Quentin Tarantino, director of the film Kill Bill, Volume 1, describes his movie as a “feminist statement” and claims that it is “all about girl power”. It is not too hard to take his word for it. The amount of power, violence, and mercilessness exhibited by the lead female character is cinematically unprecedented. It seems to throw gender roles (traditionally associated behaviors assigned according to sex) out the window. Fortunately, good critiques don’t take anyone’s’ “word for it”.(F-word 5)
The main character, the Bride, defies traditional feminine traits such as being passive, dependent, and submissive by being aggressive, assertive, and demanding. Not only is this shown, but it is shown to make the audience desire these traits in the character. Although it does enforce a few gender roles, Kill Bill deconstructs many established gender roles and gives the world a glimpse of the possibilities of female behavior.
“Gender roles…are socially created expectations for masculine and feminine behavior.” (Blumen 2). Gender roles in today’s world seem to be very limited and highly correlated and confused with sex. They insist that people fit into a binary categorization. If someone has a vagina, they are dependent, and if someone has a penis, they are independent. So far in movies, this binary has been represented to be accurate and the only realistic way to act in movies for many years (Lindsay 311).
The main objective in Kill Bill for the bride is to enact revenge on Bill for killing everyone in her wedding and shooting her in the head. Revenge is not a trait usually associated with a female. The exact opposite, submission, is expected (Blumen 2). Once the Bride realized what had happened, she didn’t haplessly wallow in her own grief or just sit and cry. She fought, crawled, hacked, and sliced just for the chance to kill the cause of her torment, Bill.
To help her quest to destroy Bill, the Bride needed a special sword made by Hatori Hanzo. Hatori Hanzo proclaims his newfound intolerance of making tools of death. A typical woman portrayed would exhibit passivity in the situation and walk away or maybe use seduction to get her way. Instead, the Bride restates that her demand was not a request and that she would kill Hatori if he did not comply. Another testimony to the Bride being anything but passive, one of her targets, Copperhead, pleas to the Bride to spare her life due to her motherhood. The Bride responds with some rather colorful language and refuses to comply.
Throughout the entire movie, the Bride is independent and looks to no one for aid in her mission. She takes it upon herself to get her revenge. She needs no man to do her dirty work; in fact, it’s the man himself that she’s seeking to destroy. Essentially it is the Bride versus the world with no one to depend on.
“Before that strip turned blue, I was a killer. I killed for you. But once that strip turned blue, I could no longer do any of those things because I was going to be a mother.” Even though Tarantino destroys some female gender roles of being submissive, passive, and dependent, I found that there are still some lurking elements that don’t quite break gender roles, and maybe even re-enforce them.
The Bride alludes to the time before the movie time frame takes place (before her and her wedding was shot up). She was an amazing assassin who had a great career. The Bride willingly forfeited her career in response to her eventual motherhood. This type of behavior, family before career, is articulated loud and clear in this decision by the main character.
With this background in mind, I determined that the only entity that breaks any kind of gender roles (the Bride) only started to break those roles once she was violently betrayed, massacred, and deprived of family, friends, and a child. One could take this to mean that the only people who break gender roles are raving, savage lunatics who have been shot in the head and have nothing else to live for. This may be an extreme, but the fact remains that even though Tarantino depicts a gender role breaking person, the means in which she arrived there were far from normal.
I am careful to not simply assume that female violence alone simply liberates women from the afore mentioned gender roles.
By far, the most important aspect of the Bride’s breaking of gender roles is that she didn’t need to become a “pseudo-male” in order to accomplish all of her feats. The Bride, in all of her carnage, does not give up being a girl. She doesn’t become a man with boobs, yet she becomes something entirely different from the impermeable binary. She is a smart, talented female who is decisive and unwavering (F-word 10).
Rhetoric is a strong yet subtle device used in the movie to decompose the traditional gender norms. According to John Sloop, words condition genders into being “natural” by using assumptions in the words and reactions themselves (Sloop ). I find that the rhetoric (or lack thereof) used in Kill Bill allowed for the naturalization of the aggressive, assertive, and violent female.
If the type of martial art skill was displayed by a female in any other movie, typically a patriarchal male would comment something along the lines of “pretty good…for a girl”. This rhetoric would of course imply that women are not normally skillful in combat or aggressive. Not once in this movie has anyone perceived the Bride as outside the norm. In fact, when the Bride enters a fight, the opposition is fully aware of her capabilities and expects them. The rhetoric concerning the Bride’s skill creates a whole new gender role, one that allows combative females the norm.
