My years at University are probably best described as both the best and the worst years of my life (I’m young, give me a break). But if there is one thing I can 100% thank Sussex, my lecturers and tutors for, it is my passion for reading and writing.
So I now give you my Film Studies dissertation, on violence and women in the films of Quentin Tarantino. It is genuinely the piece I am most proud of to date… I hope you enjoy reading it just as much as I enjoyed (and hated at times) writing it!
Introduction
Women and violence play central roles in Quentin Tarantino’s renowned films Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004), and Death Proof (2007). All three films revolve around the leading avenging females who go from victimization to vengeance and victory. These films position women at the forefront of violence, offering them both the victim’s and the driver’s seat, and it is for this reason that Tarantino’s films have played a key role in discourses of feminism within film studies. Throughout history, women have almost completely been excluded from the main roles in film, and when they seldom have been offered leading parts, they have been portrayed as confused or helpless (Smith 2005:15). This study will focus on the representation of women in Tarantino’s films, and how it is associated with the masculine trope of violence. My interest lies in exploring the ways in which these films offer a reversal of this stereotypical representation of woman as a passive object for the male gaze. By fuelling her with violence and a thirst for vengeance, he blurs the lines between masculinity and femininity on screen, thus challenging, rather than endorsing, dominant ideology. All three films subvert what Laura Mulvey refers to as the “patriarchal” substructure of film (1975:6), and this is accomplished through their divisions in to two parts which provide a dualistic view on violence: that done to women, and that done by women. As Yuko Minowa has recently proposed, the cinematic image of violent females can be perceived as a “celebration of female power in visual representation” (2014:216), thus films such as Kill Bill and Death Proof are appealing to women who seek empowerment. Conversely, in his book The Fascination of Film Violence, Henry Bacon states that Kill Bill, for example, is about beautiful blonde women who are trained to kill by men, for men (2015:147). Nicknamed after venomous snakes, Bacon insists that Kill Bill’s females exist purely to serve the snake charmer himself, Bill (David Corradine).
This dissertation will address the controversy around the representation of women in Tarantino’s films, and the ways in which they challenge pre-established theories of spectatorship with regards to violence and gender on screen. My argument will proceed in three steps. Firstly, I will discuss the sociological aspect of dominant cultural ideology, which associates violence with men, and non-aggressive behaviour with women, portraying them as maternal creatures, who are inclined to stay at home and care for their children. I will move on from this concept to that of the rise of the tough heroine, which challenges said notions of passivity on women’s behalf. Secondly, I will explore the ways in which Tarantino subverts the categorization of cinematic patriarchal traits, such as violence, which have dominated film since Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). Initially, Tarantino presents his female characters as victims of violence, however, he then overturns this conventional portrayal by moving them from the backseat to the driver’s, and blurring the lines between masculinity and femininity. According to Henry Bacon, when threatening characters have a defined motivation for their actions, the audience seeks to categorize them in familiar ways (2015:15). Tarantino is forming a new type of categorization, by allowing women to seek justice and vengeance for themselves; one which defies conventional roles within cinema. I will analyse how this is achieved in both volumes of Kill Bill and in Death Proof, specifically through female items of clothing, foot fetishisation and the relationships formed between characters. Thirdly, I will discuss how Tarantino destabilises the male gaze through violence, offering a mode of identification on screen for both male and female spectators. I will investigate Mulvey’s classical mode of spectatorship based on voyeurism and sadism, and Studlar’s alternative mode based on masochism. Subsequently I will examine how Tarantino, by mixing both modes, offers both male and female viewers an alternative perspective through the aestheticisation of violence.
According to Molly Haskell, there are three categories of women on screen: “extraordinary”, “ordinary”, and “ordinary woman who becomes extraordinary” (1999:23). The first is “extraordinary” in that she calls the shots, thus transcending the limitation of gender. However, they can only do this because they are exceptional women, thus their commonality with women off screen is weakened. The second group are “ordinary” in that they are defined by marriage, income or children, they bond with those off screen in their limitations, not in their aspirations. In fact, the purpose of the “ordinary” woman is to encourage others to accept their social positions, and conform to conventional gendered roles. The third is the “ordinary woman who becomes extraordinary”, as she “begins as a victim of discriminatory circumstances and rises, through pain, obsession, or defiance, to become mistress of her fate” (1999:23). Throughout history, most women on screen have fallen in to the second category, because their role “almost always revolves around her physical attraction and the mating games she plays with the male characters” (Smith 2005:14). This is to say that women are used for their appearance, and their actions are only taken in to consideration when dependent on male reactions. Women are generally shown as “confused, or helpless and in danger, or passive”, or as a “purely sexual being” (Smith 2005:14), rarely as independent, strong-willed human beings.
