Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
was surprisingly short–I finished it in less than two days’ commute time. It’s a lovely little confection of a book–not quite as stunning as the previously mentioned The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
, but fun. Fun to write, fun to read. Lots of detail on foreign lands and foreign times that will tend to make fans of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction fans feel right at home, even if they don’t normally read Chabon. (But who doesn’t?)
One of these days, I should read Wonder Boys: A Novel
.
Lots of thinking about sex appeal and sexual tension lately, and how to make it happen, and how that fits in with feminism while still retaining a certain amount of power. This generally means I write more of the Lady in Red’s story but you see, last week I’d started a play about metamorphoses. Why can’t I work on both? Metamorphoses isn’t down in text yet. [Holy fuck, I just realized that the initial seed-post for that character-story was almost four years ago. Must get cracking.]
Anyway, since The Kill Bill Diary
is still on the floor, I remembered something randomly while reading Maureen Dowd’s essay, What’s a Modern Girl to Do? In it, she commented,
When Gloria Steinem wrote that “all women are Bunnies,” she did not mean it as a compliment; it was a feminist call to arms. Decades later, it’s just an aesthetic fact, as more and more women embrace Botox and implants and stretch and protrude to extreme proportions to satisfy male desires. Now that technology is biology, all women can look like inflatable dolls. It’s clear that American narcissism has trumped American feminism.
and later on,
What I didn’t like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.
What I don’t like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don’t be a sex object; now it’s be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.
Similarly, David Carradine comments that he doesn’t really enjoy going to the Playboy Mansion, because it was full of plastic women and men who loved plastic. The book has no index, so I won’t burden you with a direct quote.
In any case, what clicked today in my head is that David Carradine, if nothing else, came across fairly obviously as a guy who loves women. He’s practically drooling when he’s writing about working out alongside the women who make up the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. He makes repeated references to hanky panky with his current wife(?) Annie. And at least once, he says something like, “there are lots more women to love.” But he doesn’t like Barbie doll women. There’s hope for the race of man yet!
Reading the Diary got me thinking about the film quite a bit, though. Plus, earlier this week, I’d read this rant from writer Shannon Hale:
It always bothered me when in action movies or books, the writers would turn women into men in order to make them powerful–i.e. give them a sword, put them in pants, make them more aggressive and other typically male traits. Sure, one woman like that makes an interesting character, but all of them? Can’t a woman be feminine and still be powerful?
To be honest, it never bothered me because I didn’t really have a concept of femininity or wanting to be feminine until fairly recently. I just wanted to be able to run and hang with the boys. On the other hand, action movie heroines are often fairly uninteresting to me, because a lot of times they merely serve as sidekicks to the male heroes who generally carry the flick. The only real evidence of their femininity is when they fall in love with said hero.
But for some reason, I find the women of Kill Bill extremely interesting. They all have small indications of their femininity: Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox) is a loving suburban wife and mother (when was the last time a big budget movie had, as one of its supporting characters, a mother with fighting skills? This one had TWO.) Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) has a semi-unrequited love for Bill. O-ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), outside of her kimono and ladylike shuffle, is outfitted with little details like the beaded charms on her wakizashi and ridiculously cute shoes (which, I will have you know, I cannot seem to find anywhere). Lastly, Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride (Uma Thurman) is driven, like a Greek Fury, by both by revenge and grief.
I’m drawn to two of the main Batman villainesses in the same way. Poison Ivy finds her particular genius in botany and creates her own plant-based life form to replace the need for men. Catwoman is a society girl who steals pretty baubles that distract her and is a bit of an animal rights activist. The botched version starring Halle Berry is one of the biggest wastes of that character I’ve ever encountered. Sometimes, in a fit of insanity, I briefly consider rewriting it to show people how it could and should have been done.
Back to Kill Bill. One of the things that did bother me slightly was due in large part to the splitting of the story into two parts. Part I was fun and games, and Part II was where a lot of the story development came through. But Part I was first released into theaters, and Part I kills off all the major characters of color. Now, just as I was writing this, I did one last Google search for those delicious shoes that O-ren wore (and, if I remember, had one hero shot) and came across this review of the films at Heroine Content. The writer’s got a few interesting things that I hadn’t thought about, and I largely agree with her assessment of the films.
What caught my eye was one of the comments by a poster going by “d”. It’s a long comment, and thoughtful, but there were a few arguments that I wanted to address.
