Beatrix Kiddo vs the Female Ubermensch

When Kill Bill was released in 2004, it was denigrated for lot of reasons. Some claimed it was too violent, others that it was a case of style of substance, yet more disliked the genre-splicing. Of course, it had its fans (I suppose I am one of them). The stylistic action and dialogue notwithstanding, many seem to agree with Tarantino himself when he described the project as a “feminist statement” and claimed it was all about “girl power.”

We’ve heard this shit before, of course. The Charlie’s Angels films too claimed to be about female empowerment regardless of the transparent appeal to adolescent boys. But unlike these degrading exercises in titillation dressed up as “feminist” films, the Kill Bill experience contains few if any instances of scantily-dressed females.

However, Kill Bill is still a deeply sexist film that reveals a lot about Tarantino’s mindset, beyond the usual blatantly obvious cult film geekery and foot fetish. The theme of male dominance in this film is absolutely overwhelming to the point where it’s almost impossible to believe any claim he made to the contrary. Yes, perhaps, on the surface, The Bride is physically dominant, able to dispatch hordes of male combatants with relative ease and is only in trouble in the first volume when she comes across another woman. However, she is only tough and empowered so long as she conforms to the male action hero archetype: a revenge-seeking, one-liner-dropping, martially-skilled, decisive, composed, pain-tolerant assassin. She first wears a yellow jump suit in order to be reminiscent of male action star Bruce Lee, and later adopts jeans, cowboy boots and a t-shirt.

Her other overwhelming character trait is an obsession with a man. It quite simply could not have been an accident that the centre of the film, the sun around which all the violent female planets revolve, is the eponymous Bill. Bill is the leader of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, the Bride’s targets and former peers, and it was he who selected their dangerous missions and presumably portioned out payment for. That he is perfectly analogous to a pimp is difficult to get around: women are (forcibly in the case of O’Ren Ishi, another supposedly “empowered” woman) indebted to him whilst he retains an air of cool, again archetypal with cultural depictions of pimps. Not, might I add, the first time Tarantino has stuck his oar into stereotypic black culture.

Tellingly, Bill's father figure, Esteban, actually is a pimp. Even more tellingly is that if the Bride is Uma Thurman's screen persona (that Thurman and Tarantino came up with the character together is suggested as much in interviews) then the supercool, comic-book referencing director-of-all-events Bill is so obviously Tarantino's. Where the power lies is never in doubt.

The film does not even continue its idea of only women being a threat to the Bride into the second volume. She is outsmarted and defeated in a humiliating manner by Bud, Bill’s slow-witted hick brother, before reminiscing about her defeat, humiliation and tutelage by her male mentor, Pai Mei (described indifferently as her “master,” ostensibly a reference to classic samurai/martial art revenge movies but functionally degrading). If the Deadly Vipers are the assassination equivalent of a brothel, Pai Mei is the captain of the ship the prostitutes are smuggled into the country on, and it is under him they learn how to please their predominantly male world. Pai Mei is utterly unbeatable in fair combat, and can only be overcome by the female treachery of Elle Driver, who poisons him. By the time we come to the climax, a thinly-veiled lament for father’s rights, the Bride is just about permitted to defeat a drunken, elderly and washed up Bill, and all pretences of feminism are in tatters. Her life, having up to now been defined entirely by Bill's actions, is now dedicated to raising Bill's child whilst Bill fades with Pai Mei into martial arts legend.

Kill Bill is not, though, an uncommon phenomenon in today’s society. At feminism’s start, it was required to define itself by male dominance in order to oppose it. But as we move closer and closer to a world of equal gender rights within the liberal democracy, the feminist movement has still not yet begun to define women by anything else than their male oppressors. There has, plainly speaking, never been a female Nietzsche. Nietzsche, you may remember, became famous for the statement “God is dead,” which was an avatar for the ubermensch, the next stage in man’s spiritual evolution. The ubermensch, as Nietzsche describes him in the seminal Thus Spoke Zarathustra (my first and still favourite work of philosophy), has overcome nihilism and is able to put together his own moral code completely undefined by any that had gone before or exists around him, specifically religion within the context. General cultural feminism cannot get to that stage of independent introversion and still clings to these male-defined female heroines such as the Bride. Most damning is the fact I hear a lot of women saying they came out of Kill Bill feeling strong and empowered and wanting to take up karate.

This may just be another case of Tarantino being a snake-oil salesman. But it may also be an intrinsic fault in the diamond that is feminist theory, a fault already noted by Third-Wave feminists or post-feminists who have been powerless to do anything about it. Even the attempted reclaiming of words like “bitch” and “whore” suggested by the likes of Inga Muscio has its origins in a male-defined worldview. Like in Kill Bill, women are still victims desperately trying to reassert control over their world, rather than true adventurers for whom the world is their birthright. Perhaps the first novel to concentrate on the plight of women was Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, the eponymous heroine of which is born not under a male thumb but in Newgate prison, the closest thing 18th century England had to limbo. Whilst her career is then based around the exploitation of men through sexual pragmatism and ethical survivalism, it’s worth remembering her voidesque starting point is somewhere she desperately doesn’t want to visit again, and thus being back at the beginning is the most she has to lose. There’s an attitude there that should be considered. Women should not consider themselves to be born from the head of Zeus but anywhere they damn please.