For Mulvey, in cinema, the woman is “tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (1975:7), thus reiterating the nature of passivity as a female trait. Cinema is, in fact, an influential demonstration of how sexual difference has been interpreted in general culture, thus it is conceivable that women are arranged in a specific way and men in another, as this concerns both social and cultural interpretation of what sexual difference means. Mulvey is interested in the “straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle” (1975:6). She uses psychoanalysis as a political weapon, demonstrating the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film for decades, using the male to drive the narrative forward, and using the female as spectacle, therefore considering the former as active agent, and the latter as passive. Mulvey’s categorization can be applied to a broad range of genres, from slasher films to Spaghetti Westerns to the French New Wave. Slasher films, for instance, are centred around a man stalking, and subsequently attempting to murder, his victims who are “mostly female, often sexually freed and always young and beautiful” (Clover 1999:234). An explicit example of this is Hitchcock’s Psycho (1966), where the “location is not-home” and “the weapon is something other than a gun” (Clover 1992:24), meaning it can be any phallic symbol such as a car, a sword, a chain, anything associated with masculine aggression. Therefore, violence is clearly a masculine cinematic trope. It stems from filmmaking during what David Slocum refers to as the “classical period” (2000:664), a term with which he alludes to Hollywood filmmaking between the late 1920s and 1960s, characterised by “linear narratives” centred upon individual, white males, and which defined gender through “spectacles of physical and emotional violence” (2000:667). The notion of violent male domination as a natural right is so firmly fixated in our cultural value system that it is rarely ever challenged. Even today, twenty years after the publication of Mulvey’s article, women are still associated with motherhood and kindness, whilst men are equated with strength and domination (McCaughey and King 2001:2).
Sherrie Inness argues that when Second Wave feminism arrived in America, it began to change women’s roles in society, by challenging the notion of women being “‘naturally’ not aggressive” and teaching them to challenge the “gender status quo” (2004:5). Consequently, women began pursuing different roles previously held by men, such as soldiers and police officers. Inness claims: “With changes in women’s real lives came changes in popular imagery. The rise of the female action heroine was a sign of the different roles available to women in real life” (2004:6). The need for the man to save the woman both on and off screen began to decrease, subsequently women began to take on leading female roles. Sharon Ross claims that “to be tough is to be unfeminine by normative standards, and for decades such a heroine was unthinkable” (2004:235), but this notion of tough began to shift gradually as feminism gained a stronger hold in dominant culture and society. Therefore, this new construction of the tough heroine challenges woman’s conventional status as victim both in “popular and feminist literature” (Vares 2004:219), and whilst female violence may be offensive to some female viewers, it taps in to others’ desire of power. Distanced from a femininity which is characterised by “passivity and hysteria” (Tasker 1998:69), the female action hero, whilst offering an empowering figure that every female can aspire to, also poses a problem to gendered binaries with her qualities of strength and determination, which consequently lead her to be marked as “unfeminine” (1998:69). To summarize, women throughout cinematic history have been associated with non-aggressive passivity and kindness; as a damsel in distress needing to be saved by the male, whilst man has been the dominating figure of aggression and strength, upon whose power lies the fate of the opposite sex. However, as of the 1970s with the rise of the Second Wave Feminism, the roles of women in society began to change, as women’s dependence on their male counterparts began to decrease rapidly, and subsequently this was reflected on screen. Not only is this new female figure strong and determined, she also masters the masculine trope of violence, which has been a signature aspect of masculinity both on and off screen for decades. The problem that arises from this is that, in taking on masculine traits, the female figure is classed as “unfeminine”, thus potentially limiting her gendered independence, as her new violence is seen as merely an extension of masculinity.
