the chapel massacre are father and son. During the wedding rehearsal, the obedient wife sits by her minister husband’s side. The strip club owner is a man, and his bouncer, Budd, and the strippers are submissive to him. Hattori Hanzo, who is the best swordsmith in the world, Beatrix’s and Elle’s kung fu master Pai Mei, and all of the Japanese mob bosses are men. Beatrix had to rely on another man, Estában, to help her locate Bill. Even though women engage in the majority of the action in these films, men thus retain their dominant place, serving as privileged leaders and expert artists who dictate and regulate women’s actions.

      The films also reject feminist and postfeminist messages by duplicating rape culture reminding viewers that regardless of how powerful or dangerous women may be, they can still be overcome with the male phallus. For example, even while averting the female-bodied nurse stereotype, Volume 1 includes Beatrix’s nurse, Buck, who collected money from other men by allowing them to rape her while she was hospitalized in a coma. Between being buried alive and repeatedly raped while in a coma, the link between torture and sex reaffirm a masculinist heterosexual desire for maintaining patriarchal control. Brown (2014) notes how dangerous this can be: “When heroines are victimized in torture scenes, often to the point of actual rape, the films risk eroticizing images of violence against women, even if the women do eventually triumph over their torturers” (p. 47). Clearly, the fact that the “greatest warrior” in the world can be victimized and penetrated against her will demonstrates the phallic power perpetuated by patriarchy is greater than any sword or skill a woman may possess.

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      Within the “man’s world” of the films, the dangerous dames’ access to power is, in fact, reliant on their ability to temporarily possess the phallus. Other scholars have interrogated filmmakers’ creation of female-bodied action heroes in men’s image as incorporating and reproducing masculine (fighting) behaviors (Brunsdon, 2013; Eschholz & Bufkin, 2001; Gilpatric, 2010; Grady, 2014; Halberstam 1998; Tasker, 1998). Kill Bill’s hyperreality, likewise, co-opts and caters to the norms of hypermasculine violence. The Kill Bill films celebrate and perpetuate violence that, even when perpetrated by women, is coded as masculine. Specifically, the female-bodied assassins engage in masculine fighting, serving as an example of female-bodied masculinity (Grady, 2014; Halberstam 1998) that reifies the preference for male norms and dominance that typifies patriarchal culture.

      Not only do women fight like men in the films, their possession of the phallus is further evidenced by their targeting of male-centered weaknesses by kicking each other in the crotch. Early in Volume 1, for instance, Beatrix kicks Vernita in the crotch before dropping her through the glass coffee table. Later in Volume 2, Beatrix and Elle exchange kicks to the crotch as they fight each other in Budd’s trailer home. Continuing with their hand-to-hand combat, Beatrix plunges Elle’s head into the toilet yet Elle escapes by elbowing Beatrix in the crotch. Melding stereotypical hypermasculine violence with stereotypical feminine artistic expression, one journalist praised, “the bloodletting is so over the top it turns the carnage into a blood-soaked ballet” (Brown, 2006, p. 104), a comment that suggests that women’s violence is performative, stylized, and unnatural.

      Finally, despite a superficial conclusion that the films affirm diversity through inclusion, this postmodern aesthetic disguises latent racism. That is, while the Kill Bill films suggest a postracial society by assembling a bricolage of film and music genres, geopolitical and ethnic identities, and different languages, the construction of apolitical difference (representation as a stand in for structural change) enables the reinscription of whiteness.¹³ Specifically, the inclusion of black, Chinese, and Japanese female-bodied characters support Tarantino’s postmodern imagery; however, they remain antagonists defeated by the white female-bodied warrior as Beatrix kills them all. Tierney (2006) notes that “the ability of the White practitioner to defeat Asians, using an Asian skill, in Asia, propagates the theme of ubiquitous, even inevitable White supremacy of global proportions” (p. 614). Beatrix’s emergence as a female-bodied hero thus reinscribes white women’s advancement at the expense of women and men of color, reinscribing white superiority (Tierney, 2006).

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      Repackaging Patriarchal Ideologies

      The Kill Bill films palpably communicate postfeminist and postmodern aesthetic and structural messages. We find these messages to be dangerous because they superficially allow audiences to be pleased with women’s and people of color’s “positive” presence in 21st century film. In essence, this simplistic conclusion serves as a façade for modern patriarchal ideologies embedded within the texts including the reproduction of hegemonic masculinity, rearticulation of gendered stereotypes, co-option of hypermasculine violence, and representation of a superficial politics of difference.

      Although viewers may be lured by the promise of empowerment proffered by postfeminist portrayals and postmodern aesthetics, they ought to be wary of such dangerous offerings, which merely repackage traditional ideologically patriarchal fare. Clearly, postfeminist representations of powerful women serve as a marketing ploy (Sklar, 1994). Despite the increased number of female-bodied assassins in Kill Bill, the quality of portrayal matters more than the quantity. They definitely have power, but they are certainly not empowering. Gilpatric (2010) concurs that female-bodied action heroes do not provide ideal feminist role models. “The majority of female action characters shown in [U.S.] American cinema are not empowering images, they do not draw upon their femininity as a source of power, and they are not a kind of ‘post woman’ operating outside the boundaries of gender restrictions” (Gilpatric, 2010, p. 744; also see Chapters 5 and 6).

      Focusing specifically on Beatrix, we note that she is a lone warrior lacking care or concern from others. The saga that unfolds in the Kill Bill films detail how Beatrix responded after her professional organization, much like a sisterhood, was dissolved. Rather than relying on other women to complete her mission, Beatrix and the other DVAS members turned on each other in reaction or support of male jealousy. What was once a band of women became a fragmented display of petty jealousies and catty behavior. Unlike most heroic protagonists, Beatrix is denied a sidekick and turns on other powerful women who were once her compatriots, thus supporting the patriarchal notion of competition rather than support and camaraderie.

      Comparing Beatrix further with traditional male heroes, she even lacks someone to save. Instead, she engages in a “roaring rampage of revenge.” As she informs viewers at the beginning of Volume 2, “I roared, and I rampaged, and I got satisfaction.” Thus, her quest is presented as selfish revenge rather than serving the greater good—narratives more typical in superhero epics. ←37 | 38→Clearly, this postfeminist message suggests that women are defending themselves and making a statement based on their biological status as mothers and gendered status as wives and lovers rather than their concern for the greater good.