BLOQUE 5. KILL BILL. Flashcards by Marta Otálora Ros

KILL BILL IS A

SELF-CONSCIOUS PASTICHE

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PASTICHE =

A COMPOSITION MADE UP OF FRAGMENTS PIECED TOGETHER

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IS KILL BILL A PASTICHE?

YES

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IS KILL BILL A HOMAGE OR TRIBUTE?

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IS KILL BILL PLAGIARISM?

YES

TARANTINO STEALS FROM EVERYWHERE

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KILL BILL IS A BLEND OF

THE BASIC GENRES
GENRE-PLAY AKA GENRE BLENDER

Kung-Fu
Samurai
Blaxploitation
Spaguetti Western
Horror

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CHAPTERS HAVE A

SERIAL FORMAT

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KILL BILL ENJOYS

a unified narrative of betrayal, murder, revenge, and emotional closure

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How do we classify Kill Bill?

Fits the criteria of Carol J. Clover’s
classification of “rape-revenge film”.

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Quest for revenge:

This storyline is “primal” – it is the thematic link that unifies the narrative arc.

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The innovation lies in that Tarantino’s genre-play emphasizes

the unifying theme among the several genres—both in style and content.

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Vengeance may very well be

the mainspring of American popular culture

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“Revenge”

“is the oldest motivation known to mankind.”

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I Spit on Your Grave offers

no outs; it makes no space for intellectual (119) displacement.

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Jennifer takes the revenge

because it is the punishment that fits the crime

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Higher forms of the rape-revenge story involve us in

a variety of ethical, psychological, legal, and social matters

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I Spit on Your Grave shocks

because it is too familiar, because we recognize that the emotions it engages are regularly engaged by the big screen

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The female victim-hero is the one with

a backstory and the one whose experience structures the action from beginning to end.

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KB1 -

A former assassin wreaks vengeance on the team of assassins
who betrayed her.

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KB2 -

The Bride continues her quest of vengeance against her former boss and lover Bill

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The slasher genre is predicated on

spectatorial identification with females in fear and pain.

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Without revenge, [The Bride’s narrative would be] reduced to

domestic conflicts between husbands and wives, and between lovers and exes.

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In KB1, Beatrix illustrates

the centrality of revenge in the master narrative both through actions and words.

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Another way Tarantino identifies revenge as the most dominant, over-arching theme in the film is through

The Bride’s fascination with revenge narrative.

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THE BRIDE'S IDENTITY IS

ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED

REVENGE IS

EXTERMINATORY

REVENGE ALWAYS INVOLVES

FAMILIES

TALK ABOUT TRAUMA -

WANT REVENGE AND LOSS OF IDENTITY

Berseking =

an eruption into exterminatory violence through which a victim of trauma attempts to fill an evacuated self. Avengers typically experience a final symptom of trauma that is often described as berseking

THE BRIDE IS KILLED TWICE

BY BILL BY BUDD

THE BRIDE suffers an annihilation of

meaning and identity

In KB2, we learn that

it is Bill who inspires in Beatrix her love of revenge narratives.

KILL BILL =

Transforms the structures of the revenge tragedy.

It is not a tragedy-

it has a happy ending

The avenger does not

die as a consequence of the vendetta

Kill BILL = Subversion of

the Revenge Genre’s Conventions.

An IRRETRIVABLE LOSS/UNHEALABLE INJURY starts the

quest for REVENGE

The past cannot be undone or rewritten / the loss cannot be

restored or regained

The rape revenge film seems in some ways

definitively postmodern

The revenge film offers a series of

murders and/or scenes of torture linked through a loose narrative of revenge

Violence does not operate as a shock that defamiliarizes or disrupts narrative but

constitutes the narrative.

excessive, the logic of a revenge narrative

invokes, justifies, and contains the violent action

REVENGE =

ALWAYS AN ACT OF THEATRE

AVENGERS TYPICALLY

SPARE CHILDREN

WE SEE HOW REVENGE OPERATES BUT

WE DO NOT SEE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT ON THE CHARACTER

TARANTINO MAKES VIOLENCE

AN AESTHETIC PLEASURE

AVENGERS NEED A

PUBLIC PERFORMANCE

THE LOGIC OF THE REVENGE =

THE FLASHBACK

COMIC RELIEF IN

A REVENGE

The experience of humiliation leads the revenger not only to double his or her violent deeds but

also requires a public performance to repair self-image.

The threat of female public, violent action is subsumed by

the private, essentially nonviolent domestic space.

The Bride gives up

everything, including her powerful, active identity as a skilled fighter, for her daughter.

It is an idealized vision of

maternal wholeness

UTOPIC

ENDING

MATERNAL COMPLETION AND FEMALE REDEMPTION THROUGH

MOTHER-DAUGHTER BONDING

The violence of revenge is merely shifted with

the discovery of the child, as the Bride’s motivation becomes one of maternal recovery

The final scene of Kill Bill offers a

utopic and intensely feminized image of a naturalized and conventional maternal wholeness

There is an extent to which Bill’s death is framed

as a result of masculine agency.

The penultimate scene is literally one

of domestic implosion

This melodramatic ending is in keeping with the drive toward

increasing domesticity

Bill is not penetrated but

killed from within (a literal heartbreak)

Kill Bill can be seen as

a nostalgia film

The desire is

to reawaken the sensations and feelings associated with those objects

The Bride’s violence is

exceptional, personally motivated, and purposefully aimed at the reestablishment of family unity

The absence of patriarchy is an

absence of violence and threat

In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously

looked at and displayed

Woman displayed as sexual object

is the leitmotif of erotic spectacle

Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels:

- as erotic object for the characters within the screen story - as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium

A woman performs within

the narrative

The female body, however deformed,

remains the object of the gaze

First, the woman’s lack is

cosmetically enhanced

The means through which the body achieves its lack

becomes the object of the gaze

The coupling of violence and beautifully disfigured women gives

Tarantino his most concentrated aesthetic.

These violent heroines of contemporary popular cinema are

suggestive of the kind of ideological masking

The songs in Tarantino films are also very

catchy, memorable, and finely crafted pop songs

The songs in Tarantino films evoke

retro-nostalgic longing, heightened engagement, and pure enjoyment in rhythm and tone

Music works to frame

extreme violence in Tarantino films

Tarantino’s films, most of his violence

occurs off-screen

The role of violence, and the revenge narrative in particular

is one of stabilization rather than excessive transgression

The use of sound to create the cohesion of

such scenes that in turn constructs an aural violence as powerful as the depicted brutality

Hummed tunes or elevator music -

a kind of auditory passivity and docility

Tarantino roots his violence

more firmly within a filmic fantasmatic space of artifice and reflexivity