Bloody Chick Flicks: Blurring Gender and Revising the “To-be-looked-at-ness”
Quentin Tarantino is an American screenplay writer, director and actor, who officially launched his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of his first film Reservoir Dogs, in 1992. His subsequent films have since been critically renowned for their nonlinear narratives, their derisive subject matters and, above all, for their aestheticisation of violence, and how this affects the spectatorship. His films have also generated a large amount of controversy regarding issues of feminism and misogyny, and it is in relation to these that his films play a key role amongst critical debates. This section will explore the representation of women within Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 & 2 and Death Proof, and how it relates to the distribution of violence across gendered lines within film studies. In all three films, Tarantino puts in to motion a subversion of the categorization of patriarchal traits that have dominated film since the publication of Mulvey’s article. By initially presenting women as victims, he then overturns the viewer’s conventional expectations by arming her with a thirst for vengeance. By assigning the typically masculine trope of violence, as defined in the first part of this dissertation, to women, but still allowing them to be simultaneously feminine and sexy, Tarantino is removing the notion of masculinity and femininity as fixed poles.
Susan Brownmiller argues that “most women confronted by physical aggression fall apart at the seams and suffer a paralysis of will. We have been trained to cry, to wheedle, to plead, to look for a male protector, but we have never been trained to fight and win” (1975:402). Tarantino gives women a chance to prove this conception wrong, and the theme of revenge is, in fact, what fuels their violence and their desire for independence. Kill Bill is the story of Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman), a trained killer who worked for her husband Bill, as a member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. However, the day she discovers she is pregnant, she gives it all up. Bill tracks her down and shoots her in the head, taking her baby and leaving her in a coma for four years. Thus, the two volumes entail her vengeful mission in killing every member of the assassin’s squad that aided Bill in executing her murder. Beatrix is, in fact, the definition of the strong and determined woman. She does not “fall apart at the seams”, nor does she “cry” and “wheedle”. She fights for her life, her rights, and her daughter’s. She represents a new cinematic woman, one that embodies not only vengeance, but also maternal instinct, demonstrating that women can be both dangerous and kind. Similarly, Death Proof revolves around Stunt Man Mike (Kurt Russell), a psychopath that stalks young women, before faking car accidents during which he murders them. The twist is that his car is only “death proof” for the one who drives it. The first group of girls he encounters die tragically in the accident; however, with the second group of women, Mike meets his match. In one scene, the girls are playing “Ship Mast” (one of them rides on the bonnet of the car, holding on to two leather belts, whilst the car is being driven at full speed). The three are unaware that Mike is watching them, but as he tries to bump into their car with his, the chase begins. The film ends with the three women beating Mike mercilessly. Again, this re-emphasizes how women are no longer passive, but are capable of inflicting pain on whomever crosses their path. They fight physical aggression with strength and determination, and they triumph.
Having said this, the problem that stems from Tarantino’s representation of women is the double construct of woman as heroic subject, and as sexual object. The question that inevitably arises from this is whether women are truly being given access to a position of empowerment, or whether they are still merely being fetishized as objects. According to Jeffrey A. Brown, the tough female heroine “represents a potentially transgressive figure capable of expanding the popular perception of women’s roles and abilities” (2011:43), but there is also the risk of her reinforcing gender binaries by being “window-dressing” (2011:43) for the male spectatorship. Tarantino solves this issue by using women’s traditional “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 1975:11) to endorse their empowerment and independence, without making them look butch or unfeminine, demonstrating how they are not on screen merely to “enact masculinity” (Brown 2011:48). Tarantino’s women are both beautiful and sexy, strong and aggressive, fitting in with Haskell’s third category of the “ordinary woman who becomes extraordinary” becoming the “mistress of her [own] fate” (1999:23). This part of the dissertation will explore the ways in which Tarantino does this in both volumes of Kill Bill and in Death Proof, through clothing, fetishisation of feet, and social interactions, three key signifiers in his overturning of the patriarchal substructure of film.