In terms of ethnic content, the best metaphor for how bad it seems to me were the credits when Beatrix is driving (after the credits) . It shows Lucy Liu’s name with a red mark through it, it shows Vivica Fox’s name with a red line through it, and it shows Michael Madsen’s name with a red line through it (I think) even though we know she doesn’t kill him. But David Carradine’s name does not have a line through it. And Darryl Hannah’s name has a question mark? We don’t even know if she is dead. And what that seems to show me is that minority=expendable, and non-minority= non-expendable.
I don’t remember this scene, but I don’t think the representation is as clear a breakdown as d seems to think. I could go through analysis of characters and motivations [Elle Driver isn’t dead, but she’s been left in a trailer with a black mamba in the middle of the desert; I suspect a sequel, maybe ten, twenty years down the line, with Elle Driver mentoring Copperhead’s daughter, who witnessed her mother’s murder; etc.] but even leaving such nebulous guesses aside, the fact is that the characters of color got the most nuanced roles. There’s a LOT of information packed into their screen time: with Vernita Green/Copperhead, the conversation in the kitchen discussing the impending midnight fight reeks of blaxploitation films but also of duels in samurai films and cowboy westerns; with O-Ren Ishii, she doubles as a girly-girl in the male-oriented yakuza world and we see her become the woman she is through the anime sequence depicting her childhood. What do we get of Daryl Hannah’s character, the California Mountain Snake? A tantrum on the phone, and the events surrounding the loss of each eyeball. My point is that the scenes with the two minority characters could probably each stand as their own films, with very little editing–they’re that well developed.
I will concede that Michael Madsen’s performance as Budd was at least as layered as Vivica A. Fox’s, if not quite as long an opportunity as Lucy Liu’s character.
Moving on.
Since I didn’t see the beginning, I could be wrong on this, but it seems like everything seems to be in correct chronological order except for Vivica Fox’s scene. Why is hers first? Lucy Liu technically is the one she killed first, but why on Earth do we see Vivica killed first?
Nothing was in absolute chronological order, being a Quentin Tarantino film. I think once you decide to split a whole narrative into two films, you have to consider how each half stands by itself. Vernita Green/O-ren Ishii together make sense because they’re strong stories with strong backgrounds. There’s also the advantage of having a very visual, showy first part that acts as a trailer/teaser to the second part, which is where a lot of the meat of the story happens. There’s the possibility that part of their “matchability” derives from the sequences’ heritage in films that mainly featured minority characters.
But there’s really very little choice otherwise. Matching either one with Bill would cut a lot of the more interesting sequences out, as well as eliminate the need for a second film.
Matching with Budd would stand well except for the unfortunate intertwining of Budd’s and Elle Driver’s storylines, and splitting that trailer sequence would reduce a lot of the scene’s impact in conveying Elle’s relationship to Budd as well as the overall claustrophobic effect of having a fight in that tiny trailer, with a dead body and a poisonous snake to avoid. Splitting off Budd’s death also renders the entire exchange between Elle and Budd moot, since you could convey the same information with a couple lines and a shot of Budd’s dead body. That would leave us with Budd’s sole appearance in the picture consisting of the wedding rehearsal sequence and the burial. At that point, you don’t even need the extra character stuff for Budd, like the fact that he works in a topless bar and takes shit from people he could probably kill with his bare hands as a kind of penance. I think, though, that a major part of the charm of a QT film is the characters that are constructed.
Why Vivica first? Why not? It’s an excellent introduction to both characters in terms of their deadly skill and their determination to kill or be killed. Copperhead/Vernita Green is the only store that stands alone (other than maybe Bill’s) because she’s the only one who’s left the life of violence. It also sets up a symmetry that gives you some information about The Bride, which you really don’t know much about other than a few sundry facts.
Just seems to me he went out of his way to “kill the African American first,” which can’t possibly be construed as an homage, since this seemed to please no African American I knew.
No, it’s not pleasing, but I don’t think he went out of his way more than to give a nod to the fact that really, in a lot of crappy movies, the African American dies first. Ask any fan of horror. It’s always the African American (or else the exchange student).
