Let‟s Get Into Character: Gender Depictions in the Films of Quentin Tarantino
by
Marc R. Fedderman
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
August 2009
Copyright by Marc R. Fedderman 2009
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Chris Robé for his constant support
and encouragement over the past year. Whenever I began to doubt myself or my choice
to study film at the graduate level, his spirit and optimism would reenergize me. Quite
simply, he is the kind of passionate teacher that I aspire to be one day.
I would also like to thank Dr. Christine Scodari, who planted the seed that maybe,
just maybe, I should write a thesis. This little nudge was what finally convinced me to do
so, and I am grateful to her for it. Over the past three years, I have been fortunate to
study under Dr. Eric Freedman on several occasions. The ease with which he conveyed
complex concepts is a testament to his intelligence and his ability to communicate.
iv
Abstract
Author:
Marc R. Fedderman
Title:
Let‟s Get Into Character: Gender Depictions in the
Films of Quentin Tarantino
Institution:
Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Chris Robé
Degree:
Master of Arts
Year:
2009
This study will focus on Quentin Tarantino‟s three most recent films: Kill Bill:
Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007). These works are
significant, in that they present a marked departure from the director‟s earlier films.
Specifically, they offer portrayals of resourceful and powerful female protagonists, in
stark contrast to the frequently neglected and marginalized women of Reservoir Dogs
(1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Buttressed by a mixture of psychoanalytic feminist and
postmodern theories, I will perform a careful textual analysis of these latest films. In
particular, I intend to uncover the ways in which Tarantino‟s films support and/or subvert
traditionally oppressive conceptions of gender.
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Dedication
This manuscript is dedicated to mother. She is my greatest role model and could
whoop Beatrix Kiddo in a fight any day.
Let‟s Get Into Character: Gender Depictions in the Films of Quentin Tarantino
List of Figures…………………….…………………………………………..................viii
Chapter One: Introduction……………..………………………………………………….1
Confessions of a Budding Cinephile……….……………………………………...1
Background and Justification………………………………….…………………..3
Research Questions………………………………………………………………..6
Literature Review…………………………………………………….…………....6
Masculinity and Hollywood Patriarchy………………………………………...…7
Gaze Theory and the Fetishized Female Form……………………...…………...11
Gender as Construct…………………………………………………………...…16
Postmodernism and Possibilities……..………………………………………….20
Overview and Key Issues………………………………....…………………...…26
Chapter Two: Analysis…..................................................................................................28
The Masculine Origins of Quentin Tarantino…………………………………....28
Cinematographic Choices: Fetishization and the Gaze………………………….36
Gender Performativity and Language……………………………………………44
Gender as Façade: Quentin Tarantino‟s Use of Pastiche ………………………..52
Chapter Three: Conclusion……..……………………………………………………..…61
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Quentin Tarantino and the Legacy of Cinematic Gender………………………..61
Findings……………………………………………………..……………..…….61
Limitations……………………………………………..……………..………….63
Suggestions for Further Research and Implications.………….………………....66
Works Cited……………………………..……………………………………….69
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Figures
Figure 1. Bits of Mia……………….……………………………………...……………..33
Figure 2. Vicarious Titillation…..…………………..………………………………...….41
Figure 3. The Power to Gaze...………………………………………...…………….….43
Figure 4. Pursuer…………………………………….………………………………...…51
Figure 5. Pursued……………………………………..……………………………….....51
Figure 6. Western Iconography…………………….…………………………………….59
viii
Chapter One
Introduction
Confessions of a Budding Cinephile
Seeing Pulp Fiction on the big screen in 1994 was an epiphanic moment for me.
This was the film that began my transformation from someone who liked movies into
someone who loved cinema. Ostensibly, it is the story (or collection of interwoven
stories) of a group of mobsters, drug dealers, and sundry lowlifes in Southern California.
Nominally, one might refer to it as a gangster film. Yet, there was something that
distinguished Pulp Fiction from numerous other examples of the genre. The film‟s
director, Quentin Tarantino, had a real visual and narrative flair. In the limited filmic
vocabulary of my early 20s, I referred to this as a mosaic style; he seamlessly pieced
together disparate elements in ways that seemed unique and revolutionary.
Apart from its clever structure and aesthetic charm, however, Pulp Fiction
reached me viscerally. In retrospect, I recognize this appeal in terms of its hypermasculinity. This was a film teeming with action and violence. Many of the characters
were tough guys (hit men, boxers, etc.), who tended to act first and ask questions later.
Along these lines, it spoke to my manhood as much as my burgeoning sense of art.
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Upon subsequent viewings, my adoration did not abate, but, emboldened by a
newfound academic rigor, I began to speculate as to why I was so attracted to the film. I
asked myself questions like “Is this how men, even fictional men, should behave?”
Although I was initially struck by such issues of masculinity, my interest gradually
shifted to the portrayal of women in the film. As such, I wondered where the strong
female characters were. As Susan Fraiman notes, the women that do appear are usually
relegated to “small gestures made within small spaces, spectral presences hovering just
offscreen” (4). This became a real concern and my love for Pulp Fiction became a guilty
pleasure.
Tarantino‟s directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs (1992), presented many of the same
problems. Hinting at the narrative and stylistic flourishes to come, the film portrays the
aftermath of a botched jewel heist. It is every bit as violent and even gorier than Pulp
Fiction. To this end, Sharon Willis claims, “the film‟s duration seems to be controlled by
the amount of time it takes someone to bleed to death” (191). It focuses exclusively on
the formation and dissolution of homosocial relationships among the all-male criminals.
While women are literally absent, they figure in the film‟s dialogue in subtle, but
significant ways. For example, the thieves are all given color-related code names to
protect their anonymity. When one character is assigned the moniker “Mr. Pink,” he
vehemently objects. His main concern seems to be the feminizing or emasculating
connotations of the color. This is confirmed explicitly, when Joe, the plot‟s mastermind,
says that he gave the character the name because Pink is “a faggot.” Similarly, the
thieves employ pejorative, gendered language when discussing the significance of the
Madonna song “Like a Virgin.” According to Mr. Brown, it is “all about this cooze
2
who‟s a regular fuck machine, I‟m talking morning, day, night, afternoon, dick, dick,
dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick.” Such sequences made the film seem at best
myopic, at worst hateful and misogynist.
As my immersion in the medium intensified, I began to reconsider the genderbased assumptions of works like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Buoyed by a more
sophisticated understanding of the cinematic apparatus, as well as concepts like the gaze
and postmodernism, I attacked such films with the relish of a recent convert.
Accordingly, Tarantino‟s women seemed to fall into the reductive categories of
marginalized plot points (Mia, the gangster‟s moll in Pulp Fiction) or disembodied
points-of-conversation (Madonna and Pam Grier in Reservoir Dogs). As my
examinations continued, however, this simple dyad was complicated by two factors.
First, all of Tarantino‟s work since Pulp Fiction has featured strong female characters.
These are not just characters, but protagonists (the titular Jackie Brown, The Bride in Kill
Bill, and the vengeance-seeking women of Death Proof). Furthermore, my introduction
to the feminist theories of academics like Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, Mary Ann Doane,
and Judith Halberstam forced me to reconsider the function of gender in the Tarantino
oeuvre. Accordingly, I approach this project with mixed emotions. My academic
curiosity is mingled with the fear of pleasure deprivation through over-analysis.
Background and Justification
The popular appeal of Quentin Tarantino‟s work is undeniable. A quick perusal
of his filmography on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) confirms this. According to
the site, as of November 2008, four of the director‟s six feature-length films rate among
the 250 most popular of all-time (The Internet Movie Database). These include: Pulp
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Fiction (#6), Reservoir Dogs (#68), Kill Bill: Volume 1 (#129), and Kill Bill: Volume 2
(#194). Moreover, Tarantino has received extensive coverage in magazines such as
Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. He has also been the subject of numerous
“quickie” biographies like Jami Bernard‟s Quentin Tarantino: The Man and his Movies
(1995), Jim Smith‟s Tarantino (2005), and Edwin Page‟s Quintessential Tarantino
(2005).
Such sources are valuable, in that they underscore the widespread attraction of his
work. Nonetheless, there is a relative dearth of academic information on Tarantino‟s
films. For the purposes of this study, the quality scholarship that does exist is limited in
two key ways. First, it tends to focus, with marked skepticism, on the director‟s earlier
efforts, namely Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Both Sharon Willis (1997) and Susan
Fraiman (2003), for example, consider Tarantino‟s postmodern aesthetic as depicted in
these films. Accordingly, his aim in Pulp Fiction is characterized as a “drive to turn shit
into gold” (Willis 195). Second, when gender is addressed, it tends to be placed in the
context of the director‟s perceived essentialist view of women. Along these lines, The
Bride, protagonist of Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2, is seen as a character reduced to her
anatomy. Early in the first volume, she is shot and left for dead. She is then sent to a
hospital, where her comatose body is rented out for sex. In his analysis of this sequence,
Stanley Crouch contends that even:
[. . .] as she lies in a coma, with no personality on display other than an
unconscious muscular reflex of spitting, her vagina gives her value as an
opening for sale, one that, detached from any response, can be lubricated
4
with vaseline [sic] if it becomes dry. Her hole is her entire story and the
source of her brutal degradation. (194)
If true, such a reading condemns the film for being hostile and misogynistic. It is,
however, my contention that Tarantino‟s work presents a far more nuanced critique of
prescriptive gender norms.
In particular, his three most recent films: Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill:
Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007), provide illustrative examples of a gender
continuum. On such a scale, masculinity and femininity are not fixed poles, but rather
fluctuating points. Furthermore, these labels do not adhere circumscriptively to either
men or women. This idea is based in large part on the theories of Judith Butler, who
claims gender to be ideologically constructed. She states that even if we accept (as she
does not) the significance of anatomical differences, “it does not follow that the
construction of „men‟ will accrue exclusively to the bodies of males or that „women‟ will
interpret only female bodies” (Butler 9). As such ideas pertain to the aforementioned
films, “masculine” themes, like vengeance and violence, are perfectly compatible with
female characters. Conversely, “feminine” behaviors, such as chattiness and weeping,
are reconcilable with male characters.
To my knowledge, no study has considered Tarantino‟s films in terms of Butler‟s
notions of gender constructedness. By applying a multi-pronged, theoretical approach, I
intend to redress this absence in the academic literature. The components of my
argument will include: masculine ideology (and production practices), gaze theory,
gender studies, and postmodernism.
5
Research Questions
Over the course of my study, I intend to consider several questions. First and
foremost, how does Quentin Tarantino construct the feminine gender or portray the
feminine gender as a construct? Furthermore, in tracing the trajectory of his career, have
these portrayals become markedly more equitable? Do, in other words, his recent female
protagonists rise to a level of empowerment generally reserved for male characters?
Literature Review
This review of literature provides an overview of the four theoretical perspectives
employed in my discussion of gender characterizations in the films of Quentin Tarantino.
This, however, is not only a summary. The review section also allows me to “unpack”
and synthesize some of the more complex concepts that I will be grappling with
throughout.
First, I look at the director‟s background. The particular focus here is on
Tarantino as a purveyor of masculine ideology and a byproduct of a patriarchal
Hollywood system. Next, I examine the gaze, from its origins in the Western artistic
tradition to its more contemporary applications in feminist film studies. Moreover, I
consider the role of the fetish object within gaze theory. This is followed by a discussion
of gender as construct, with an emphasis on femaleness (and maleness) as invention,
rather than anatomical truth. I conclude with an outline of postmodernism, in its many
facets. While Tarantino‟s style is frequently referred to as postmodern, his films also
evince certain key tenets of postmodern theory.
6
Masculinity and Hollywood Patriarchy
As the reach of feminist film criticism/theory expanded in the 1970s, discussions
of a so-called “crisis in masculinity” started to emerge. Cinematic studies of masculinity
began in the “early 1980s in Britain and [are] being pursued actively in America today”
(Kaplan, Introduction 1). Such work tends to subvert the notion that white, heterosexual
men are unworthy of discussion because they are the presumed default producers and
consumer of popular culture. To this end, in “Masculinity as Spectacle: Reflections on
Men and Mainstream Cinema,” Steve Neale contends that masculinity has:
[. . .] been identified as a structuring norm in relation both to images of
women and gay men. It has to that extent been profoundly problematized,
rendered visible. But it has rarely been discussed and analyzed as such.
(253)
Neale provides a psychoanalytic examination of how men, both onscreen and in the
audience, “look.” Ultimately, he concludes that normative masculinity is a façade. This
pretense is reified, however, through macho cinematic confrontations. For example, he
refers to “those moments at which a narrative outcome is determined through a fight or
gun battle, at which male struggle becomes pure spectacle” (261). Put another way, the
fluid nature of masculinity, and by implication femininity, is obfuscated through filmic
tropes like the showdown.
