(1995) fourth phase of media transformation. Baudrillard posited that mediated images make us think they represent reality, but, because the real and the image have imploded, they are hyperreal. Kill Bill’s hyperreality is evident in the films’ shift from live action to anime, where the use of real people and animated characters flow seamlessly. Hyperreality is also evident in the characters’ accomplishing of impossible feats that exceed reality.
Beatrix engages in several impossible feats. In Chapter One, she dodges a bullet at close range, responding by throwing a knife killing Vernita. In Chapter Five: The House of Blue Leaves, the fight scene changes from color to black and white, from real time to bullet time, and includes gravity-defying action. In this scene, Beatrix effortlessly spins and flips through the air and easily jumps to a second floor bannister while combatting the Crazy 88s. During the battle, she catches a hatchet thrown at her head, splits a man in half length-wise with her sword, stands on one man’s shoulders while stabbing another man, and holds up a dead body with her sword, using him as a shield. Most of this fighting takes place on a dance floor reminiscent to the iconic scene in the 1978 hit film Saturday Night Fever while the 1960s Isley Brothers’ pop song “Nobody but Me” plays in the background, reinforcing the postmodern pastiche. The action continues as the battle appears to take place on stage, with opponents in silhouette with a blue light outlining their figures and a blue grid background providing the backdrop. Such imagery suggests a theatrical performance and hails Elvis Presley’s “Jail House Rock” performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. After defeating over 30 attackers, Beatrix faces one final member of the Crazy 88, who stands shaking in fear. Demasculinizing him to validate her conquest, Beatrix spanks him and tells him to “go home to your mother!” She then demonstrates amazing balance by standing on the second-floor railing and telling everyone still alive to go but to leave their dismembered limbs behind because “they belong to me.”
Beatrix repeats her ability to defy reality in Chapter Seven: The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz and Chapter Eight: The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei. After being shot in the chest at close range with a shotgun loaded with rock salt, Beatrix is tied up and buried alive. Fortunately, because of her training, she was able to punch her way out of the pine coffin and break through the soil, freeing herself. In the following chapter, viewers learn that Beatrix ←31 | 32→acquired her gravity-defying acrobatic skills from her elderly trainer, Pai Mei. When she meets him to begin training, he demonstrates his gymnastic moves while testing her fighting abilities. In addition to successfully dodging her attacks, he effortlessly jumps in the air and lands on her extended sword, five feet above the ground, parallel to the earth. Later in this test of her skills, he throws his sword up in the air and catches it with the scabbard strapped to his body. This ancient artist, with long white hair and an equally long white beard, apparently defies time, space, and gravity.
Beatrix similarly defies physics and demonstrates impressive martial artistry adding more examples to the excess and spectacle apparent in the films. In Chapter Nine: Elle and I, the fight concludes when Beatrix pulls out Elle’s only eyeball.9 She uses lightning fast reflexes and squishes it between her bare toes as she leaves the blinded Elle in Budd’s trailer home with a deadly Black Mamba snake.10 In the Last Chapter: Face to Face, Bill met his demise when Beatrix performed the deadly five-point-palm exploding-heart technique that Pai Mei taught her. A lightning-quick, precise punch to the heart kills the recipient. Bill had heard about this method but was surprised that Pai Mei taught it to Beatrix; he was never afforded the opportunity to learn it himself. By presenting the feminine characters’ strength in an over-the-top manner that places them outside the realm of the real, these repeated violations of reality actually serve to mock and undermine women’s power and strength proclaimed by postfeminism. Despite Tarantino’s claim of providing positive portrayals for girls, his work counters his goal as the excess and spectacle of the hyperreal distract audiences from the traditional patriarchal ideologies embedded within the films.
Modern Patriarchal Ideologies
In concert with the films’ postfeminist and postmodern limitations, the Kill Bill films co-opt and repackage modern patriarchal ideologies. To begin with, hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2001; Hundley, 2013; Trujillo, 1991) manifests in the Kill Bill films in numerous forms. Although the story is about a woman’s quest for revenge, a man’s forceful actions (Bill shooting Beatrix) catalyzes the narrative. If not for Bill’s decision, the story would never have taken place. Moreover, he shot her because he was jealous she was marrying another man. Hence, due to two men’s actions, myriad lives, including their own, were lost.
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Another signifier of hegemonic masculinity is that women submit to men, maintaining a patriarchal power structure in the Kill Bill films. The majority of DVAS were women, but a man remained at the top of the organizational hierarchy. Bill was the boss, and he directed the DVAS missions. His codename, Snake Charmer, reinforced his position of power as all of the assassins’ codenames are snake breeds (Black Mamba, Copperhead, Cottonmouth, California Mountain Snake), suggesting that he controlled them with his ability to “charm” them.11
In addition to a man being the center of action and the heterosexual overtones in their codenames, biological determinism cements women’s domestic role and the patriarchal culture embedded within the films. Beatrix’s quest for revenge takes place after she learns she lost her unborn child. The loss of the child fuels her rage and drives her revenge quest. Tasker (1998) argues that the heroic mother/wife motif is a common frame for female-bodied characters who risk themselves for their children’s safety and survival (Gilpatric, 2010). Like Katniss in The Hunger Games (Chapter 2) and Mary in Proud Mary (Chapter 4), Beatrix is no exception. Brunsdon (2013) concurs that maternal instincts are accepted as justifiable reasons for women to kick ass, drawing attention to female-bodied heroes in Aliens (1986), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Kill Bill (2003 & 2004), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), Alias (2001–2006), and Underworld: Awakening (2012), among others.
Apparently, other female-bodied assassins also acquiesce to women’s inherent biological nature. For example, the female-bodied assassin sent to kill Beatrix disengages when she learns Beatrix is pregnant. In an earlier scene Beatrix allows a temporary truce when Vernita’s child exits the school bus and enters her ransacked home. These scenes suggest that when it comes to children, women’s “maternal instincts” supersede their violence and, even as assassins, their implied decorum protects children (also see Chapters 2 and 4).
Unlike most action-oriented characters, Beatrix was not rewarded with a love interest at the films’ conclusion (also see Chapter 3 regarding Wonder Woman). Instead, she was “rewarded” with the return of her child to assume her “true” place in society—that of a mother. Unlike the reward of an adult sex partner, motherhood does not provide her with sexual pleasure or assistance raising the child; it annihilates her independence, ends her career, returns her to the domestic sphere, and forces her into a position of responsibility as a caretaker for another person. Indeed, her fate is sealed when the film concludes, and viewers see the following