Firstly, in Kill Bill: Volume 1 the opening shot is of Beatrix’s face covered in blood, accompanied by the sound of her whimpering, contrasted with the authoritative, harsh sound of Bill’s boots hitting the wooden floor step by step as he walks towards her. By using this as the opening scene, Tarantino is establishing conventional gender stereotypes: the woman lying passively and helplessly on the floor, and the violent male looking down on her. The gender binaries are also defined by the audio in the scene, as Beatrix’s whimpering is a feminine trope, to refer back to Brownmiller, according to whom women “cry”, “wheedle” and “plead” (1975:402). However, what Tarantino is doing here is establishing what Haskell refers to as “discriminatory circumstances”, that will then cause Thurman’s character to become “mistress of her fate” (1999:23). This is, in fact, demonstrated in the following scene, when she shows up at the house of Jeannie Bell, a member of Bill’s squad that contributed to Beatrix’s assassination. They immediately engage in a vicious fight which is put on pause when Bell’s four-year-old daughter arrives home from school. Jeannie pleads Beatrix to let her live, for her daughter’s sake, to which Thurman retaliates: “It’s mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality”. Thus, she is rejecting the typically feminine traits of compassion and feeling, in favour of the non-emotional masculine rationale. However, despite Beatrix having progressed from victimisation to vengeance, the men on screen persist in primarily commenting on her appearance. For example, when the town Sheriff arrives at the chapel where the shooting had taken place moments before, his first comment is: “Look at her… Hay-coloured hair, big eyes, she’s a little blood spattered angel”. Even though unconscious at this point, to this she retaliates by spitting blood in his eye, something which the film’s narrative refers to as a motor reflex, but actually points to her refusal to be objectified. Beatrix controls the action and calls the shots throughout both volumes. She also controls what the viewer thinks and sees by providing him with the missing information in the form of voiceover, through which she narrates the back stories of the four other members of the assassin’s squad, thus both female and male viewers rely on her for crucial information.
Feet are a recurring theme in both Kill Bill and Death proof. Having been in a coma for four months, Beatrix’s legs are temporarily paralyzed. As she climbs in to her rapist’s car, namely the “Pussy Wagon”, there is a shot-reverse-shot sequence between her feet and her face, as she tries with all her strength to move her big toe. What would normally be seen as an object of fetishisation can now be seen as something that grounds women’s toughness, and enables them to actively seek revenge, thus symbolizing a source of power and strength. Whilst she attempts to move her feet, her voiceover provides the viewer with information about her next victim: O-Ren Ishii, whom as a young girl witnessed her family being murdered and was able to overcome this, and go on to become one of the most dangerous and powerful women in Japan. After showing O-Ren brutally murdering her parent’s assassins, the narrative returns to Beatrix trying to move her feet, thus this sequence highlights a connection between feet and female empowerment. What would normally be seen as an object of fetishisation can now be seen as something that grounds women’s toughness, and enables them to actively seek revenge, thus symbolizing a source of power and strength. In Kill Bill: Volume 2, when Beatrix is tied up and buried alive by Buddy (Michael Madson), the camera shot fixates on her boots inside the coffin. Her feet begin to twitch, as she manages to take off her boots and free herself from the binding belt, an initial act that then leads to her freedom. This scene is also interconnected with the chapter titled “The cruel tutelage of Pai Mei”, Pai Mei being arguably the most misogynistic character in Kill Bill: Volume 2. During the flashback, he asks Beatrix to show him what she knows, and then states: “Like all Yankee women, all you can do is order in restaurants and spend a man’s money”, and refers to her being as “helpless as a worm fighting an eagle”. After having gone through emotional and physical torture, Beatrix ultimately becomes stronger and proves to her teacher that she can be as fierce as she wishes to be. Thus, this is an additional sequence highlighting women’s empowerment through their own feet, pointing to their growing independence.
Furthermore, Tarantino not only uses the fetishisation of feet to endorse women’s violence associated with empowerment, but he also does so through items of clothing. In Kill Bill: Volume 2, the chapter entitled “Massacre at the Two Pines” offers the viewer a backstory of what happened before Beatrix was shot in the head by Bill. In this chapter, Uma Thurman is wearing a long, white, lacey dress, which accentuates her feminine features and depicts her in the lighting of an angel. However, in chapter five, she appears riding a motorbike, in a yellow jumpsuit, which is tight and shows every curve on Thurman’s body, but it does so in a way that reveals her muscles, which are not excessively big nor masculine. Tarantino does not tone down Beatrix’s muscles to make her more palatable to a mass audience, he embraces them and endorses them as a positive feature, as it is because of those muscles that she is able to successfully pursue her own agenda. According to Sherrie Inness “the stereotypical female heroine can be muscular but not so much that she presents a threat to the males”, her muscularity must not challenge the male’s ego (2004:12). Tarantino does not make this distinction; Beatrix is not excessively muscular, but neither are the men. In fact, Bill is an old and weak man, and Buddy is overweight. In allowing her maximum flexibility when fighting, as shown in the encounter with O-Ren’s entourage, and depicting her curves and muscles simultaneously, the jumpsuit in itself is a key signifier in blurring the lines between masculinity and femininity.