Published in 2005, more than twenty years after Neale‟s essay, Daniel Tripp‟s
“„Wake Up!‟: Narratives of Masculine Epiphany in Millennial Film,” echoes many of the
same sentiments. The author‟s particular focus is on the construction of a narrow,
masculine ethos by the hands of corporate elites. By exploring films such as American
7
Beauty (1999) and Fight Club (1999), Tripp contends that masculinity is akin to a
product that is bought, sold, and foisted upon unwitting consumers through mediated
images. Accordingly, he notes that it is “not a stable essence with which men identify by
nature; rather it is an effect of the consumption and remediation of gendered images”
(Tripp 187). Both Tripp and Neale seem to suggest that the crisis in masculinity is based
upon flawed assumptions. Namely, masculinity is not fixed, but in constant flux. In
addition, Tripp argues that white heterosexual men, like women and racial/ethnic
minorities, are frequently pigeonholed by cultural images.
Underlying this pigeonholing are the subtle, yet insidious, forces of a sexist
ideology. As it pertains to cinematic masculinity, ideology may be defined as the
perpetuation of “real material conditions and relationships,” through “abstract and false
thought” (Williams 155). In his book Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and
Critical Practice in Film and Television, John Caldwell discusses the Hollywood system
in such terms. He notes that film and TV production communities are not simply
manufacturers of popular entertainment. They are also:
cultural expressions and entities involving all of the symbolic processes
and collective practices that other cultures use: to gain and reinforce
identity, to forge consensus and order, to perpetuate themselves and their
interests, and to interpret the media as audience members. (Caldwell 2)
This Hollywood production ideology is heavily patriarchal, affecting workers both
“below” and “above” the line. Below the line workers, such as set designers and gaffers,
work far from the limelight, but they are often subject to gendered assumptions. For
example, Caldwell describes a promotional film produced by equipment giant Sony.
8
Marketed to camera operators, much of the video depicts debonair cameramen capturing
the Las Vegas cityscape at night. It concludes, however, with the “soft-core images of
screaming bikini-clad females shooting through nearby waterslides [. . .]” (Caldwell 103).
Highlighting the gender disparities of production communities, the author‟s account is
rife with examples of misogyny.
Above the line personnel, including producers and directors, are similarly subject
to Hollywood‟s patriarchal ideology. In these capacities, women are not just segregated,
but virtually absent. Along these lines, one can probably count the number of prominent
female directors working in Hollywood on one hand. Although it can not be proven, it
seems logical that films made by men will tend to reflect the interests of and appeal to
men in the audience.
Growing up in and around the Los Angeles area in the 1960s and 1970s, Quentin
Tarantino was an avid filmgoer. During this period, he saw a variety of movies with his
mother, including adult-themed works like Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Deliverance
(1972), before the age of ten (Bernard 13). By his early twenties, Tarantino was working
at Video Archives, the “coolest, hippest video rental counter in [Southern California]”
(Bernard 28). As a clerk, he would spend his days immersed in film. When he wasn‟t
viewing movies, he was talking about them with customers and his fellow employees.
As a young man without a real father figure, Tarantino emulated the men he saw
onscreen. He found a particular affinity in the tough, yet witty characters of Golden Age
director Howard Hawks. Musing on Hawks‟ work, Tarantino claimed to admire the
“ethic that he was proposing in his films, about men and their relationships with each
9
other and with women. And I guess I recognized it in my own self and adopted it” (qtd.
in Bernard 21).
Utilizing film as a surrogate father, however, was fraught with problems.
Throughout his teens and twenties, for example, Tarantino would often respond to
confrontations physically, à la John Wayne. To this end, he confided to Jami Bernard: “I
guess my biggest demons have to do with boyhood masculine pride. Like if I‟m pushed
into a situation I will totally respond with violence or something like that” (145).
Moreover, his self-professed bouts of masculine pride find a clear resonance in his work.
Not surprisingly, much of the academic literature on Tarantino considers his films
as quintessentially masculine and filled with complex father figures. Sharon Willis, for
example, portrays the director‟s early work as a challenge to white heterosexual
manhood, through its focus on the feminine aspects of popular culture and blackness.
Analyzing the director‟s brand of Oedipality, she suggests that both “desire and hostility
seem to be directed at fathers in attacks staged to win the approval of women and black
men” (Willis 201). This fascination with black culture is echoed by Susan Fraiman and
Stanley Crouch. Accordingly, Fraiman asserts that Tarantino‟s understanding of white
coolness is derived from “an impersonation of blackness” (2). Blackness as a litmus test
for “cool” has a long and troubled history, rooted in American primitivism. Some
prominent cinematic examples include Al Jolson achieving superstardom while
performing in blackface in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1929) and Marlene Dietrich
impersonating a gorilla during her risqué nightclub act in Blonde Venus (Josef von
Sternberg, 1932). Along these lines, the hip and hyper-masculine black men (and white
poseurs) who litter Tarantino‟s early films are part of a long, ignominious tradition.
10
Other popular academic essay collections such as Quentin Tarantino and
Philosophy: How to Philosophize with a Pair of Pliers and a Blowtorch and The
Tarantinian Ethics are similarly (albeit appropriately) focused on race and masculinity.
By contrast, scholarly focus on gender relations in general and the director‟s female
characters in particular, is relatively scarce.
Gaze Theory and the Fetishized Female Form
Female characters have in fact become more prominent, occupying center stage as
it were, in Tarantino‟s three most recent films. Accordingly, the Kill Bill saga may be
read as the story of The Bride‟s transformation from hapless victim to empowered
woman. As the tale‟s narrative arc progresses, however, she begins to control filmic
space as well. Consider, for example, two diametrically opposed scenes, one at the start
of the saga, one at its conclusion. In the former, we find The Bride battered and
bloodied, prostrate on the floor of a wedding chapel. It is her former lover, Bill who
stares down at her helpless body. In the latter scene, nearing the end of her quest for
vengeance, it is The Bride who peers down at Bill from the top of a staircase. The
change is significant, in that she has come to actively possess the frame, rather than
existing passively in it. Put another way, the shifting power dynamic in the film is
realized through The Bride‟s gradual possession of the gaze. This lies in stark contrast to
the traditionally oppressive depictions of women in various media.
In Ways of Seeing, John Berger details the gendered assumptions found in
classical (from its earliest incarnations until the birth of photography) Western painting.
He notes a clear delineation between the male and female presence in such work,
defining them as those who do and those who have done to them respectively. Expressed
11
in simple terms, “men act,” in the role of painter or spectator and “woman appear”
(Berger 47).
This dichotomy is most evident in the depiction of the female nude. Many early
nudes referred, either explicitly or implicitly, to the Genesis tale of Adam and Eve.
Significantly, this focus on biblical creation aligns women with the notion of original sin.
Moreover, it confirms man‟s place as the morally superior “agent of god” (Berger 48).
Even with the secularization of subject matter, vestiges of gender hierarchy would
remain. As Berger notes, the shame and sin correlated with the female body would be
“transformed into a kind of display” (49). Along these lines, the classic Western painting
presumes a male spectator. These works were painted for men by men, and women were
the objects of their erotic contemplation. In this manner, the female form was often
presented in compromising and subservient poses, to underscore the dominance of the
implied male viewer.
This tradition of asserting male agency and female inferiority through
difference persists in newer media such as film. In her highly influential essay “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey defines this dyad in terms of the
oppressive male gaze and the “to-be-looked-at-ness” of women (841). As opposed to
painting, film offers the presumed male spectator several ways to look and, by extension,
possess the female image. She describes these looks as: “that of the camera as it records
the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the
characters at each other within the screen illusion” (Mulvey 847). In all three instances,
it is the male, either off or onscreen, who controls the gaze.
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Employing psychoanalytic theory, Mulvey attempts to unravel the essence of
cinematic gazing. She defends her choice of a theory steeped in misogyny, claiming that
it is an effective means for “demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society
has structured film form” (Mulvey 837). In Freudian terms, woman is defined by what
she is not (a man) and what she does not possess (a penis). As a result of this lack, she is
“tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (838). Echoing the
sentiments of Berger, the film female remains, like her painted forebears, the acted upon
rather than the actor.
Corresponding to the three ways of looking, Mulvey defines the three types of
cinematic pleasure. The first is scopophilia, or looking in secret. According to the
author, film depicts a “hermetically sealed world which unwinds magically, indifferent to
the presence of the audience, producing for them a sense of separation and playing on
their voyeuristic fantasy” (Mulvey 839). The basis for this pleasure is the libido, in that it
concerns the male‟s, often surreptitious, desire to sexually possess and control women.
The second type of pleasure is narcissism, or the wish to see oneself onscreen. This is
grounded in the ego and the mirror phase of human development. Mulvey characterizes
this as the stage when:
[. . .] the child‟s physical ambitions outstrip his motor capacity, with the
result that the recognition of himself is joyous in that he imagines his
mirror image to be more complete, more perfect than he experiences his
own body. (840)
Accordingly, film embodies the viewer‟s desire to return to this euphoric state of
childhood.
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Unlike the first two iterations, the third type of pleasure is distinctly cinematic.
This results from the ideal, yet illusory, world created from the clash of projected desires
(scopophilia) and the need to see oneself onscreen (narcissism). These two impulses are
incompatible, so the presumed male viewer accepts the film‟s masculine protagonist as
his surrogate. Even when experienced vicariously, the role of the male is active, while
the female is passive. Along these lines, female characters are “coded for strong visual
and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (841). What
is more, the onscreen male is a narrative agent, propelling the story forward, while the
female is often relegated to a spectacle that staunches narrative flow.
In this manner, the onscreen female confronts the male spectator with a
significant problem. As Mulvey notes, this highly sexualized female “connotes
something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis,
implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure” (844). One way to circumvent this
anxiety is the reduction of woman to fetish object. She may, therefore, be condensed into
a specific body part (Marlene Dietrich is legs, Jane Russell is breasts, etc.). This literal
fragmentation of a woman‟s body serves to figuratively disempower her. By extension,
when she is defined by her anatomy, she is made to seem less threatening, her lack less
apparent.
Throughout Tarantino‟s oeuvre, for example, the camera and dialogue often fixate
on women‟s feet. As a friend of the director once confided, he‟s “got a huge foot fetish”
(Biskind 314). Along these lines, Jules and Vincent, the itinerant hit men of Pulp
Fiction, engage in a philosophical discussion about the pleasures and perils of giving a
foot massage. Moreover, both The Bride in Kill Bill and Abernathy in Death Proof are
14
subject to long shots, which linger on their feet. While both characters prove strong
protagonists, one must consider the extent to which their power is undermined by this
preoccupation.
In her essay “Representing Pornography: Feminism, Criticism, and Depictions of
Female Violation,” Susan Gubar traces the history of the fetishized female form in
Western art. This tradition, according to the author, is couched in pornography, which
she defines as a “gender-specific genre produced primarily by and for men but focused
obsessively on the female figure” (Gubar 713). She notes that the genre runs the gamut,
from vile objectification of women in the writings of Rabelais to aestheticized portrayals
in the paintings of Magritte. Its frequent reduction of women into convenient, sexualized
body parts, however, binds all of this work under the rubric of the pornographic
according to the author. Ultimately, Gubar claims that misogyny is endemic to the
institution of Western art. She notes, “in many instances art and pornography are
indistinguishable” (Gubar 741). Still, she believes that fetishistic portrayals of women
should be addressed and studied rather than disavowed. There is, in other words, great
value in analyzing pornography as a means to subverting it.
In concluding this section on the gaze and fetishization, it is essential to recognize
that much feminist film theory is an elaboration of/response to Mulvey‟s seminal essay.
Two notable examples are Mulvey‟s own “Afterthoughts on „Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema‟ Inspired by „Duel in the Sun‟ (King Vidor, 1946)” and E. Ann
Kaplan‟s “Is the Gaze Male?” In her later work, Mulvey defends her theories, asserting
that she was interested in the “„masculinisation‟ of the spectator position, regardless of
the actual sex (or possible deviance) of any real live movie-goer” (12). She does slightly
15
amend her earlier work, claiming that women can identify with and, by extension,
appropriate the masculine pleasure of gazing. Through this identification, Mulvey asserts
that the female viewer can “rediscover that lost aspect of her [active] sexual identity”
(13). Similarly, Kaplan considers the degree to which women can truly possess the gaze.
She problematizes Mulvey‟s theories, wondering if the dominant cinematic position must
be synonymous with masculinity. Put another way, she implicitly asks if a woman needs
to act like a man to achieve power on and offscreen. To attain such control, she promotes
the need to:
move beyond long-held cultural and linguistic patterns of oppositions:
male/female (as these terms currently signify); dominant/submissive;
active/passive; nature/civilization; order/chaos; matriarchal/patriarchal.
(Kaplan 135)
According to Kaplan, it is the blind acceptance of differences, where none exist that
leads to parochial and oppressive concepts of gender.