Moreover, the very fact that she kills her in front of her daughter – but not just that, that the daughter just stands there – emotionless. Why was she denied her grief? It’s not normal; It was almost as if Tarrantino was either saying the daughter was somehow in agreement with it, the daughter was somehow inhuman, or the daughter was somehow akin to a killer. I hope it played better in the film; but since I missed it, I looked up the script. And Beatrix seemed the most disrespectful to her as well – not just the manner in which she dealt with her, but with the language she used. [….]And her line to the daughter seemed to be cold and callous, and part of me wishes she would grow up and murder her; because how ironic that she decried mercy for her since she lost her baby, when really her baby was alive all the time, but now the daughter is deprived of a mother, and she has a memory (unlike her baby, which would have not even been born yet).
I think this is where d’s lack of familiarity with Quentin Tarantino and the kind of pulp movie genre he makes his trade in really impacts her understanding of the film. In the Chinese revenge movies, the child/witness ALWAYS grows up wishing for revenge for his parent(s) death. See the anime sequence of O-ren Ishii’s childhood [login required for inappropriate content], where the character went to the length of becoming a child prostitute in order to exact her revenge. And the dialogue here has that archly unreal quality that’s really the stuff of legend.
Besides, is it really that hard to imagine a girl-child to be too stunned or shocked to react? Not to mention–this sets up a possible sequel for Elle Driver (presumably still alive, because we don’t see her die) to seek out Nikki Green and train her for the sole purpose of killing her mother’s murderer.
About Lucy Liu as O-ren Ishii:
But for all her being so ruthless and so powerful that she was the head of the Yakuza – a feat in and of itself for a female, let alone a foreign female. But there was all this fanfare about their fight, with her pulling off her shoes, and pulling out her sword, and that fight was soooo brief!? I was thinking, wait, that’s it? And on top of that, she cuts off her head? It seems as if she dispatches both vipers of color rather brutally and ruthlessly. And while she did yank Elle’s eye out, she left her alive…alive enough that she gets a question mark at the end, and a possible chance to come back.
The final fight was the classical “honorable duel” done Lady Snowblood style. These are Asian/Asian movie values, where true fighters would rather die than call off a fight. To do anything else would be dishonorable and disrespectful to your opponent, and there are little indications that the two combatants did have some respect for each other, as fighters and comrades. In contrast, Elle has no honor…she’s doomed to either kill herself or live vicariously through a student/mentee. It’s a values thing. An opponent will only leave you alive if you’re deemed too incompetent to ever attempt a comeback to kill him/her. In a more Western line of thought, it’s like telling your underaged opponent, “come back when you’re big enough to fight like a man.”
It’s something similar to Hattori Hanzo’s willingness to break his life’s promise never to make another weapon, because Bill’s disrespect in indiscriminately using Hanzo’s swords to kill go against Hanzo’s ethics.
There’s more. I’ll edit this later and add more material, because honestly, I’ve been at this for four or five hours and it’s getting long.
In general terms you leave your strongest opponents for last, and how is it that with the exception of the smarmy rape guys, the European characters are saved until last. Elle and her get a great fight scene! It was really well done, in terms of suspense. The crazy 88 almost seemed like people she was merely cutting through. At least Gogo gave her a real threat of some kind.
Again, balance/pacing issue. Go-Go as a real threat would support the strength of the female characters.
In terms of gender content, I though it was pretty terrible too. How is it that the one viper who truly bested her was the guy? And he did it rather unceremoniously too….and quickly. It was the two guys who brought her the closest to death. You can tell that Bill was just playing around with her too. He loved her still, and it was only because she learned that move. But it is a bloodless, painless, looking death he had – where she is crying, it’s drawn out and almost beautiful.
It’s not that simple.
Re: Budd. Budd changed, much like Vernita changed. But Budd isn’t just any guy, he’s Bill’s brother. Part of the lack of ceremony is perhaps due to the Bride’s lack of understanding the male psyche.
I don’t think Bill was just playing around with her. I think he would have been perfectly willing to kill her and be done with it.
It wasn’t just the move that killed him. It was the counter-betrayal. He was willing to kill her at some point; she had succeeded in killing him, and letting him know that. There’s also the revelation that she was a better student than he realized, and that he didn’t fully understand her in not realizing that she had secrets to keep from him.
The beauty is also implicit in any film where you have a lot of duels. The emotional build is also reinforced by the evidence that they’re still very much in love with each other.
If you wonder why they would work for him, it seemed to me like a glorified version of the prostitute/pimp scenario. They work for him, and he gets the benefits. And even though he puts the hit out on her, she saves her venom for her team mates – for the people who pretty much do the same thing that she does? Kill for a living?