Beatrix can, indeed, be classified as “extraordinary” (Haskell 1999:23), but she is relatable in that she is possesses not only independence and power, but also maternal instincts which manifest themselves on multiple occasions. Her violent aggression is balanced out by the love and tenderness shown towards her daughter, which implies the possibility of women embodying two sides of the same sword, in displaying both maternal and killer instincts. Her raw emotions emerge for the first time when she awakens from the coma and discovers she has lost her baby. During this moment, her tough exterior fades into an incontrollable outburst of pain and anger, demonstrating how she is not afraid to show emotion. Another pivotal moment is when she is lying on her bathroom floor, crying over the death of Bill, even though she was the one who killed him, it was a necessary sacrifice for the safety of herself and her daughter. Again, this displays humanity and feeling, both towards her daughter and towards Bill. Beatrix is a new cinematic woman who shows determination and will power; her commonality with women off screen is not weakened because of her maternal qualities with which every woman off screen can identify and associate with, alas she connects with them in their aspirations to be independent, rather than in their limitations of being passive beings, existing for male scope.
Tarantino employs similar tactics in Death Proof. The film is divided into two parts, each characterized by a group of females who both adhere to, and refute feminine traits in a similar way to Beatrix Kiddo. The conventional “to-be-looked-at-ness” referred to by Mulvey is explicit in the first half, with Julia (Sydney Porter), Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), and Shanna (Jordan Ladd) being presented to the viewer in revealing clothes. The first scene of the film captures Julia walking around her apartment in her underwear; through a series of long shots, the camera reveals her long legs and Amazonian physique. The scene that follows depicts all three girls in a car: Arlene and Shanna in the front, and Julia in the back, again in a visually stimulating position showing off her legs as they lay sideways across the back seats. The objectification of Julia is arguably also met by the bill boards in which she is portrayed as the radio DJ “Jungle Julia”; however, the girls sound the car’s horn and scream in celebration each time they pass one, embracing Julia’s fame and sex appeal. Just like the men in Kill Bill, Mike comments on Julia’s physical appearance, calling her a “striking woman”, and drawing attention to her hair in particular. By doing so, he reduces her to an object to be looked at and admired, thus presenting the viewer with conventional gendered stereotypes. A similar approach is used with Arlene, during the lap dance which also takes place in the bar. Seen as an erotic activity created for the pleasurable purpose of the male, Tarantino uses the lap-dance in a different way to this traditional perception. In this scene, Arlene’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” and her stripper-like action is arguably used to “advance the plot while simultaneously stopping the narrative” (Brown 2001:53), ergo whilst it may seem that Mike is the one holding the power, it is actually Arlene that controls the action in this sequence, as she is the one whom is gaining most pleasure out of being seen as desirable. Thus, Tarantino is renegotiating the gaze to reveal the underlying control belonging to the object of the gaze, placing the woman in a position of control. In the second half of the film, Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is dressed as a cheerleader, a traditionally feminine outfit, and is introduced as a model appearing in the latest issue of Vogue, a fashion magazine with a typically female fan base as demonstrated by Abernathy’s (Rosario Dawson) eagerness in buying it. Lee’s femininity is contrasted with Kim’s (Tracie Thoms) lack of it, which is represented by her harsher tone of voice, her swearing and her choice of clothes: T-shirt, and a pair of jeans, a combination which is neither feminine nor masculine. Abernathy, however, is depicted as the mother of the group, who shouldn’t be able to come along to witness Zoe (Zoe Bell) and Kim playing Ship Mast, because she would categorize it as being too dangerous. However, to their surprise she enjoys it; and when the moment comes to go after Stunt Man Mike for what he has done to them, she surprises them again by saying “Let’s kill that bastard”, thus demonstrating the maternal and protective instinct which permits women to simultaneously be aggressive towards their enemy, and loving towards their friends and family.