Gender as Construct
In “Film and the Masquerade,” Mary Ann Doane responds to Mulvey‟s theories
by envisioning a hypothetical female gaze. Significantly, this essay serves as a key
bridge between “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and the more radical iterations
of feminist theory, espoused by scholars like Judith Butler. Here, Doane notes that the
patriarchal cinematic apparatus denies women power by depriving them of the ability to
“look.” This is accomplished through the reduction of woman to her physical attributes.
According to the author, the film female is “more closely associated with the surface
image than that of its illusory depths, its constructed three-dimensional space which the
16
man is destined to inhabit and hence control” (Doane 43-4). Simply put, woman is
portrayed as body and man as mind.
Unlike Mulvey, however, Doane contends that women onscreen can circumvent
this power dynamic by deliberately embellishing their femininity. She refers to this act
as the “masquerade.” Herein, the female manufactures a “lack in the form of a certain
distance between oneself and one‟s image” (Doane 49). Whereas Mulvey posits women
as helpless victims to be looked at, Doane describes potential empowerment through a
willing and knowing encouragement of the gaze.
Female performers can, in other words, underscore the absurdity of circumscribed
gender roles by playing their parts to the hilt. Consider, for example, the hyperbolized
femininity of Marilyn Monroe‟s Lorelei Lee in Howard Hawks‟ Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes (1953). Lee is so excessively effete and girly as to seem a campy cliché.
Accordingly, the astute male viewer is compelled to question the traditionally oppressive
categories of man and woman. Furthermore, in recognition of the mask worn by her like
onscreen, the female spectator is no longer left with only two, internecine options,
namely the “masochism of over-identification or the narcissism entailed in becoming
one‟s own object of desire” (Doane 54). In this way, Doane attempts to disentangle
femininity (the masquerade) from women‟s bodies (the reality). Most significantly, her
theory serves as a key bridge between Mulvey‟s concept of the gaze and the more
transgressive and liberatory possibilities of gender as construct.
Judith Butler is perhaps the best-known proponent of the latter argument. In
Bodies That Matter, she considers how women are oppressed through notions of
anatomical difference. In a tradition dating back to Plato, Butler notes that women have
17
been consistently reduced, through sexual customs and reproduction, to passive bodies or
receptacles, while men have been elevated to transcendent forms. In other words, men
are traditionally characterized as doers, women as those who have done to them. Butler
problematizes this Platonic dichotomy of mind over matter. She claims that if women
begin to do, “if the copies speak, or if what is merely material begins to signify, the
scenography of reason is rocked by the crisis on which it was built” (Bodies 52).
According to Butler, the “reason” upon which sex and gender differences are founded is a
construct, rather than an essential truth. She believes that oppressive patriarchal systems
(though not expressly mentioned by the author, film is a prominent example) can crumble
under the pressure of close scrutiny and analysis. Put another way, she seeks to expose
gender as an elaborately institutionalized type of performance.
In Quentin Tarantino‟s films, however, women often perform in a conventionally
feminine manner. This is not necessarily to say that women act like men, but rather that
“woman” and “man” are, ultimately, arbitrary signs, their actions no more than charades.
This is evident in Death Proof, where Tarantino divides his narrative into two similar, yet
discrete parts, broken up along gendered lines. In both sections, a group of women is
subjected to the machinations of the brutal Stuntman Mike. It is in how the women
respond to his pursuit, however, that their respective fates are determined. The first
group behaves in a traditionally feminine and frequently subservient manner. One of the
women, Arlene, goes so far as to perform a lap dance for Mike. Despite all of their tough
talk, they are unable to transcend their “to-be-looked-at-ness.” The second group, by
contrast, is able to meet Mike on his own terms; they not only talk the talk, but walk the
walk. After avoiding his clutches, they choose to pursue and torture him. As Aaron C.
18
Anderson notes, the “sadisms of Kim, Zoë, and Abernathy turn Mike‟s sadomasochism
on its head” (19). In a sense, they assume the masculine power of hunters. They seem to
possess an implicit understanding that gender is no more than a construct and,
consequently, are able to succeed where their predecessors failed.
Butler further elucidates her argument in her highly influential Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Here, she considers the often subtle ways in
which women are subjected to patriarchal and heterosexual paradigms. Of particular
resonance is Butler‟s contention that feminists who argue against phallogocentric
structures without first deconstructing them are inadvertently supporting those structures.
If women are simply defined by what they are not, for example possessors of the gaze
(Mulvey), they cannot attain true equity. Accordingly, she believes that subversion is
only achievable from “within the terms of the [patriarchal] law, through the possibilities
that emerge when the law turns against itself and spawns unexpected permutations of
itself” (Butler, Gender, 127). For example, she notes the tendency in psychoanalytic
theory to confuse the penis with the phallus. This can be alternately defined as the
difference between “having” and “being.” While only men can have the penis, it is,
ultimately, an arbitrary symbol of power. The phallus, by contrast, represents true
authority and is not distinctly male or female. When they are employed interchangeably,
however, the illusion of power as exclusively masculine is created. As such, women are
seen to symbolize, but not possess the phallus. They provide “the site to which it
penetrates, [. . .] through „being‟ its Other, its absence, its lack, the dialectical
confirmation of its identity” (Butler, Gender 59). To achieve equality, the artificial
19
delineation of penis and phallus, of having and being must be recognized and
reconfigured.
During the climactic car chase sequence in Death Proof, such a reconfiguration is
accomplished through the masculine words and actions of Kim. After turning the tables
on Mike, she pursues her former tormentor with a gusto that seems almost orgasmic. In
fact, the chase parallels intercourse, with Kim‟s car repeatedly ramming into Mike‟s
vehicle from behind. In this way, she undermines the sexual thrill that Mike receives
from stalking his victims. Spewing lines like “I‟m the horniest motherfucker on the
road” and “I‟m gonna bust a nut up in this bitch right now,” Kim evinces the power of the
phallus by proving that it need not be tied to the possession of a penis.
Postmodernism and Possibilities
In sentiments that resonate with, and yet transcend, Doane‟s concept of the
masquerade, Butler proposes the liberatory possibilities of drag. Calling into question the
essential “nature” of men and women, drag “plays upon the distinction between the
anatomy of the performer and the gender that is being performed” (Butler, Gender 187).
This is not, however, a simple case of role reversal, of women dressing and acting like
men (and vice versa). Through its confusion of prescriptive gender norms, drag
accentuates the artificiality upon which the male/female dyad is built. In a way, these
performances undermine the repeated acts (behaviors) that constitute conventional
notions of gender and sex. Drag and other instances of “occasional discontinuity, reveal
the temporal and contingent groundlessness of this „ground‟” (Butler, Gender 192). It is
through the exploration and repetition of these fissures that Judith Butler envisions a state
20
of genderlessness. Moreover, in her focus on the superficiality of the labels “man” and
“woman,” her theories can be characterized as postmodern.
Drawing upon the gender as construct theme, Judith Halberstam proposes the idea
of alternate masculinities. She claims that the binary system of gender identification is
inadequate, because many people do not fit neatly into the discrete categories of man or
woman. In an attempt to remedy this shortcoming, Halberstam believes it essential to
situate a dialogue of “female and lesbian masculinities in direct opposition to a more
generalized discussion of masculinity within cultural studies that seems intent on
insisting that masculinity remain the property of male bodies” (Female Masculinity 15).
Such masculine women are a staple of Tarantino‟s most recent films. The Bride
in Kill Bill and Kim in Death Proof provide clear illustrations of this phenomenon, as
both characters are able to seamlessly blend conventional notions of masculinity and
femininity. The Bride for example, exhibits both mercenary and maternal behaviors.
These facets of her personality reflect a balance that reconciles her “desire to get even (to
make the world one of extraordinary violence that works in [her] favour) and the need to
acknowledge an ordinary world (one that includes daughters and mothers . . .)” (Gallafent
107). Similarly, Kim is a car-crazed stuntwoman who loves to chat it up with her
girlfriends when not engaged in brinksmanship. The masculine traits of these characters
are not anomalies, but rather expressions of a fluid, postmodern gender that does not
adhere strictly to anatomy.
Halberstam goes on to posit that notions of conventional masculinity originate in
childhood. Specifically, she considers the issue of tomboyism, or girls behaving like
boys. While adolescent tomboys are generally accepted as quirky and different, such
21
tendencies are deemed aberrant in grown women. Reiterating the sentiments of Butler,
Halberstam recognizes the power of language to effect such categories. In a sense, a
masculine woman is akin to an indecipherable language. She asserts that as a “cardinal
rule of gender [. . .] one must be readable at a glance” (Female 23). When women exhibit
masculine traits, for example, they are made to seem illegible and, consequently,
maligned and marginalized. Along these lines, female masculinity presents a particular
threat to oppressive hegemonic values. In this vein, she notes that there is “no word for
the opposite of „emasculation‟” and “no parallel concept to „effeminacy‟” (Female, 269).
The language simply does not exist to adequately explain such phenomena.
Halberstam does see great potential for portraying female masculinity (and other
alternative identities) through the medium of film. First, however, she finds it necessary
to reconsider the pioneering work of theorists like Laura Mulvey and Mary Ann Doane.
In opposition to the androcentric assumptions of the gaze, she is determined to locate
“queer relations to cinematic pleasure that are not circumvented by the constrictive
language of fetishism, scopophilia, castration, and Oedipalization” (Female 179). In a
savvy acknowledgement of Butler‟s Bodies that Matter, Halberstam explores these
possibilities in “Bodies that Splatter: Queers and Chain Saws.” Her particular focus is on
the emancipating potential of the most generic of genres, the slasher film. She suggests
that there is a strong correlation between the tearing and shredding of characters in such
violent fare and the deconstruction of the circumscribed categories “man” and “woman.”
Halberstam postulates that such films depict gender as “skin, leather, face, not body, not
internal mechanics, certainly not genitalia” (Halberstam, Skin Shows 152). This
22
emphasis on the external and superficial qualities of gender can be classified under the
rubric of the postmodern.
Postmodernism suggests a wide range of things, from historical epoch to artistic
style to cultural theory. The postmodern era roughly covers the period that “began with
the Enlightenment and ended in the 1960s or the 1970s” (Bennett et al. 269). This span
corresponds to the shift from industrial to post-industrial economies, from the production
of goods to the focus on services and ideas. The postmodern aesthetic, which emerged in
the 1960s, marks a blurring of the distinction between high and low art, between past and
present.
This blending of high and low, of past and present is a staple of the Tarantino
style. Accordingly, Kill Bill possesses the “high” art elements of bildungsroman and
Homeric epic. It also, however, is a reverent tribute to the Spaghetti Western and the
Kung Fu film. Moreover (and without seeming anachronistic), Death Proof mixes the
campy sensibilities of 1970s Grind House cinema with current cell phone technology.
Similarly, postmodern theory, often referred to as poststructuralism and
epitomized by the work of Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, and Fredric Jameson,
offers a synthesis of myriad other theories. In The Cultural Turn, Jameson strives to
make some sense of the morass that is postmodernism. He contends that two key
components of the postmodern are the obliteration of established ideas and the
aforementioned blending of high and low cultures.
With regards to postmodern art, Jameson recognizes two essential features:
pastiche and schizophrenia, or the iterations of space and time respectively. Pastiche is
23
often confused with parody, as both involve imitation or mimicry. There is, however,
one crucial difference. As the author states, pastiche is a:
[. . .] neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody‟s ulterior motive,
without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent
feeling that there exists something normal compared with which what is
being imitated is rather comic. Pastiche is blank parody, parody that has
lost its sense of humor [. . .]. (Jameson 5)
Pastiche is, in Jameson‟s estimation, the soulless, artistic residue of late capitalism. It is
the byproduct of a nostalgic longing for irrecoverable places and times. This desire is
often manifest in the schizophrenic character of the postmodern. Not only is the art
object atomized, but the individual subject is fractured as well. If art is an expression of
individuality, then postmodern art, with its reliance upon pastiche and nostalgia, can be
said to represent the death of the enlightened (Descartian) individual.
Taken to its (il)logical extreme, Jameson speculates that the individual may never
have existed in the first place. By extension, the subject may more properly be called the
idea of the subject. It is a construct that is “merely a philosophical and cultural
mystification which sought to persuade people that they „had‟ individual subjects and
possessed some unique personal identity” (Jameson 6). The nullification of the subject
through demythologization parallels the degradation of the object through pastiche and
schizophrenia; it is here that postmodern theory and art reach a nexus.
Andreas Huyssen also explores this connection between art and the individual. In
“Mass Culture as Woman,” he claims that during the modernist period (the latenineteenth through early-twentieth centuries), intellectuals often relegated popular art to
24
the margins of society. Moreover, they often derided it as ineffectual and feminine. High
art, by contrast, was tied to the masculinist concept of the industrious subject. Along
these lines, man was “identified with action, enterprise, and progress—with the realms of
business, industry, science, and law” (Huyssen 189). Expressed differently, men were
linked to active production and women to passive consumption.