I think the prostitute/pimp scenario is the point. Pulp-y. Just like Charlie’s Angels. And it’s not like she didn’t have any venom for him. (although the “that’s it? you OVERREACTED?” line was hilarious)
I’m probably going on, so I’ll quit after this. But the most egregious thing to me was that in the strictit[sic] sense of the website title, this movie was totally devoid of all “heroine” content. Yes, she kicked major butt, but that doesn’t make a hero. And often a hero in the film learns from their actions. And I felt she never learns. She never learns, she just keeps going. I felt little to no sympathy to her at all, she seemed like a monster – just a killing machine. I think Bill was right, and that little tack-on at the end about her and her baby didn’t seem to help at all. It just made her seem selfish. When Bill asked her why she was surprised by his behavior considering he loved her and he was a killer, she still said yes. It was at this point she still could have kept her anger, her vengeance, but still said she saw. She just seemed like a spoiled brat to me. She decides she wants out, but instead of being up front about it, she takes the coward’s way out and ditches him. She could have even sent him a letter. Then when they do to her what she has done to countless people, then she feels vindicated to go on a murdering spree until she feels better and gets her kid. And then, oh, everything is ok again? Mindless killing is not female empowerment at all – it is female imprisonment. If Quentin was trying to make a statement about violence, then someone would have had to cite it. I guess it was bill, but that is weak.
Maybe he tried, but while people celebrate the Godfather series, at least in the first one, Coppola showed how corrupting absolutely violence was. And you even get this in Eastwood films (and many of his are horribly stereotypical for women). But in this one, I get the sense that I am supposed to clap and applaud the Bride while she goes on her murderous killing spree just because she’s p’d off? She is no worse than the others, and what’s worse, it seems like many had already left that life, and saw the wrongness of it. I think the guy, Bud, was dead on when he said that they deserved what they got…but then said so did she (the Bride). It almost doesn’t seem like the bride’s movie at all, since there seems to be no real arc to her character. Everyone, save those rapists, seems to be more dimensional than the bride. The movie seems more like an advisory tale of beware what you do in life – regardless of your reasoning (bill), regardless of your epiphaniy and your repentence (Vernita – when they showed the brief clip of the near murder at the end you can already see in her eyes the beginning of remorse), regardless of anything, it will bite you in the end. The bride was like the snake – an awesome metaphor, but a lousy example of a heroine in film.
I don’t think d has seen many Quentin Tarantino films, let alone the pulp films his work is so immersed in. They’re all anti-heroes, and terrible people to boot. The magic is in QT’s ability to get audiences to care for these people. I don’t think, QT is every trying to make a specific point, I think he’s just constructing his view of how the world might be like. Trying to make a movie to convey a specific point is better put in documentary form. Otherwise you end up with the kind of movie Adrian Tomine lampooned in Shortcomings
. I think the problem here is mostly the fact that this website appears to exist to examine the feminine hero as portrayed in film, and the review was posted as such. These aren’t heroes in the Knights of the Round Table sense. They’re meant to be people who, through circumstances and through choice, have ended up in a world where most of us will never go.
My sense of d’s reaction is that it’s somewhat akin to the Simpsons phenomenon: some people are terrifically entertained by the antics of Homer and Bart Simpson because of their ludicrousness; other people with a less nuanced sense of reality/fiction (or who fear those with a less nuanced sense of somesuch) find it ugly, stupid humor.
What I’ve been doing for the last five or so hours in writing this? My duty.
Cleanup tomorrow, and maybe some additional thoughts on heroism. Ugh, this think came out close to 4000 words–that’s almost as long as my senior thesis on films noir (although I never quite finished that one to my satisfaction, either). I didn’t even get to talk about why Mr. and Mrs. Smith is the kind of movie I’d like to make. In any case, it gives some insight into the weird messiness of my brain when not regulated by law and logic.
. I read the linked Natasha Randall translation and loved it; there appear to be a few others out there. This is definitely a “purchase and reread” book.
better, but Thud! is still full of interesting images. I liked the twist on the 
craze, and the whole concept of metaphorical trolls (trolls who are actually composed of specific types of rock, e.g. Shale, Mica, Brick) is nice. The description of the dead kings gave me shivers.
. Basically, a little fairy tale, a little horror, and very much English.
