Reflection: Kick-Ass Female Assassins, Metaphorical Penises, and Slaying the Patriarchy in Quentin T
Synopsis: In Quentin Tarantino’s film Kill Bill Volume I, Beatrix Kiddo, a former assassin, wakes up from a coma as she lays in hospital bed. Little does she know, Elle Driver, an assassin disguised as a nurse, has visited her hospital room while she was asleep. Right as Elle is about to inject Beatrix’s I.V. with a lethal substance, Bill, the ring leader of the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad and Beatrix’s former lover, calls Elle to cancel the hit. When Beatrix wakes up, she realizes, to her great horror, that her once pregnant stomach is now smooth whilst noticing her surroundings. When Beatrix hears male nurse, named Buck, and his friend come into the room she pretends to still be in her coma. She finds out that Buck and his friends have been raping her and other female patients while they have been incapacitated. Beatrix kills Buck and his friend and makes her way into the parking garage where she takes Buck’s truck “The Pussy Wagon” as her getaway car. She goes to Japan to obtain a Hattori Hanzo sword and to formulate her plan of revenge against Bill and his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad who are responsible for putting her into a coma (and presumably killing her baby). First, she kills O-Ren Ishii, known as Cottonmouth, who is the current leader of the Yakuza. Second, she files back to the states to kill Vernita Green, currently a suburban housewife and formerly an assassin known as Copperhead.
Reflection: A few weeks ago, my friends and I decided to have a kick-ass girls night and watch Kill Bill Vol. I together. Our group is made up of literature majors, film majors, and linguistic majors, and we are all very interested in gender. So, as could be expected, this movie lead to some very lively post-film discussion. We were all fascinated by how physically strong and non-emotional Beatrix and the other female members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (I really like that name!) are. Beatrix singlehandedly kills Buck and his friend (a way to assert her dominance over her victimizers), O-Ren (who is an incredibly skilled assassin), and Vernita and brutally maims/kills nearly every member of the Crazy 88, O-Ren’s Yakuza body guards. Beatrix and O-Ren, in particular, break many gender norms. O-Ren, whose parent were brutally murdered in front of her as a child, assassinates her parents killers using her sexual power as a way to lure the mob boss (who also happens to be a pedophile) into a vulnerable situation. (Thereby deconstructing the gender binarism in which she was once the feminine victim.) Then she makes her way up the ranks in the world of Japanese organized crime as an assassin—an amazing feet for a woman in a traditionally male profession. Beatrix is deadly and ruthless and wields her sword, a metaphorical penis, with power and without mercy. And none of the women are highly sexualized, surprisingly. It should be said that, as progressive as this film might be in terms of broadening women’s action roles, Beatrix is still killing other women over a man. And, by and large, Bill, a passive observer in a film riddled with violent action, is in control from a safe distance. He doesn’t need to enter the blood bath, risking his personal safety—he can let his female assassins, his pawns, murder each other instead.