The gendering of art was a hallmark of modernism. Writers like Gustave Flaubert
and T. S. Eliot embodied the Jamesonian myth of the mighty individual. With the
emergence of the postmodern style, however, boundaries between art and artist (e.g.
Andy Warhol‟s mass-produced paintings) and high and low culture began to collapse.
Accordingly, it became increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to label art as masculine
or feminine. For these reasons, Huyssen is cautiously optimistic about the potential of
postmodernism. He asserts that whereas “modernism‟s great wall once kept the
barbarians out and safeguarded the culture within, there is now only slippery ground
which may prove fertile for some and treacherous for others” (Huyssen 202).
The Tarantinian aesthetic evinces the possibilities that Huyssen describes.
Furthermore, the director‟s complex female characters seem to thrive on the
aforementioned “slippery ground.” They exist somewhere between the traditional labels
of masculine and feminine; they are neither completely men nor women. There is a
sense, therefore, that Tarantino‟s postmodern style parallels his portrayal of fluid gender
roles.
In Postmodern Chick Flicks: The Return of the Woman‟s Film, Roberta Garrett
explores the potential for female liberation and empowerment through cinema. Focusing
on traditionally feminine genres like the melodrama and the romantic comedy, she
25
analyzes how these films often utilize postmodern elements such as “irony, narrative selfconsciousness, and allusion” to positive ends (Garrett 7). What is more, she describes
how films that do not belong to feminine genres have, in the spirit of postmodernism,
appropriated key elements from them.
Overall, Garrett believes that this give and take has served to undermine
hegemonically masculine forces in film today. Still, she is concerned with a perceived
correlation between the postmodern aesthetic and “film texts featuring high levels of
violence, a derogatory and often abusive treatment of women and the depiction of a male
criminal subculture [. . .]” (Garrett, 5). She points to several culprits, including directors
David Lynch (Blue Velvet, 1986), David Fincher (Fight Club, 1999), and especially
Quentin Tarantino. Garrett‟s critique begs the question: What, if anything, can these
auteurs of postmodern masculinity contribute to the struggle for gender equality in
contemporary cinema?
Overview and Key Issues
This study will focus on Quentin Tarantino‟s three most recent films: Kill Bill:
Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007). These works are
significant, in that they present a marked departure from the director‟s earlier films.
Specifically, they offer portrayals of resourceful and powerful female protagonists, in
stark contrast to the frequently neglected and marginalized women of Reservoir Dogs
(1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994). Buttressed by a mixture of psychoanalytic feminist and
postmodern theories, I will perform a careful textual analysis of these latest films. In
particular, I intend to uncover the ways in which Tarantino‟s films support and/or subvert
traditionally oppressive conceptions of gender.
26
In the first section, I focus on Tarantino‟s work as a byproduct of a masculine
Hollywood ethos. After a discussion of how men and women are characterized in his
signature film, Pulp Fiction, I trace the trajectory of gender depictions throughout his
oeuvre. Most significantly, I search for the feminist fissures. Next, I will consider how
the gaze functions, both narratively and spatially, with regard to his female characters. In
addition, I will analyze the function that fetishization, especially Tarantino‟s fixation on
women‟s feet, plays in his portrayals of gender. This will be followed by a consideration
of the fluidity of gender roles in his work. While these films do present women who
behave in conventionally masculine ways, I question the extent to which this is either a
simple case of role reversal or a more radical critique of entrenched gender norms. I
conclude with a section that attempts to draw a connection between such notions of
genderlessness and the director‟s postmodern aesthetic. Specifically, I ask what Quentin
Tarantino‟s three most recent films can tell us about how gender functions in postmodern,
twenty-first century Hollywood.
27
Chapter 2
Analysis
The Masculine Origins of Quentin Tarantino
Hollywood is often referred to as the “dream factory,” a phrase whose meaning is
twofold. On the one hand, it describes the production of celluloid illusions to be
consumed by the masses. On the other, it entails the creation of icons, also intended for
public consumption. Many aspiring actors, actresses, and directors are drawn to the
movie industry by this possibility of stardom and immortality. These dreams, however,
are not as easily achieved for some as they are for others. In fact, the industry has, since
its inception, been the domain of (white) men. Moreover, its practices have served to
protect the interests of these men through the creation of a privileged, masculine culture.
The gendering of Hollywood has, in other words, become institutionalized.
Accordingly, gender segregation permeates every level, from the uppermost echelons
(consider the dearth of high profile actresses over the age of forty) to the workaday world
of men and women behind the scenes. Often this patriarchal ideology is implied rather
than expressed outright. For example, John Caldwell describes a promotional campaign
for the special effects company IXS. In one ad, the viewer is confronted with a “freeze
frame taken the split second before a charging African carnivore attacks and eats a far
less nimble four-legged mammal” (Caldwell 130). Here, the industry is likened to a
28
jungle, whose denizens must do whatever it takes to survive and prosper. The hunting
metaphor underscores the masculine aggressiveness that has become de rigueur in the
business of filmmaking. This mentality is also manifest in the movies themselves, from
big-budget productions to foreign and independent films, which frequently operate from
within (or in response to) the Hollywood paradigm.
Like many young men, Quentin Tarantino dreamed of making movies. As a clerk
at the Video Archives rental counter in Southern California, he garnered the knowledge
that would propel him to superstardom as a director. Here, he had time to watch
countless films and debate their merits with his fellow employees and cineastes.
Although Tarantino was renowned for his eclecticism, the works that fueled his nascent
filmmaking desires are telling. On various occasions, he was asked to recommend his
favorite movies for inquisitive and adventurous customers. To this end, he would:
stack the racks with kung fu flicks, blaxploitation classics like Coffy, and
anything else starring Pam Grier. At one time or another, Quentin would
promote his personal favorites: Blow Out, One-Eyed Jacks, Rio Bravo,
For a Few Dollars More, Bande à Part, Rolling Thunder, Breathless
(1983), Le Doulos, His Girl Friday, They Live By Night, The Long
Goodbye. (Bernard 35)
These films are filled with voluptuous women, tough guys, thieves, and fast talkers. Put
another way, they evince an androcentrism that would become a hallmark of Tarantino‟s
earliest work.
The director‟s second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), provides a particularly germane
example of this mentality. Moreover, it has been the subject of so much critical and
29
popular attention, as to come to define what might be labeled the Tarantinian ethos of
unwavering and nonchalant manliness. Susan Fraiman describes this as a philosophy of
“coolness,” as a “distinctly masculine desire for mastery,” which entails, among other
things, a “domination of the feminine” (3). While women are equated with weakness,
men are shown to rule and control through violence. In other words, Pulp Fiction can be
characterized as a world of men and for men, with women relegated to its margins.
A conversation between two of the film‟s more memorable characters, the cool hit
men Jules and Vincent, is illustrative of this point. After (accidentally?) disposing of an
informant, they are left covered in his blood. Finding safe haven at a friend‟s house, they
begin to vigorously scrub the incriminating evidence from their bodies. While Jules is
poised and efficient in his washing, Vincent leaves the towel he used so soaked with
blood as to resemble a “goddam maxipad,” in his partner‟s estimation. This seemingly
banal exchange is actually indicative of the gender hierarchy found in the film.
Specifically, the invocation of “feminisation (and fear of the feminine) evoked
here…might recall that in fairy tale and elsewhere it is often women who are seen as
unable to remove bloodstains” (Gallafent 50). Along these lines, feminine blood is
characterized as a sign of weakness and shame. By extension, women are portrayed
throughout as ineffectual and somehow less whole than men.
This notion is emphasized at the outset of the film, during another conversation
between the philosophical Jules and Vincent. Here, while preparing to carry out the
manly work of murder, the crooks reveal a misogynist worldview. At this point, they
consider the rumor that their boss, Marsellus Wallace, has crippled another man for the
audacious act of giving his wife Mia a foot massage. This exchange is relevant in two
30
key ways. First, Mia (the film‟s most visible female character) is utilized as a mere plot
point, as a way to drive the narrative forward. At this juncture in the story, Mia has not
yet appeared on camera and still, she is used to foreground masculine concerns, in this
case the threat of a wife‟s infidelity. Moreover, it is significant that she is discussed, not
as a well-rounded person, but rather in terms of a single, anatomical feature. During this
sequence, Mia synecdochically becomes her feet. (It bears restatement that the
fetishization of women‟s feet is to become a theme throughout Tarantino‟s work.)
This scene highlights both the mysterious relationship between Mr. and Mrs.
Wallace and the gender disparity between the two characters. On the one hand,
Marsellus is depicted as a powerful and respected crime boss. He is also the hub through
which all the disparate narrative threads of Pulp Fiction are held together. Mia, on the
other hand, is defined not by who she is, but by whom she is with. Deprived of true
personality and power, she functions as an “absolute commodity, the commodity by
which all the others are measured, the phallic trophy of trophies that establishes
[Marsellus] as master of enjoyment” (Botting and Wilson 27).
Beyond her role as a trophy wife, however, Mia proves ineffective at almost
everything she undertakes. During a conversation with Vincent (who has been
conscripted into taking his boss‟s wife out on a date), Mia confides that her fifteen
minutes of fame came as the star of an unaired pilot episode of a television show.
Significantly, her ambitions seem to begin and end with this short-lived attempt at
stardom. Furthermore, her inability to succeed onscreen recalls the disembodied women
of Reservoir Dogs (1992), who are spoken of, but never shown and reveals how little
progress Tarantino made in terms of gender depictions from his first film.
31
Mia, it turns out, is equally inept as a gangster‟s moll. One would assume that she
has learned a thing or two about crime while married to Marsellus, and yet her ignorance
of illicit drugs almost proves her undoing. After returning from her date with Vincent,
Mia snorts, rather than injects, the heroin that she finds in his pocket and mistakes for
cocaine. There is a bit of homophonous irony here, in that Tarantino gives us heroin, in
lieu of a heroine. Tellingly, Vincent manages to revive her after penetrating her heart
with a shot of adrenaline. The quasi-sexual act further accentuates the notion that women
derive their meaning from (and in this case, owe their lives to) the powerful men around
them.
This gender gap is revealed in a subtle, but no less insidious way during the scene
that serves as our introduction to Mia. Here, Vincent has come to the Wallace‟s palatial
estate to entertain her for the evening. The sequence is carefully constructed and edited
to stress the power disparity between the two characters. In the span of three minutes,
Mia is cinematographically reduced to an assemblage of body parts.
Our first intimation of the real Mia is her voice, as she “reads” the note that she
has taped to the door for her date. Upon entering the house, Vincent is forced to converse
with her over an intercom, while she watches his every move from a bank of security
monitors. Mia is shot from behind, so as to reveal only her back as she spies on Vincent.
Next, as she speaks to him, the camera offers an extreme close-up of her ruby red lips, as
they seductively approach a phallic microphone. Finally, Mia‟s infamous feet are shown
traipsing across the floor as she approaches Vincent. While these images offer the
promise of an enigmatic and engaging character, this notion is quickly dispelled when we
finally meet the frustrated actress who is Mia Wallace. Expressed bluntly, the whole is
32
much less compelling than its parts (Figure 1). Overall, the sequence serves to
compartmentalize and reduce her character, to disempower her by stressing her “to-belooked-at-ness” (Mulvey 841). It is crucial to note that among all the fetishized bits of
Mia on display here, we never get to see her face. Consequently, we never get a true
sense of her humanity.
Figure 1. Bits of Mia
While this analysis suggests that the film is at best paternalistic and at worst
contemptuous of women, under close scrutiny, certain fissures appear in its oppressive,
masculinist ideology. Consider, for example, a scene that bears a marked resemblance to
Mia‟s game of cat and mouse. Here, the hardscrabble boxer, Butch, has just returned
from swindling Marsellus, by killing another man in the ring. He is, presumably, covered
in the blood of his vanquished foe. While these cues clearly ensconce him within the
aforementioned brutal world of men, he is portrayed in a way that undermines these
assumptions. Namely, Butch is shown showering so as to stress the sensuality (à la Mia‟s
lips hovering over the microphone), rather than the mundanity of the act.
The camera lingers on Butch‟s naked body, which is partially, but not fully
obscured by steam and a pane of glass. His curves (and briefly his genitals) are
unabashedly presented to the audience. This aesthetic choice lies in stark contrast to
Steve Neale‟s claim that “in a heterosexual and patriarchal society, the male body cannot
33
be marked explicitly as the erotic object of another male look” (258). Rather than simply
presenting a male character as an object of fetishized contemplation, however, Tarantino
subverts the tacit rules of cinematic gazing, expressed by Mulvey. In this sequence, the
director “underlines both the cinematic cliché (a woman silhouetted in the shower) and
his own innovative re-gendering of it” (Fraiman 12). Unfortunately, while instances of
valorized masculinity (be they ascribed to men or women) abound in Tarantino‟s work,
the shower sequence is an anomaly. Rarely again does he present such a strong challenge
to the tacit cinematic taboo of feminizing the male subject or portray femininity as a
source of strength, equal to or even approaching masculinity.