Like in Kill Bill, the fetishisation of feet is used as a source of empowerment. The opening credits of Death Proof overlap a shot of Arlene’s painted red toenails, seductively tapping the dashboard of the car. Here Tarantino is presenting women’s feet in a traditional lighting; the red toenail varnish and the sensual tapping portraying them as an object for the male gaze. One of the following scenes reveals them belonging to Arlene, thus establishing sexual behaviour from the very beginning, and foregrounding her sensuality exhibited in her lap dance later in the film. The second half begins in a similar manner, with Abernathy’s feet hanging out of the car being the primary focus of Stunt Man Mike, who not only grazes them with his body, but also licks them without her consent. This scene is explicitly contrasted with Abernathy delivering the last kick to Mike’s head, a deadly blow that leads to his death in the fighting scene at the end of the film. This, again, suggests that where women’s feet used to merely be something to look at, they are now a source of empowerment, as it is by firmly standing on those same two feet that they achieve independence. Therefore, women are no longer confined and defined by their physical appearance and attributes.
Lastly, whilst it is the maternal instinct that links Beatrix to women off screen, in Death Proof it is the social bond of friendship. In referring to television programmes such as Xena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both of which are based on the figure of the tough heroine), Sharon Ross claims that “traditional heroes of the past have been made tough via their individualism”, but the true heroines of today “grow as heroes because of their female friends” (2004:231). Tarantino uses this idea of female friendship and solidarity, and depicts it as a key element in responding to sexual violence on screen. Whilst the first group of girls fit in to the portrayal of women as helpless beings, the second group save themselves by working together and collectively seeking revenge. Though lacking literal rape, there is an explicit reference to it through Mike’s phallic muscle car ramming in to the girl’s Dodge Challenger without their consent, causing panic, pain and outrage. However, the masculine notion of the muscle car is overturned by stunt woman Kim behind the wheel of her own, and when the latter becomes the object of victimisation it is a parodic moment, intensified by his whimpering and excessive blubbering when Kim shoots him in the arm, a gun also being a phallic weapon, in this case in the hands of a woman. Henry Claire states: “The female friends find a way to resist the impossibility of living freely in a patriarchal society, and the final freeze frame celebrates the triumph of violent resistance to gender based violence” (2014:155). The final freeze is, in fact, a depiction of Abernathy, Zoe and Kim with their fists in the air in a celebratory pose, with Mike’s bloody mangled body on the floor, placing the male in the vulnerable position instead of the female. After the car chase, all three get out of the Dodge Challenger and slowly walk over to Mike, who is hanging out of his car. The camera fixates on their perfectly shaped bottoms, before they begin beating Mike to death, showing the mercilessness and lack of compassion, also embodied by Beatrix Kiddo. By doing this, Tarantino shows that by sticking together, girls can be sexy and tough all at the same time.
The Cinematic Gaze: Tarantino’s Revision of Spectatorship
Having established Tarantino’s overturning of the patriarchal substructure of cinema as defined by Mulvey in 1975, this section will examine the ways in which said subversion affects the spectatorship. I will begin by discussing Mulvey’s use of psychoanalysis in reference to her voyeuristic and sadistic theory of cinematic gaze, subsequently I will compare it to Studlar’s alternative theory based on masochism. Lastly, I will examine Tarantino’s re-working of their theories within both volumes of Kill Bill and Death Proof. First of all, psychoanalysis consists of a set of theories about the drives that organise our satisfactions as human beings, and how these derive from our childhood. According to psychoanalysis, the child develops through several stages: the earliest is the oral stage, associated with the mother breast feeding her child, and the last is the phallic stage, related to post castrated socialisation. Thus, psychoanalysis is used by feminist critics as a theoretical lens through which to understand patriarchal imagery, and consequently analyse the ways in which sexual differences are encoded in to the classical narrative of cinema. In fact, Mulvey is interested in the final stage, whilst Studlar insists on the importance of the earlier phase.