Pervasive message
In conclusion, Tarantino goes down the list of traditional female gender roles and blows them up one by one. He depicts a character that forfeits every trait common associated with females and still retains every aspect of her femininity. Throughout, the Bride retains that she is a woman and can do many things that her gender role has said she could not and without resorting to masculinity. Tarantino has created a model for future roles and has proven that people do not have to be depicted through gender binaries to seem realistic.
The main character, the Bride, defies traditional feminine traits such as being passive, dependent, and submissive by being aggressive, assertive, and demanding. Not only is this shown, but it is shown to make the audience desire these traits in the character. Although it does enforce a few gender roles, Kill Bill deconstructs many established gender roles and gives the world a glimpse of the possibilities of female behavior.
“Gender roles…are socially created expectations for masculine and feminine behavior.” (Blumen 2). Gender roles in today’s world seem to be very limited and highly correlated and confused with sex. They insist that people fit into a binary categorization. If someone has a vagina, they are dependent, and if someone has a penis, they are independent. So far in movies, this binary has been represented to be accurate and the only realistic way to act in movies for many years (Lindsay 311).
The main objective in Kill Bill for the bride is to enact revenge on Bill for killing everyone in her wedding and shooting her in the head. Revenge is not a trait usually associated with a female. The exact opposite, submission, is expected (Blumen 2). Once the Bride realized what had happened, she didn’t haplessly wallow in her own grief or just sit and cry. She fought, crawled, hacked, and sliced just for the chance to kill the cause of her torment, Bill.
To help her quest to destroy Bill, the Bride needed a special sword made by Hatori Hanzo. Hatori Hanzo proclaims his newfound intolerance of making tools of death. A typical woman portrayed would exhibit passivity in the situation and walk away or maybe use seduction to get her way. Instead, the Bride restates that her demand was not a request and that she would kill Hatori if he did not comply. Another testimony to the Bride being anything but passive, one of her targets, Copperhead, pleas to the Bride to spare her life due to her motherhood. The Bride responds with some rather colorful language and refuses to comply.
Throughout the entire movie, the Bride is independent and looks to no one for aid in her mission. She takes it upon herself to get her revenge. She needs no man to do her dirty work; in fact, it’s the man himself that she’s seeking to destroy. Essentially it is the Bride versus the world with no one to depend on.
“Before that strip turned blue, I was a killer. I killed for you. But once that strip turned blue, I could no longer do any of those things because I was going to be a mother.” Even though Tarantino destroys some female gender roles of being submissive, passive, and dependent, I found that there are still some lurking elements that don’t quite break gender roles, and maybe even re-enforce them.
The Bride alludes to the time before the movie time frame takes place (before her and her wedding was shot up). She was an amazing assassin who had a great career. The Bride willingly forfeited her career in response to her eventual motherhood. This type of behavior, family before career, is articulated loud and clear in this decision by the main character.
With this background in mind, I determined that the only entity that breaks any kind of gender roles (the Bride) only started to break those roles once she was violently betrayed, massacred, and deprived of family, friends, and a child. One could take this to mean that the only people who break gender roles are raving, savage lunatics who have been shot in the head and have nothing else to live for. This may be an extreme, but the fact remains that even though Tarantino depicts a gender role breaking person, the means in which she arrived there were far from normal.
I am careful to not simply assume that female violence alone simply liberates women from the afore mentioned gender roles.
By far, the most important aspect of the Bride’s breaking of gender roles is that she didn’t need to become a “pseudo-male” in order to accomplish all of her feats. The Bride, in all of her carnage, does not give up being a girl. She doesn’t become a man with boobs, yet she becomes something entirely different from the impermeable binary. She is a smart, talented female who is decisive and unwavering (F-word 10).
Rhetoric is a strong yet subtle device used in the movie to decompose the traditional gender norms. According to John Sloop, words condition genders into being “natural” by using assumptions in the words and reactions themselves (Sloop ). I find that the rhetoric (or lack thereof) used in Kill Bill allowed for the naturalization of the aggressive, assertive, and violent female.
If the type of martial art skill was displayed by a female in any other movie, typically a patriarchal male would comment something along the lines of “pretty good…for a girl”. This rhetoric would of course imply that women are not normally skillful in combat or aggressive. Not once in this movie has anyone perceived the Bride as outside the norm. In fact, when the Bride enters a fight, the opposition is fully aware of her capabilities and expects them. The rhetoric concerning the Bride’s skill creates a whole new gender role, one that allows combative females the norm.
Pervasive message
In conclusion, Tarantino goes down the list of traditional female gender roles and blows them up one by one. He depicts a character that forfeits every trait common associated with females and still retains every aspect of her femininity. Throughout, the Bride retains that she is a woman and can do many things that her gender role has said she could not and without resorting to masculinity. Tarantino has created a model for future roles and has proven that people do not have to be depicted through gender binaries to seem realistic.
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