Still, I would propose that Tarantino‟s reworking of traditional Hollywood
narrative and stylistic techniques was beginning to extend to how gender, and especially
femininity, was expressed onscreen. This is borne out in his next film, Jackie Brown
(1997). Here, Pam Grier, the idol of Tarantino‟s Video Archives days, plays the titular
character, a down-on-her-luck, middle-aged, black stewardess. Struggling to make ends
meet, Jackie outsmarts her weapons-smuggling boss and federal agents to achieve a
measure of wealth and comfort amidst hostile circumstances. More importantly, the
storyline can be seen as an allegory for a woman succeeding in a man‟s world. This
characterization is a clear departure from the meek and ineffectual Mia Wallace, as well
as the generally misogynistic tone of his previous film. In fact, Tarantino “auditioned
Grier for the roles of both Mia and Jody [a drug dealer‟s girlfriend] in Pulp Fiction but
didn‟t feel she fitted either; more, she deserved better” (Smith 178). This suggests that
the director was intent on portraying a truly empowered woman onscreen. Moreover, in
34
terms of how masculinity and femininity were demarcated, it marks Jackie Brown as a
transitional film in his oeuvre.
It is essential to note that following the massive commercial and critical success
of Pulp Fiction, Tarantino was given free reign to choose his next project. His decision,
therefore, to adapt Elmore Leonard‟s novel Rum Punch (1992), into Jackie Brown is
telling. Specifically, the film signals a shift in the director‟s career. While his previous
offerings focused almost exclusively on hardened male characters, Jackie Brown presents
the audience with a smart, strong, and eminently attractive female protagonist. In fact,
Grier, the iconic star of 1970s niche cinema, has described her work as “an attempt to
establish a filmic presence that [is] „assertive yet feminine‟” (qtd. in Smith 179). In her
seamless blending of masculinity and femininity, Jackie is a direct precursor to characters
like Beatrix Kiddo, Kim, and Zoë.
In Tarantino‟s next three films, the problematizing of prescriptive gender
norms hinted at previously would reach its fruition. In Kill Bill Volume 1, Kill Bill
Volume 2, and Death Proof, he would explicitly challenge the traditional notions of what
women were capable of, by expanding his filmic vocabulary and embracing the alterity of
his female characters. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise. In a 2004 interview
published in Entertainment Weekly, Tarantino spoke at length of the influence that his
successful, single mother had on his life and how this is reflected in his films. He stated
that from the “very beginning I never considered that there were boundaries, things a
woman can and can‟t do” (Tarantino 29).
35
Cinematographic Choices: Fetishization and the Gaze
Significantly, Tarantino employed the same actress, Uma Thurman, to portray
both the marginalized Mia Wallace and the unrelenting heroine of his Kill Bill saga,
Beatrix Kiddo (AKA The Bride). Whereas Mia is incapable of achieving success in a
man‟s world, Beatrix (literally) carves out her own niche. Moreover, while Mia is
defined by the men in her life (Marsellus and Vincent), Beatrix is fiercely independent,
proving that masculinity is no more than a state of mind. Along these lines, Thurman‟s
starkly different roles reflect a shift in how gender is addressed in Tarantino‟s films.
This change is evident in the ways the director re-works the traditionally
misogynistic devices of fetishization and the gaze. By questioning these staples of film
grammar, the gender-related fissures only suggested by Pulp Fiction will become
increasingly explicit in Kill Bill and Death Proof. For example, these later films evince a
markedly different attitude toward women‟s feet. While Mia Wallace is defined and
confined by her feet, The Bride‟s feet are a source of great power. After awakening from
her coma, Beatrix flees the hospital in a wheelchair, climbs into the backseat of her
rapist‟s car (appropriately known as the “Pussy Wagon”), and waits for her paralysis to
subside. Here, the camera lingers on her feet in extreme close-up for an inordinately long
time. This would seem to be a case of the fetishized female slowing narrative progress.
The Bride‟s feet appear to “freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation”
(Mulvey 841). Tarantino, however, uses this sequence to further the storyline,
foreshadowing the climactic duel at The House of Blue Leaves, where the protagonist‟s
feet become deadly weapons. As Beatrix wills her toes to move, her body responding to
her own desire, the audience is provided crucial information about the background of her
36
adversary O-Ren Ishii. Not coincidentally, O-Ren also overcomes male aggression (her
family is murdered by a sadistic gangster), to become the head of Japan‟s Yakuza.
Accordingly, the sequence expressly links The Bride‟s feet to female empowerment
rather than subjugation. Furthermore, during the scene, Beatrix is shown actively
contemplating her own feet. By highlighting the act of looking, Tarantino calls into
question the “sense of separation and […] voyeuristic phantasy” inherent in the filmic
medium (Mulvey 839). In this canny, ironic gesture, he encourages the audience to
recognize their own complicity in the compartmentalization and oppression of women
onscreen.
The foot as fetish object is similarly problematized in Death Proof. At the start of
the film‟s second half, the film‟s antagonist, Stuntman Mike, stares longingly at the feet
of Abernathy, as they protrude from the backseat of a car. He even goes so far as to
surreptitiously grope them while she sleeps. Again, however, fetishization serves to
prefigure a crucial section of the narrative. In this case, it corresponds to the car chase
sequence in which the depraved Mike gets his comeuppance. At the end of this section
(and the film) it is Abernathy who delivers the coup de grâce, a swift kick to the head of
her tormentor. As in Kill Bill, women‟s feet are characterized as a source of power and
liberation. In this manner, Tarantino challenges the notion, prevalent in the Western
artistic tradition, that a woman‟s “anatomy is bound to be her destiny” (Gubar 722).
The director also manages to undermine the oppressive legacy of the male gaze.
To wit, an early sequence in the chronology of the Kill Bill epic depicts a small-town
sheriff racing to the site of a mass murder at a local church. On his dashboard is a
collection of sunglasses, each pair a different hue. As he investigates the scene of the
37
crime, much of the action is shown from his perspective. We also, however, witness
things through the bloodied and swollen eyes of the massacre‟s sole survivor, a tall
blonde pregnant woman in a tattered wedding gown. Along these lines, the glasses serve
as a metaphor for the myriad ways of seeing portrayed in the film. They also presage a
shift in power dynamics, as Beatrix Kiddo progresses from nameless (she is known only
as The Bride in Volume 1), helpless, and gazed-upon to named, empowered and active
possessor of the gaze.
The first shot of the saga, recalling the stark aesthetic of film noir, is a black and
white image of Beatrix lying helpless on the floor. Her breathing labored and almost
orgasmic, she stares up helplessly at her mysterious assailant. The faceless man looks
down at her, tenderly wipes the blood from her face (his handkerchief embroidered with
the name “Bill”), and inquires: “Do you find me sadistic?” He then proceeds to deliver a
bullet to her head at pointblank range.
Bill‟s question is a fitting one, for the sadistic impulse is found throughout the
first volume of the Kill Bill saga, as well as the first half of Death Proof. According to
Laura Mulvey, such sadism stems from the displeasure created by the cinematic female.
She notes that the “woman as icon […] always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally
signified. The male unconscious has two avenues of escape from castration anxiety”:
fetishization or sadism (Mulvey 844). While instances of sadistic behavior abound in
these films, I assert that Tarantino draws our attention to such behavior, so as to redeploy
the impulse in more gender equitable ways. In particular, he presents us with female
characters (Beatrix, Kim, and Zoë) that rise up against their objectification and seek
vengeance upon the very men who initiated this sadism.
38
In this manner, the director‟s most recent works often appropriate the concerns of
the rape-revenge film, a marginalized subset of the horror genre. Epitomized by films
like I Spit on Your Grave (1974), the rape-revenge formula is a simple one. In general,
the first half of the film presents the buildup to and carrying out of a brutal rape. The
second half, by contrast, focuses on the female protagonist‟s unwavering quest for
vengeance against those who assaulted her earlier. While their plots are simplistic, they
offer a challenge to cinematic convention. Specifically, they present female characters
who behave in ways that are generally considered to be masculine. As Carol J. Clover
asserts, “female self-sufficiency, both physical and mental, is the hallmark of the raperevenge genre” (143). This theme of self-reliance is similarly stressed during The Bride‟s
tumultuous journey from victimhood to empowerment.
The opening scene of Kill Bill Volume 1 sets the tone for the violent subversion
and eventual recuperation of The Bride‟s power through looking. This sequence is in
keeping with the tendency of classic Hollywood cinema to open a film with a woman as
subject to the “combined gaze of spectator and […] male protagonists” (Mulvey 843).
Notably, Bill‟s face is not shown during the assault or at all during the first volume. This
would seem to mark him as the surrogate male gazer described by Mulvey. What is more,
his facelessness makes it easier for the presumably male viewer to map his desires onto
Bill. In its intermingling of sexual innuendo and violence, as well its voyeuristic aspects,
this scene conforms to the traditionally masculine and domineering way that women are
depicted onscreen.
By the end of the second volume, as The Bride‟s epic journey nears completion,
this paradigm has been significantly challenged. Having survived her wounds,
39
vanquished her foes, and discovered that the daughter she conceived with Bill is still
alive, Beatrix prepares to confront her former lover at his Mexican retreat. In one telling
sequence, she peers down at Bill from the second floor of his home. Passing an opening
in the wall, the camera seems to frame Bill as is if Beatrix is watching him onscreen.
Furthermore, much of the action is shot subjectively from her perspective. As she
descends a staircase, Beatrix is photographed so as to emphasize her power. She walks
slowly and deliberately, in an act resembling a predator (recall the image described by
John Caldwell) measuring and stalking its prey. The inversion of the opening scene is
clear. Now, it is Beatrix who controls the action, and it is her vantage point that the
viewer must see things from.
Tarantino employs a similar tactic in Death Proof. Here, the film is divided into
two halves. These sections may be distinguished by their respective groups of female
characters and the ways in which they adhere to and refute the voyeuristic expectations of
the audience. The women in part one (Julia, Arlene, and Shanna) are marked by their
conventional “to-be-looked-at-ness.” Julia, for example, is consistently framed so as to
stress her long legs and Amazonian physique. In addition, Arlene performs a seductive
lap dance for Stuntman Mike, as well as the members of the audience who experience the
film vicariously through him (Figure 2). Such foci confirm Mulvey‟s claim that the
“determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled
accordingly” (841).
40
Figure 2. Vicarious Titillation
The power of the male gaze is also conveyed in other, less-overt, ways. Before
leaving the bar to pursue the women, Mike is shown putting drops in his eyes. This
seemingly prosaic bit of business actually connotes the power and clarity of his sight, his
ability to control the action through looking. It is also of great allegorical significance
that Stuntman Mike (his initials an acronym for sadomasochism) hunts and kills the
women with his car. As he approaches them in the dark and at top speed, with his
headlights turned off, the women are stalked by something that they never really see. In
this way, the car is akin to the invasive, yet invisible gaze of the camera. Moreover, the
climactic shot lingers upon their deaths. The sequence is shown from numerous angles
and at various speeds, the victims‟ bodies aestheticized as they are rent to bits. Tarantino
goes so far as to focus on Julia‟s severed leg, lying in the road. This image recalls a
staple of the director‟s visual style, the “hyperfetishistic” insert, a sort “of macrolensed
money shot” (Stephens 45). Such shots reveal a visual irony (à la The Bride
contemplating her own feet) that undermines the power of the gaze. Julia‟s long, sensual
leg has been reduced to a lump of bloody flesh splattered on the pavement. As a result,
the audience is encouraged to reconsider the pleasure that it once took in ogling her body.
A similar effect is achieved when Mike looks directly into the camera, before the
chase sequence. On the one hand, he is a surrogate for the viewer and this act seems to
41
confirm the bond between them. On the other hand, his stare reminds the audience of its
culpability in what he is about to do. By breaking the fourth wall, Tarantino reflects on
the role that the viewer plays in the objectification and murder of his female characters.
When the action shifts to the second group of women (Kim, Zoë, Abernathy, and
Lee), the subversion of the male gaze intensifies. Even as Mike stares at his quarry
through a pair of binoculars, there is a sense that his scopophilia will culminate in
punishment rather that pleasure this time around. The initial sequence of part two takes
place outside of a convenience store, where the cinematography abruptly shifts from
color to black and white. This change clearly demarcates the two halves of the film and
is concomitant with a reversal of its power dynamics. In this section, the female
characters will appropriate the power of the gaze.
As in part one, Stuntman Mike purses the women with murderous intentions.
Here, however, the chase takes place in broad daylight; there can be no surprise head-on
collision. As Kim spots Mike through her rearview mirror, it is clear that she possesses
the power to reverse the gaze, to look back. This scene reaches its turning point when
Kim shoots Mike in the arm, impairing his ability to utilize his car as a weapon. At this
point, the women go from hunted to hunters. Furthermore, Kim‟s gun shot may be read
as an oblique reference to/reconfiguration of the way that women are “shot” onscreen.