John Berger once said: “Women are depicted in quite a different way from men … because their ‘ideal’ spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him” (1972:64). Mulvey’s gaze theory is in compliance with Berger’s statement, as she uses psychoanalysis to think of Hollywood as a patriarchal dream machine devoted to dispensing visual pleasure for the male spectator. This approach has proved to be very popular within film theory analysis because it reveals the viewer’s deepest desires, and the ways in which he digests material, both consciously and unconsciously. According to Mulvey, psychoanalysis “takes as a starting point the way film reflects, reveals and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking and spectacle” (1975:6). The sexual difference she is referring to is that of anatomical differences between sexes, as general culture merely derives from an interpretation of what those differences mean. Mulvey claims that there are two ways of looking in a conventional cinematic situation, [1] scopophilia, [2] narcissism. The first is associated, by Freud, with “taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey 1975:8), and the second is cinema’s provision of the pleasure of recognition/misrecognition with a self-like image on screen. She argues that “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active male and passive female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly” (1975:11), thus women on screen are merely objects for the sexual gratification and visual pleasure for men both on and off screen. This, in turn, insinuates a “to-be-looked-at-ness” (1975:11), and implies the woman’s identification with that of a passive object. Therefore, woman is “tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (1975:7). Mulvey’s notion of cinematic gaze is based on the assumption that the audience is completely male, and the women on screen are there to please men. By using psychoanalysis, Mulvey raises questions about gendered violence of spectatorship, and in doing so assigns a sadistic position to the male, who experiences pleasure in viewing the infliction of pain on the woman because he feels the need to make up for woman’s lack of penis. It is because of this lack that the man feels superior to woman, as he is complete, whilst she is not.
According to Mulvey, when the male spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look on to his “screen surrogate”, so that the power of the male protagonist “coincides with the active power of the erotic look” (1975:12). However, what if the male protagonist cannot control the events of the film until the last moment? What happens when the “screen surrogate” is out of his depths? Where does that leave identification? In response to Mulvey’s construction of gender binaries, Gaylyn Studlar proposes a gaze theory based on masochism, where the female “is more than the passive object of the male’s desire for possession” (Studlar 1984:273). Studlar provides an alternative model to the male controlling gaze as the only position of spectatorial pleasure, steering away from the notion that cinema is merely voyeuristic and sadistic.
The term “sadism” was popularized by Marquis de Sade (1740-84), via his own work 120 days of Sodom (1975), and entails the objectification of women and men for the pleasure of total destruction and annihilation. Sadism played a key role in Mulvey’s understanding of Hollywood cinema, according to which, the man, both on and off screen, objectifies the woman and seeks pleasure from her pain. Masochism, however, is named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836-95), with his book Venus in Furs (1870), and entails idealisation and fetishisation. Masochism reveals that pleasure can be obtained from watching a woman whom is both comforting and dangerous, kind and aggressive. The masochistic model “rejects a stance that has emphasized the phallic phase and the pleasure of control or mastery, and therefore offers an alternative to strict Freudian models that have proven to be a ‘dead end’ for feminist-psychoanalytic theory” (Studlar 1984:269). In other words, masochism challenges the theory of male scopic pleasure being based on control, instead of identification and submission with the female. The mother figure is the child’s “active nurturer, first source of love and object of desire” (Studlar 1984:271), so the child’s love for the mother is stronger than their love for the father, who merely threatens the bond between them. For Studlar, there is more freedom to think about the complex ways in which pleasure is activated by what the spectator sees on screen when thinking about the breast-feeding stage, rather than the post sexualised phase as Mulvey does, a theory that she calls the “masochistic aesthetic” (1984:267). Whenever a film provokes the masochistic aesthetic it allows spectators to access certain unconscious fantasies. Because both males and females are breast-fed in the same way, Studlar says this is useful because the castration anxiety is all about the horror the boy feels when he sees the girl because of her lack of penis, whereas the breast-feeding scenario is about the pleasure experienced when in a state of satisfaction. It is not organized around sexual difference, it is pre-sexual difference, therefore Studlar steers away from Mulvey’s portrayal of woman as lack.
Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume 1 & 2 and Death Proof present the viewer with a mixture of voyeurism, sadism and masochism, offering both male and female spectatorship different perspectives through the aestheticisation of violence. He breaks the binary oppositions of male and female created by Mulvey, and provides an alternative interpretation that combines sex appeal and toughness into one figure, implying that gender traits are no longer mutually exclusive. In all three films, there is a clear reversal of the notion of woman as passive, and a refusal of their traditional objectification, as represented by Beatrix and Kim. Tarantino offers the male viewer the traditional sadistic view aligned with voyeurism at the beginning of each film. In Death Proof this is done by presenting the opening credits with Arlene Ferlito’s feet in the background, highlighting her perfectly painted red toenails, and the way in which they tap seductively on the dashboard along to the soundtrack of the film, and then cutting to Jungle Julia walking around her apartment with no trousers on, emphasizing her long smooth legs. In Kill Bill this is done by presenting Beatrix’s face covered in blood as the opening shot, and Bill’s voice in the background saying “Do you find me sadistic? … this is me at my most masochistic”. In the former we assume the position of the male spectator seeking visual pleasure by fetishizing Arlene’s perfectly coloured toenails and seeing the beautiful Julia walk around her apartment semi-naked. In the latter, the spectator assumes a male point of view because the camera aligns itself with Bill’s gaze peering over Beatrix’s body. However, this identification with the dominant male does not last long, as it is clear within the first five minutes that the leading roles actually belong to the females. So where does this leave the male? To refer back to Studlar, it is useful to think of what could happen if the male were not in control until the end of the film, where does this leave identification for the male spectator?