Tarantino‟s ability to reverse entrenched gender dynamics through the gaze is
most effectively expressed in the tour de force that is his “House of Blue Leaves”
sequence from Kill Bill Volume 1. In particular, this scene offers a potent example of
how The Bride controls the look and how the director expresses this control through
framing and color choices. Of particular relevance is his use of extreme close-ups. Just
42
prior to the start of the battle, we are offered several intense shots, focusing on the eyes of
Beatrix and O-Ren. Their confident stares both convey power and facilitate the narrative.
For example, as The Bride gazes intently at her foe, the image of her eyes is overlapped
by shots of the wedding party massacre. In this way, the viewer is reminded of the
impetus behind her actions.
Figure 3. The Power to Gaze
The extreme close-up of Beatrix‟s eyes becomes a motif in this sequence (Figure
3). At another juncture, The Bride prepares for the attack of the Crazy 88s, O-Ren‟s gang
of thugs. As they are about to swarm her, the action is continually inter-cut with shots of
The Bride‟s confident gaze. Moreover, when surrounded, she studies the reflection of the
gangsters behind her in her sword. In an act akin to Kim peering at Mike through her
rearview mirror, Beatrix‟s ability to see even those threats that are not directly in front of
her conveys empowerment and foreshadows her victory in battle.
In this scene, the director further challenges the supremacy of the male gaze via
thoughtful stylistic shifts. As the conflict reaches a crescendo, The Bride plucks out the
eye of one of her assailants. This raw display of power is accompanied by a sudden shift
from color to black and white cinematography. As she deprives her foe of his sight,
Tarantino simultaneously refuses the audience its desire to possess Beatrix through the
gaze. We are, in a sense, having our customary ways of seeing challenged. Several
43
minutes later the color photography resumes when The Bride blinks her eyes in extreme
close-up. Not only does the action resemble the movement of a camera‟s aperture, but it
is attended by the sound of a clicking shutter. This recalls Laura Mulvey‟s assertion that
“cinema builds the way [women are] to be looked at into the spectacle itself” (847).
Taken quite literally here, through the simplest of gestures, Tarantino offers an incisive
challenge to the ways in which women are gazed upon and to the cinematic apparatus
itself.
Gender Performativity and Language
Harkening back to the image of the glasses on the dashboard in Kill Bill Volume
1, it is significant to note that after escaping her trauma in the hospital, The Bride
dispatches her assailant and makes off with his sunglasses. She stashes them in her
pocket and can be seen wearing them at several key points in the film (for example, while
willing her toes to move in the backseat of the car). Apropos of this, Mary Ann Doane
posits that glasses “worn by a woman in the cinema do not generally signify a deficiency
in seeing, but an active looking, or even simply the fact of seeing as opposed to being
seen” (50). If she does indeed achieve empowerment through her acquisition and gradual
mastery of the gaze, Beatrix also gains control of the narrative through her ability to
speak with authority. In this way, language is an integral factor in both depriving and
establishing the power of the director‟s female protagonists.
In cinema, the place of woman has traditionally been circumscribed both by the
language she uses and the language used to contain her. Moreover, she may be likened to
a hieroglyph, in that she “harbors a mystery, an inaccessible though desirable otherness,”
while remaining eminently readable (Doane 42). This state of being both enigmatic and
44
knowable is purely ideological; it has little basis in reality and has been used to create
gendered distinctions and preserve patriarchal hegemonies. Judith Butler alternately
expresses this duality as the power of words to “work on bodies [as] both the cause of
sexual oppression and the way beyond that oppression” (Gender, 158). Accordingly, she
urges us to recognize the arbitrariness of the categories “masculine” and “feminine,” as
well as the role that language plays in creating these artificial distinctions. As is often
the case in Tarantino‟s most recent films, language demonstrates the power to transcend
such strictures.
This is in keeping with Butler‟s bold assertion that equity can only be achieved by
problematizing the “gendered matrix” that creates the male/female dichotomy (Bodies,
29-30). In this manner, characters like Beatrix Kiddo and Kim evince fluidity in their
language, which marks them as neither entirely feminine nor masculine, but rather
antithetical to conventional notions of gender. They exist on a continuum, shifting
effortlessly in word and deed from one pole (masculinity) to the other (femininity).
In the Kill Bill saga, The Bride exhibits the tendencies of both a violent killer and
a compassionate mother figure. Furthermore, the language she employs throughout is at
turns masculine and feminine. The fight sequence between Beatrix and her former
friend, turned bitter enemy, Vernita Green is illustrative of this split, yet seamless, gender
identity. After several minutes of intense combat, the first words are spoken by Vernita,
when she implores her adversary to “C‟mon bitch!” In fact, the epithets “bitch” and
“mother fucker” are uttered repeatedly during the scene and continually throughout the
entire saga. They are used not only as an invective, but also to express mutual respect, as
signs of honor among thieves. Jim Smith compares this to the function of the word
45
“nigger” in Tarantino‟s earlier films, noting that “bitch” is “thrown around by characters
who could claim it as „reclaimed‟ (women) and those who couldn‟t (men)” (212-13).
There is, clearly, a bond that the two women share, which is elucidated by the word.
Furthermore, by appropriating the word “bitch,” Beatrix and Vernita are challenging the
role of language in the gender matrix, by converting a misogynist term to one of (albeit
grudging) female empathy.
The power of language is conveyed in the scene through other, subtle forms.
Along these lines, the name on the cereal box that Vernita uses to disguise her gun is
“Kaboom.” This bit of clever wordplay is suggestive of the power of words as weapons.
Taken a step further, such simple gestures underscore the need for women to take control
of language, to fire back, as it were.
The sequence takes an interesting turn when Vernita‟s daughter, Nikki, returns
from school in the midst of the confrontation. As the young girl enters the living room,
which is filled with broken glass and debris by this point, the women make a concerted
effort to convince her that all is normal. Beatrix goes so far as to engage Nikki in polite
conversation, sincerely inquiring as to her name and age. Moreover, Vernita assuages her
daughter‟s fears, while ushering her to safety. She calmly tells Nikki: “Me and mommy‟s
friend have some grown-up talk to talk about.” The substitution of the word “talk” for
“fight” provides further evidence of language‟s potency. In addition, the ability that the
women display to shift from violent action (as traditionally masculine trait) to calm
conversation (as conventionally feminine) highlights the performative basis of gender
distinctions. As Judith Butler states, the terms “man and masculine might just as easily
signify a female body as a male one, and woman and feminine a male body as easily as a
46
female one” (Gender 9). In this sense, Beatrix and Vernita are, without contradiction,
both masculine and feminine. While they are anatomically female, their actions and
words defy and transcend rigid gender categorization.
During her battle with Vernita, Beatrix proudly declares that she lacks “mercy,
compassion, and forgiveness.” The Bride‟s seemingly inexorable bloodlust, however, is
often balanced by her maternal behavior. This is most evident during what B. Ruby Rich
refers to as “one of the oddest scenes in any action movie” (25). Herein, while on a
mercenary assignment in Japan, Beatrix learns that she is pregnant. She is ambivalent
about the news and, understandably, her thoughts drift from work to motherhood. At this
juncture, she is ambushed by a fellow female assassin named Karen Kim. The two
women, guns poised at each other, find themselves at a stalemate. The tension remains
palpable until Beatrix suggests that they “talk.” As in the aforementioned sequence, the
word “talk” conveys the power of language. In this case, it is the power to diffuse, rather
than instigate, violence.
Eschewing her killer “instinct,” Beatrix implores Karen to look at a pregnancytest kit, which has fallen to the floor. Karen, still wielding her weapon, agrees. After
struggling to decipher the instructions and color coding, she eventually concedes that her
foe is indeed pregnant. Having reached an understanding with Beatrix, Karen departs
after a few words are exchanged. She even manages to offer her rival a solemn
congratulation.
Rich wonders if Tarantino has gone soft in the sequence by “delivering us into a
domesticated world where even female assassins take pregnancy tests and slink away
without killing” (25). This seems to miss the essence of an encounter that is significant
47
in several, key ways. First, it reaffirms the place of language in the saga. In fact, as the
narrative progresses (not always chronologically), bloodshed is generally supplanted by
dialogue. This may be read in terms of Beatrix‟s gradual realization that words are,
ultimately, more effective than violent actions. Moreover, the scene confirms that she
possesses, without contradiction, both masculine and feminine tendencies. She can kill
when necessary, but is equally adept at conversation. Finally, it foreshadows The Bride‟s
climactic confrontation with Bill, which entails a rather lengthy discussion, culminating
in a brief flurry of action.
Even after she kills Bill, Tarantino pursues her story, juxtaposing the closing
credits with an image of her driving off into the sunset. As the saga concludes, Beatrix is
accompanied by her daughter and her sword, these seemingly disparate symbols
reflecting the feminine and masculine facets of her character. Accordingly, the credits
list her various aliases, including “The Bride” and “Black Mamba,” before concluding
with “Mommy.” In the end, she cannot be reduced to a single, essentialist label.
The women of Death Proof evince similar, gender-defying characteristics. An
important sequence in this regard is the coffee shop conversation between Kim, Zoë,
Abernathy, and Lee. Here, the action-heavy narrative slows down to allow the female
characters several minutes of uninterrupted dialogue. The topics range from movies to
cars to guns. Regardless of what they are discussing, however, this “girl talk shows that
the women are just as territorial over conversation and claiming ideas as the guys
[Tarantino‟s] written” (Mitchell vii).
When the subject of film arises, Kim and Zoë profess their love for the
quintessential, testosterone-fueled, car chase movie Vanishing Point (1971), claiming that
48
such fare appeals to the “gearheads” in them. After Kim declares that most women
wouldn‟t know the film, Abernathy inquires sarcastically: “Excuse me, what the fuck are
you two?” In retort, Kim notes that she is also a fan of John Hughes movies like Pretty in
Pink (1986), because she is, after all, “still a girl.” This seemingly banal exchange is
indicative of the masculine and feminine proclivities that coexist, without contradiction,
in characters like Kim, Zoë, and Beatrix. They are powerful women for whom gender is
a relative and non-restrictive concept.
This refusal to be limited by anatomy is further emphasized when the
conversation turns to self-defense. After Kim reveals that she carries a gun, she urges
Zoë to “check it out bitch.” Again, “bitch” is used as a term of respect and camaraderie
between women. The reclaiming of the word, and of language in general during this
scene, prefigures the narrative shift that will take place during the final confrontation with
Stuntman Mike. As for the gun, Kim states that she carries it so she can go wherever she
wants, whenever she wants. Specifically, she says that she wants to be able to do her
laundry, late at night, without fear of being raped. To which, an incredulous Lee
remarks: “Don‟t do your laundry at midnight.” This debate points out the distinction
between women who accede to prescriptive gender norms (i.e. Lee) and those who
challenge them (Kim and Zoë). In the terminology of Judith Butler, it marks the
difference between “having” and “being,” between the penis and the phallus (Gender 60).
For Kim, the gun is a phallic object, not in a derogatory sense connoting lack, but rather
as a symbol of power. She will meet the world on her own terms, irrespective of
fabricated gender categories.
49
Still, the fact that Kim needs to carry a gun at all, reveals how a conflation of
gender and anatomy persists, even in an empowering narrative. There certainly are
moments when traditional gender assumptions reassert themselves in a film that
otherwise aims to minimize or obliterate them. Through Kim and Zoë‟s obsession with
cars (paralleling Beatrix‟s fascination with samurai swords), Death Proof underscores the
notion that the penis is not the phallus, yet might be mistaken for it. The characters may
not need these objects to vanquish Stuntman Mike, but they serve as reminders of an
oppressively patriarchal paradigm that permeates every cinematic nook and cranny.
The penis/phallus division is most clearly articulated in the car chase scene that
concludes the film. After spying on the girls from afar, asserting the power of his gaze,
Mike jumps into his car and begins the pursuit. Stealthily approaching from behind, he
rams his victims, while exhorting them to “suck on this for a while.” On the one hand
this is a case of crude sexual innuendo. More importantly, it is an attempt to assert
phallic power though his car. That the act resembles copulation is significant, for as the
sequence progresses, the women gradually turn the tables on Mike by (re)claiming their
right to penetrate.
In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler wonders: “What would happen if [the
woman] began to resemble that which is said only and always to enter into her?” (50).
As if in response to this query, the tide of the scene shifts decisively after Kim uses the
gun, cleverly introduced earlier, to shoot/penetrate Mike. Moreover, Zoë wields a pipe,
which she employs to bludgeon her assailant. Finally, the women use their own car to
reverse the pursuer/pursued dynamic. They now approach Mike from behind. Through
her dialogue, Kim makes this shift explicit, referring to the back of his car as an “ass.”
50
Accordingly, she encourages Mike to “wiggle that ass at me.” She then proceeds to slam
into his car repeatedly (Figure 4). At this point, the anguish is visible on Mike‟s face and
the allusions to forced penetration and rape (again, foreshadowed earlier) become more
overt (Figure 5). Kim even asks, with more than a hint of sadism in her voice: “Don‟t
like it up the ass, do you?”
Figure 4. Pursuer
Figure 5. Pursued
It can be argued that this sequence is an example of women behaving badly, of
Kim, Zoë, and Abernathy merely emulating the depravity of their antagonist. This scene
may also be read, however, as an attempt to disentangle the oft-confused concepts of
having (the penis) and being (the phallus). While Mike possesses the penis, it is the
women who hold the power. This authority is conveyed through the simulation of
intercourse. Apropos of this, Butler asks: “Would the terms „masculine‟ and „feminine‟
still signify in stable ways, or would the relaxing of the taboos against stray penetration
destabilize these gendered positions in serious ways?” (Bodies 51). The answer here is
clear; by taking control of the chase, by inverting the subject/object paradigm, through
language and action, the women of Death Proof call into question the viability of
prescribed gender norms.
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Gender as Façade: Quentin Tarantino’s Use of Pastiche
Much postmodern feminist theory, epitomized by the work of scholars like Butler
and Judith Halberstam, focuses on the power of words to oppress women while
preserving patriarchal ideologies. To this end, in Female Masculinity, Halberstam
explicitly seeks to undermine the “tyranny of language—a structure that fixes people in
place artificially but securely” (7). In a similar manner, the empowered women of
Tarantino‟s most recent films refuse to be limited by or through language. Consider, for
example, the aforementioned appropriation of the word “bitch.” As with the liberatory
possibilities of speech, characters like Beatrix and Kim also assert dominance via their
repeated, masculine actions. Through such repetition, their behaviors are made to seem
less anomalous, their genders less relevant. It is here that a link begins to emerge
between Tarantino‟s gender bending and his postmodern genre bending.
In his influential essay “Postmodernism and Consumer Society,” Fredric Jameson
defines the two crucial features of postmodernism as schizophrenia and pastiche, which
correspond to the disruption of time and space respectively (3). Both elements are in
great abundance in the Tarantino oeuvre. With regards to the former, non-linear narrative
has become a hallmark of the director‟s films (Death Proof serving as a notable
exception). His movies often defy chronology to the point where a character that dies in
one scene, reappears later in the story (Vincent in Pulp Fiction being an obvious case).
In the Kill Bill saga, for example, The Bride‟s quest for vengeance is relayed in nonsequential order. Yet, there is a method to the madness; events that appear out of time
actually blend together to form a seamless whole. In the first volume, O-Ren Ishii‟s back
story is interposed between Beatrix‟s escape from the hospital and the ultimate
52
showdown at The House of Blue Leaves. Here, flashback is used to great effect, setting
the stage for the film‟s final confrontation and establishing O-Ren as a character of great
pathos and substance.
Pastiche is also essential to the inimitable Tarantinian style. Accordingly, Death
Proof employs generic elements of the slasher film, 1970‟s grindhouse cinema, the
French New Wave, and the car chase thriller. Similarly, Kill Bill is, in equal measures,
Kung Fu movie, spaghetti western, and rape revenge fantasy.
At this point it is useful to again delineate pastiche from parody. According to
Jameson, the intention of parody, which he associates with high modernism, is to “cast
ridicule on the private nature of […] stylistic mannerisms and their excessiveness and
eccentricity with respect to the way people normally speak or write” (4). It offers, in
other words, a trenchant social or cultural critique. Pastiche, by contrast, has no such
value; it is empty, blank, and derivative. It is all surface and no substance. This, in brief,
is what Jameson describes as the lot and dilemma of the postmodern artist. He notes that
“only a limited number of [creative] combinations are possible [and] the unique ones
have been thought of already” (Jameson 7).
By these standards, Tarantino‟s work clearly falls under the rubric of the
postmodern. The director‟s style, which borrows liberally from myriad other sources,
both high and low brow, seems to fit the aforementioned definition of pastiche. Jameson
contends that because the postmodern sensibility draws on so many other influences,
“one of its essential messages will involve the necessary failure of art and the aesthetic,
the failure of the new, the imprisonment of the past” (7). I believe this to be a major
oversight on the author‟s part. In particular, I assert that through the reconfiguration of
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existing styles and ideas, through the politicization and reenergizing of established
genres, the postmodern artist (with Tarantino as quintessential example) can call into
question the very ideologies that undergird those styles and ideas. To this end, the ways
in which Tarantino engages pastiche in his most recent films, particularly through his
focus on repetition and surface, often challenge prescriptive cinematic gender norms.
Tarantino makes his intentions clear from the outset. Specifically, a common
device employed by the director is to frame the film proper with retro-style openings and
closings. The introduction to Kill Bill Volume 1, for example, consists of several Chinese
symbols, which distinctly resemble the title card of a traditional Hollywood production,
something along the lines of “Quentin Tarantino Presents.” This is followed by a badgeshaped logo (which is markedly similar to the Warner Brothers emblem) and the
announcement that the film will be presented in “Shaw Scope.” The specific reference
may be lost on most Western audiences, but this is a direct homage to the Shaw Brothers,
a duo that produced “many of the classic films made by and at the brothers „Movie
Town‟ complex in Hong Kong” (Smith 230). While the pair worked in numerous genres,
they are best known for their contributions to the martial arts film. Significantly, this
opening not only cues the astute viewer in to Tarantino‟s love of old Kung Fu movies,
but prepares him/her for the collected bits of nostalgia that comprise the Kill Bill saga. It
readies us, in other words, for the films‟ reliance upon pastiche.
In a similar manner, the opening credits of Volume 2 are placed over a stark,
black and white sequence of The Bride behind the wheel of a car. With a Bernard
Herrmann-esque composition gradually swelling in the background, a steely-eyed Beatrix
recounts the events of the previous installment. She notes that she went on “what the
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movie advertisers refer to as a roaring rampage of revenge.” Taken as a whole, these
elements recall numerous films noir of the 1940s and, by extension, characterize the
protagonist as a femme fatale. While Jameson might contend that such scenes (and such
films) are examples of pastiche, which resort to the “allusive and elusive plagiarism of
older plots,” something more complex is at work here (9). In particular, the sequence is
shot against a blatantly obvious rear projection screen. To this end, there is not only a
literal, but a figurative disconnect between the actress and the action. Through this
antiquated technology, Tarantino (as Hitchcock did before him) reminds the viewer that
he/she is watching a film. In this manner, the director encourages us not to suspend, but
rather to embrace disbelief. What is more, in his presentation of a devious, yet heroic,
woman with murder on her mind, Tarantino challenges, rather than reinforces, the
accumulated legacy of cinematic misogyny.
This correlation between pastiche and gender is especially pointed in the prologue
to Death Proof. Here, the action is once again preceded by “artfully distressed leaders
announcing „Our Feature Presentation‟ and the „Restricted‟ rating, along with other
fetishistic marks of the vintage grindhouse experience, such as occasional deep scratches,
smears and dodgy colour processing” (Rayns 52). Moreover, when shown theatrically,
on a double bill with Robert Rodriguez‟s Planet Terror, the experience was augmented
by schlocky, 1970s-style movie trailers. On the whole, Tarantino‟s film sought to
reproduce the sex and violence-obsessed grindhouse aesthetic, with “reproduce” being
the operative word. The aforementioned scratches and smears, along with frequent
hiccups on the film‟s soundtrack serve not only nostalgic purposes, but also as reminders
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of the audience‟s role in creating a film‟s meaning. In this case the seams are literally
rendered visible.
Following the retro disclaimers in Death Proof are the opening credits, which
overlap a shot of Arlene‟s feet swaying seductively on the dashboard of a car. Before the
actresses‟ names are presented, they are announced nondescriptly as “The Girls.” Again,
the image here is blotchy and worn, in a manner reminiscent of a film that has been
projected repeatedly. Along these lines, a parallel may be drawn between film as a
phenomenon that derives meaning through repetition, and gender, which functions in
much the same way. Judith Butler notes that if gender signification “takes place within
the compulsion to repeat; „agency,‟ then, is to be located within the possibility of a
variation on that repetition” (Gender 199). Similarly, if the intentional deterioration of
the image (as an expression of homage/pastiche) in Death Proof underscores the
contrived nature of film, then its juxtaposition with the conventional markers of
cinematic femininity (the woman as fetish object and the pigeonholing of “The Girls”)
highlights the artificial bases upon which gender is constructed. It is at this nexus,
between Tarantino‟s postmodern style and his portrayal of gender, that we may seek the
“agency” which Butler describes.
The scene from Kill Bill Volume 2, wherein Beatrix seeks her revenge on Elle
Driver is a particularly evocative example of the genre/gender dyad. On its surface, the
sequence seems a simple case of pastiche. Elements of both the western and Kung Fu
film are in great abundance. As the two women measure each other, samurai swords
poised, their encounter resembles a high noon confrontation between gunslingers. Elle is
dressed in slick, all-black attire, replete with color-coordinated eye patch. Beatrix, by
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contrast, wears a tattered white shirt and blue jeans. The characters possess, in other
words, the sartorial trappings used to distinguish good from evil in the classic western. If
we hadn‟t seen another frame of this film, we would instantly recognize the iconography.
These symbols are augmented by how the scene is shot; split screen and super slow
motion are utilized to emphasize the balletic quality of the duel. In this manner, it
resembles an aestheticized martial arts fight sequence.
Somewhere along the way, though, these bits of stylish homage descend into the
mundane. The tension between adversaries is so high and the build-up has been so
carefully orchestrated , it is easy to overlook the fact that the duel is taking place in the
dilapidated trailer of Bill‟s brother Bud. Strewn throughout his home is the refuse (porno
magazines, booze bottles, movie posters, etc.) of a life squandered. At one point, during
their skillful swordplay, Beatrix resorts to forcing Elle‟s head into the toilet. Here, we are
shown Elle‟s struggle from a perspective inside of the bowl. Moreover, Tarantino
actually takes the time to show Elle flushing the toilet as she gasps for air, increasing the
banality of the situation.
Jameson contends that in postmodernism the “line between high art and
commercial forms seems increasingly difficult to draw” (2). In this sequence, however,
the director revels in, rather than blurs these distinctions. While the two combatants are
made to seem noble (Elle refers to Beatrix as the greatest warrior she has ever known)
and their confrontation inevitable, they are not above playing dirty. Consider, for
instance, the manner in which Beatrix defeats Elle. As the two women determinedly
stand face-to-face, a continuation of their duel seems likely. Beatrix dashes these hopes,
when she abruptly yanks out Elle‟s single “beautiful blue eye.” She then proceeds to
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squash it, slowly, beneath her bare foot, the camera lingering on the gory details. In a
similar manner, the blinded Elle is shown, for an excruciatingly long period, flapping and
flailing amidst the detritus of Bud‟s trailer. As with his use of rear projection,
Tarantino‟s obsessive focus on the absurdity of the situation only serves to remind us that
we are watching a film to underscore the constructed nature of his cinematic world.
The director also calls into question the fixity of gender roles by reworking
generic conventions, particularly through his homage to the French New Wave.
Tarantino‟s respect for the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard is well known. In fact, his
production company, A Band Apart, is named after Godard‟s 1964 film of the same
name. One of the features of the Nouvelle Vague that Tarantino is especially fond of is
its use of halting or seemingly out of place dialogue. Peter Wollen refers to this
Godardian tendency as narrative intransitivity, which is characterized by “gaps and
interruptions, episodic construction, undigested digression” (525). In Godard‟s
Breathless (1960), for example, he intersperses large chunks of conversation throughout a
film that is itself a tribute to the action-packed American gangster genre.
In this manner, during the duel sequence, the characters take time to chat before
they cross swords. In a rather lengthy discussion, Elle recounts how she lost her eye.
Beatrix prefaces their conversation by claiming that its content is “just between us girls,”
in a rather explicit acknowledgement of the gendered nature of chitchat. This is not an
isolated occurrence; in fact, all of Tarantino‟s films are filled with periods of extended
conversation, right smack in the middle of the action. The theme can be traced from the
diner sequence in Reservoir Dogs to the maternity scene in Kill Bill Volume 2 to the diner
sequence in Death Proof. What is most remarkable about these moments of talkiness is
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not their mere existence in the action-packed Tarantino oeuvre, but rather the degree to
which they are a seamless part of it. During the duel, for example, Beatrix and Elle
alternate fighting with conversation, yet the cadence of the film is never disrupted. By
extension, the viewer never questions this mélange of traditionally masculine and
feminine cinematic conventions.