By channelling the male gaze through the camera lens at the beginning of each film, Tarantino is adhering to the voyeuristic and sadistic theory proposed by Mulvey. However, by attributing the leading role to women, he is also subverting it. The audience taken in consideration is no longer restricted to men, but it allows females to gain visual pleasure through cinema as well, because they may identify with the powerful character on screen which this time is a female. This gives the male spectator a choice, either he can identify with the “bad guys”, such as Bill and Mike, or he can warm to the female character and identify with her instead. It is at this point that Studlar’s masochistic theory steps in. To put it simply, the male spectator can find comfort in an active woman by tapping in to the oral stage of his childhood, and channelling affection through the women on screen who present themselves as both violent and maternal. They connect with the violent side, as it is a typical masculine trope, but also with the maternal side because the mother is the first figure ever to be loved by a child. So instead of presenting women as lack, Tarantino is actually presenting them as abundance. According to Bacon, the spectator identifies with the main hero, who only resorts to violence when it is necessary (2015:3), thus he feels justified in siding with those who are carrying out acts of violence when seeking revenge. This method of overturning the gaze through violence is how women are allowed to perform the way they do without alienating the audience. The contrast between fetishisation and violence is what undermines the classical notions of the look, set up by Mulvey, and mixes them with those set up by Studlar. Critics may point out that despite the females being active women, they are still presented under the scope of the heterosexual gaze, and this is arguably true, as they are all beautiful, curvy women. However, women are presented as both tough and sexual in order to provide an alternative model that both female and male spectators can both enjoy and identify with, and by assigning violence to women, the spectator focuses more on what their bodies are doing, rather than how they look, thus refusing the classic objectification.
Conclusion
In conclusion, through his leading females in Kill Bill Volume: 1&2 and Death Proof, Tarantino successfully offers the viewer a reversal of the stereotypical representation of women as a passive object for the male gaze. This dissertation has moved from the sociological debates on to the representation of women in cinema, to screen theory and how this affects the spectatorship. After examining the stereotypes of women on screen, and the labelling of violence as a masculine trope, two main issues were tackled. Firstly, the ways in which Tarantino subverts the categorization of patriarchal traits that has dominated film since the publication of Mulvey’s article. In other words, Tarantino overturns the conventional perspective of the viewer by placing women at the forefront of violence, and creating a new woman who embodies both sex appeal and toughness, thus defying the fixed poles of masculinity and femininity. Tarantino achieves this by using woman’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 1975:11) to endorse their empowerment and independence, proving that being tough does not entail being butch or unfeminine. I explored the ways in which he allows women to do this specifically through their clothing, the fetishisation of their feet and their protective nature towards others. Secondly, the ways in which these three films offer a mixture of voyeurism aligned with sadism, mixed with masochism. By first examining Mulvey and Studlar’s theories individually, I then discussed how these are used simultaneously by Tarantino to produce an effect that is pleasurable and innovative for both the female and the male spectatorship. At the beginning of each film, Tarantino bases his gendered figures on Mulvey’s theory, and allows the spectator to automatically assume the position of the male. However, he then blocks this conventional view by handing the leading role to the female, and arming her with a thirst for vengeance; emotions which, according to Bacon, are innate in us all as human beings. Instead of presenting the woman on screen as lack, as endorsed by Mulvey’s theory, Tarantino presents her in a way that channels the oral stage of the individual spectator, thus presenting the male with a woman who is both tough and kind, therefore relatable because of the mother during their childhood. By aestheticizing the violence projected on behalf of the female protagonists, Tarantino is giving the female spectator a mode of identification, without alienating the male audience.
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Filmography
Death proof. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. The Weinstein Company, 2007. Film.
Kill Bill: Volume 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 2003. Film.
Kill Bill: Volume 2. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax, 2004. Film.
Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Universal Pictures, 1960. Film.