The ending of the showdown sequence is a particularly germane example of this
phenomenon. After defeating Elle, a beleaguered and bloodied Beatrix collects her
sword and heads toward the exit of the trailer. Here, Tarantino focuses on the victorious
warrior, sated by a job well done, posed heroically within the doorframe (Figure 6). The
allusion to John Ford‟s The Searchers (1956) is an apt one. Just as Ethan Edwards (John
Wayne) marches off into the desert at the end of Ford‟s masterpiece, Beatrix leaves the
camper and defiantly approaches her future, here represented by a barren Texas
landscape.
Figure 6. Western Iconography
While the homage to the western is obvious, this scene, and in fact the entire Kill
Bill saga, parallel another, equally masculine genre, the boxing film. Judith Halberstam
claims that in movies like “Raging Bull and Rocky […], the masculinity of the boxer is
determined not by how quickly he can knock the other guy out but by how many punches
the boxer can take without going down himself” (Female 274). At the conclusion of her
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confrontation with Elle, what formula could more accurately describe Beatrix‟s ordeal?
By this point, she has been shot in the head, raped, and buried alive, among other
traumas. In terms of her endurance, her masochistic refusal to accept defeat, Beatrix
Kiddo more closely resembles Ethan Edwards or Rocky Balboa than Mia Wallace.
Moreover, through her repeated acts of masculinity, she offers a strong challenge to the
oppressive, binary system of cinematic gender representation. Along these lines, when
Tarantino presents us with images like Beatrix framed in the doorway of the trailer
(Figure 6) or Kim behind the wheel of a car (Figure 4), he creates moments of
enlightened ignorance, moments when we forget the gender of the character onscreen.
In the opening shot of the Kill Bill saga, we witness a battered, nameless bride
from the perspective of an unknown, male assailant. She is clearly meant to be gazedupon and can thus “be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 841). By contrast,
at the end of the second volume, a victorious Beatrix Kiddo drives off toward the
horizon, with daughter and sword appropriately by her side. In a similar manner, Death
Proof commences with the image of a woman‟s feet sensually tapping in time to the
film‟s soundtrack. Here, feet represent the traditionally oppressive depiction of women
onscreen. By the conclusion of the film, however, another woman‟s feet are deployed to
deliver the death blow to the misogynistic Stuntman Mike. I would claim that a
transformation takes place between the opening and closing scenes of these films.
Specifically, Quentin Tarantino employs pastiche to expose or refract how gender is
simply an endless series of performances. It is all surface.
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Chapter 3
Conclusion
Quentin Tarantino and the Legacy of Cinematic Gender
This chapter will focus on the findings of my research. In addition, I will
consider the limitations of my work, specifically in terms of who is calling the shots, how
the shots are called, and what this says about gender parity. Finally, I will present
suggestions for further study and discuss the significance of my work with regard to the
expansive field of gender representations in cinema.
Findings
Throughout this undertaking I have kept several key questions in mind. First and
foremost, I wondered: How does Quentin Tarantino construct the feminine gender or
portray the feminine gender as a construct? On the whole, I contend that characters such
as Beatrix, Kim, and Zoë are positioned, both spatially and narratively, as powerful
subjects (actors), rather than passive objects (acted-upon). The director accomplishes this
by offering forth, only to undermine, the conventionally misogynistic devices of
fetishization and the gaze. By focusing on women‟s feet, for example, he examines how
they can become a source of great power (the death blow delivered by Abernathy to
Stuntman Mike), as well as a means to further a film‟s storyline (as a flashback device
while The Bride recovers from paralysis).
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Moreover, Tarantino redeploys the gaze, so that these women are transformed
from characters to-be-looked-at, to those who control the look (consider the bookend
shots, which open and close the Kill Bill saga). In fact, I assert that these transformations
are so profound, as to force us to reconsider the very labels of “masculine” and
“feminine” in his films. Accordingly, characters like Beatrix and Kim display fluidity in
their language and action, which mark them as neither feminine nor masculine, but
somehow genderless.
Next, I asked: In tracing the trajectory of Tarantino‟s career, have his depictions
of women become markedly more equitable? The director‟s first two films, Reservoir
Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), generally concern themselves with the world of
men. These works present women as either marginalized and ineffectual (Mia Wallace)
or as mere topics for conversation, (the Madonna speech). This begins to change,
however, with Jackie Brown (1997), where Tarantino presents us with a strong female
character, who serves as a precursor to the empowered women of his three most recent
films. In Kill Bill Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007),
the director‟s challenge to the oppressively patriarchal legacy of cinema, only hinted at
previously, reaches its apex. In these films, I argue that he embraces his female
characters, not because of, but in spite of their gender. Beatrix, Kim, and Zoë are not just
strong women, they are simply strong. As Beatrix dispatches countless Yakuza during
The House of Blue Leaves sequence or Kim, Zoë, and Abernathy relentlessly pursue their
tormentor, we find ourselves in a state of enlightened ignorance. When these characters
are at their strongest and most confident, gender becomes much less relevant to how we
read them.
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Finally, I inquired: Do his recent female protagonists rise to a level of
empowerment generally reserved for male characters? This question has proven most
troublesome for me. Over the course of my textual analysis, I have presented myriad
instances of women acting with great courage and determination. To this end, we never
doubt that Beatrix will succeed in her quest to kill Bill or that Kim, Zoë, and Abernathy
will vanquish Stuntman Mike. The director has skillfully and deliberately created an
environment in which we embrace these female characters as our “screen surrogate[s]”
(Mulvey 842). Still, there are moments in these most recent works when Tarantino
resorts to the essentialist view of women prevalent in his first two films. I am thinking
specifically of a sequence in Kill Bill Volume 2, interposed between the liberatory images
of The Bride defeating Bill and her riding off into the sunset. Here, we find a distraught
Beatrix, prostrate on the floor of her hotel room. She is curled into a fetal position,
weeping, and clutching a stuffed animal. It is understandable that she would mourn the
loss of the man she loved, but what I find unsettling about this scene is that Tarantino
places it at the end of the saga. After four hours of identifying with Beatrix Kiddo, we
ultimately see her reduced to a cinematic stereotype. In this moment, she reminds me of
nothing so much as a helpless, drug-addled Mia Wallace.
Limitations
Along these lines, while I have made every effort to support my reading of
Quentin Tarantino‟s latest films as gender equitable or neutral, there are certain
shortcomings in my research that I feel compelled to mention. There is, for example, the
inescapable truth that these female characters are speaking and acting under the direction
of a powerful, white male. This calls into question not only the apparent re-appropriation
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of words like “bitch,” but the degree to which his female characters are empowered at all.
As such, one must consider the possibility that Tarantino may be co-opting this language
as an alibi, so as not to interrogate his own privileged position.
I also wonder whether or not I have been blinded to the director‟s misogynistic
impulses by his engaging aesthetic. In fact, Roberta Garrett claims that male critics often
overlook these impulses altogether or view them as “somewhat negated by the films‟
self-conscious tone and playful manner” (6). In fact, this seems to be a consistent
complaint offered by feminist scholars (Fraiman, Garrett, Willis, et al.) against Tarantino.
Sara Ahmed, for instance, claims that it is “important for feminism to consider sexual
violence in films which have been designated as postmodern. Indeed postmodernism
may involve not seeing the violence which takes place, precisely by seeing such films
purely in terms of transgression” (174).
It is important to recognize that during the Kill Bill saga, Beatrix achieves
empowerment, in large part, through violent acts committed against other women. Her
confrontations with Vernita Green, O-Ren Ishii, and Elle Driver are characterized by
intense brutality and gore. The Bride stabs Vernita through the heart (in front of her
daughter), scalps O-Ren and yanks out Elle‟s eyeball, before squashing it underfoot. In
stark contrast, she defeats Bill in a rather bloodless way, employing the non-invasive
“five point palm exploding heart technique.” He literally dies of a broken heart.
In this manner, legitimate concerns may be raised over the ways in which
Tarantino literally cordons off femininity from masculinity. While conventionally
masculine traits such as violent action are usually valorized in his films, feminine traits
such as talking are frequently correlated with weakness. This equation seems valid,
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whether the characters displaying these qualities are men or women. Moreover, these
characteristics are consistently associated with specific sites of action or inaction, as the
case may be. For example, the space of the coffee house is coded as feminine throughout
the Tarantino oeuvre. In Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Death Proof, it is designated
as a place for quiet reflection and conversation. When violence does threaten this
tranquility, as in the holdup sequence in Pulp Fiction, it is averted via (sublimated
through) dialogue. Ultimately, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny prove ineffective as armed
robbers, because they are unable to act in a masculine (violent) way. In fact, they only
manage to escape their predicament through the intervention of the quintessentially
macho Jules.
By contrast, the car is a defined as a masculine space of action. In Pulp Fiction,
when Vincent‟s gun (accidentally?) discharges, killing Marvin, it should not come as a
surprise. In Tarantino‟s world, the automobile is a place where violence can erupt at any
moment. Similarly, when the women of Death Proof defeat Stuntman Mike, they do so
in (with) a car. They must, in other words, enter a space coded as masculine and
appropriate the brutality of their male tormentor to achieve empowerment. The car (as
site of action) is, in many ways, the masculine antipode to the feminine space of the
coffee house (as site of inaction). This spatial delineation of masculinity and femininity,
which is apparent throughout the director‟s work, presents a significant challenge to the
notion of greater gender equality to be found therein.
On the whole, however, I maintain that Tarantino‟s films have become markedly
more evenhanded and, in fact, progressive in their portrayal of women. From the hateful
(albeit tongue in cheek) “Like a Virgin” monologue in Reservoir Dogs and the depiction
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of the ineffectual Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction to the inexorable determination of Beatrix
Kiddo in the Kill Bill saga and the esprit de corps displayed by the women of Death
Proof (a re-gendering of the group mentality in Reservoir Dogs), the evolution is
obvious. While not denying that these most recent works occasionally lapse into the
essentialism of his first two films, it is crucial to recognize what the director gets right.
Namely, characters like Beatrix, Kim, and Zoë are generally depicted in ways which defy
the simple, reductive labels of masculine and feminine.
Suggestions for Further Research and Implications
Although I have spent considerable time on Tarantino‟s use of pastiche, his
appropriation of certain horror film formulae, in particular, would prove a rich subject for
further investigation. As mentioned, the structure of the Kill Bill saga bears a strong
resemblance to the rape-revenge film. Moreover, Death Proof is a clear homage to that
most rigid of horror subgenres, the slasher film. Accordingly, many of the elements
discussed by Carol J. Clover in her influential Men Women and Chainsaws are apparent
here: the close-knit group of girls (two groups in this case), the stalker (Stuntman Mike),
and the industrious final girl (Kim). In fact, during a 2007 interview with Elvis Mitchell,
the director referred to this film as a “high octane slasher film at 200 miles per hour.”
While Clover makes the case that slasher and rape-revenge films “repeatedly and
explicitly articulate feminist politics,” a similar argument might be employed while
discussing the theme of gender in Tarantino‟s most recent work (151).
Furthermore, in terms of genre theory, it would prove useful to delineate the
various ways in which Tarantino employs pastiche in these most recent films.
Specifically, his use of the device seems more effective at articulating gender concerns in
66
Death Proof than it does in the Kill Bill saga. I contend that this is because his homage is
more specific, his focus more pointed, in the former than the latter. While Kill Bill often
spreads itself too thin, appropriating numerous cinematic tropes (Kung Fu, Spaghetti
Western, rape-revenge, French New Wave, Japanese anime, etc), Death Proof recalls a
very precise feeling and moment in film history (the seediness of the 1970‟s Grindhouse
experience). Consequently, it seems better able to hone in on and deconstruct, the bases
upon which gender are constructed. In her analysis of the slasher genre, Clover notes that
its narrowness and formulaic nature are “the very qualities that make it such a transparent
source for (sub)cultural attitudes toward sex and gender in particular” (22). This would
also seem to be the case in the self-consciously transparent (it was packaged as a
“Grindhouse” presentation) Death Proof. Accordingly, the concept of “less is more”
with regards to pastiche and gender in Tarantino‟s films (and film in general) seems a
rich area, warranting further consideration.
Methodologically, I propose that a study of gender in these films would benefit
greatly from the addition of an ethnographic or audience-based perspective. While the
popularity of Quentin Tarantino‟s films is undeniable (witness their respective rankings
in the Internet Movie Database Top 250 poll), two crucial questions remain unanswered.
Namely, what specific audiences are they popular and unpopular with? What is more, do
his latest films appeal to a different or wider-ranging demographic than his earlier ones?
This could be considered not only in terms of gender, but also with regards to other group
dynamics (e.g. African Americans, homosexuals, etc.).
As this study is, necessarily, limited to the work of a single director, my findings
in no way represent a comprehensive analysis of how gender functions in postmodern,
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twenty-first century Hollywood. Along these lines, I would suggest further research into
the fissures of hegemonic, patriarchal cinema. While continuing to note the generally
misogynistic assumptions of mainstream popular film, it is incumbent upon critics and
theorists to identify examples of female empowerment to be found therein. We must
recognize the good to ensure a more equitable future.
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