Final paper - Kill Bill: A Post Modern Masterpiece

Leah Moriyama
Critical Practice 1 T 3:30-6:30
Rosetta Brooks
31 March 2009
Final Paper
Kill Bill: A Post Modern Masterpiece
Motion pictures have been entertaining people for many, many years now. Over the years there have been many evolutions of film style and content. Today we live in a world where there are four or five new movies coming out every weekend. When we go to the local movie theatre, there are about twenty movies to choose from at any given time. Of course these movies consist of many different themes, and subjects and also display an array of different styles. When it comes to post modernist films, Quentin Tarantino is definitely a filmmaker to look at. Many of his films are great examples of post modernity and Kill Bill is definitely one of them. This film, like its predecessors, is unique and creative. Kill Bill Vol.1 and Vol. 2 are filled with a mixture of styles and their discontinuous narratives take us on a journey filled with many post modern characteristics and allow us to see the world in a different way and in a different context.
Kill Bill is a story about a group of assassins called the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad. At one point the group consisted of the bride played by Uma Thurman, Oren Ishii played by Lucy Liu, Vernita Green played by Vivica A. Fox, Elle Driver played by Daryl Hannah, and Budd played by Michael Madsen. The leader of the Assassin gang is Bill played by David Carradine. The story mainly revolves around the character of the bride who was Bill’s lover and his favorite of all the girls. When she becomes pregnant with Bill’s baby and finds out about her pregnancy while on a job, she decides that she does not want her child to be born into the life that she is living and the world that surrounds her. To avoid this, she runs away and tries to start a new life. She meets a new guy and makes new friends in the desert somewhere and is planning to marry her new boyfriend, start over in a “normal” life, and hide her identity and her past life. However, Bill finds out what is going on. He had been mourning her death assuming that she died on the job and then finds her pregnant and about to get married. Being that he is the leader of an assassin gang he and the entire squad go to her wedding and kill everyone. Right before Bill shoots the bride in the head, she tells him that it’s his baby. The bride does not die but she goes into a coma. When she comes out of it she immediately looks down at her stomach and sees that she lost her baby. She then breaks out of the hospital and begins her journey to get revenge. She makes a death list, which includes the pre-mentioned members of the Deadly Vipers and Bill, and she plans to seek each of them out and kill them one by one. Throughout the film, the bride seeks out each person on her death list but as they are all professional assassins of her caliber, she encounters many hurdles and has many intense, action packed fights. However as the woman scorned, she gets her revenge but when she finally finds Bill she discovers that her baby survived and that Bill has been raising her all along. Even though Bill still loves the bride he has done her wrong and they have unfinished business, her daughter is all that is important to her now. The bride and Bill discuss everything and they have a fair fight, which she wins. The bride had no idea that she still had her daughter to live for and the movie ends with her starting her new life with her daughter Bebe.
Quentin Tarantino’s strategy in the making of Kill Bill is one important aspect in the post modernity of the film. He uses a unique and signature style of structuring time and place for his audience. This style is basically discontinuity. In this film, Tarantino breaks up the continuity of the story. He mixes up the chronological order of the events in the story and thus delivers a discontinuous narrative. This totally defies what the audience expects. Tarantino’s use of the discontinuous time structure is amazing because it really takes away the predictability of the story and it adds to the suspense, anticipation, and excitement of the film. Even though this structure is somewhat complex, because Tarantino is so good at what he does, the audience does not get confused at all as to what is going on in the story. He often uses location, dates, times, and chapters with titles to label and organize the different events in the film. Also, the story of Kill Bill is broken into two parts, which are the films Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2. However, they can be regarded as one film called Kill Bill, because the second part is really not a sequel to the first and the first is not a prequel to the second. The films were both filmed together and released one year apart. The main reason for the two separate movies is simply that to complete the entire film and tell the entire story, it would be impossible to squeeze everything into one feature length film time. That in and of its self is something unique and questions normal structure of filmmaking. Furthermore, Tarantino’s structure of time and place in this film stretches throughout both of the films as if they were one.
Another aspect of the structure that is an example of postmodernism is the use of the story’s multiple characters. Part of the discontinuity of the film structure is the changing of the main character involved in the different events and scenes that make up the narrative. Instead of watching a completely linear and chronological narrative from the point of view of the main character and everything he or she is doing, the film is broken down into sections or chapters regarding the stories of each of the characters involvement with the main character. The chapters are not in chronological order but they are however, organized to fit and create the arc of the narrative. For example, at the beginning of Vol. 1, the Bride gets a small piece of her revenge and kills Vernita Green and then later goes to Japan to find Hatori Hanzo, get her sword, train, and then kill Oren Ishii. However, chronologically, the bride actually goes to Japan first, after she recovers from her coma. After she kills Oren Ishii and all of the people that protect her, the bride leaves one character, Sophie, alive to deliver the message to Bill and the others that she is coming for them. Then she continues down her list and kills Vernita Green. However, by switching the order of these particular events, we start the movie with startling action and end the movie with intensity and drama. Because of this we also find out right at the end of the first half of story, that the bride’s baby is alive. Throughout this film the stories of other characters like Elle Driver, the story of Oren’s past, and the story of the Deadly Viper Assassins Squad are all woven in.
A main concept in the film that is also postmodern is the way that the story is told. One interesting point is that at some points in the film, there is a narrator with voice over. The bride is the narrator and she mostly narrates the parts of the story where she talks about the history or back-stories of the other characters. This narrative voice is not consistent throughout the film because most of the time there is no narrator at all. Usually when a film has a narrator it is pretty consistent or reoccurring in the film. This inconsistency also adds to the mixture of styles in the film. Another thing is that the main character is unnamed at first and known only as the bride even in the credits. In one of the very early scenes in the movie where the bride fights Vernita Green, there is a part where her name is said. Green introduces the bride to her daughter but when she says the bride’s name, it is literally bleeped out. It is so different that the viewer stops and questions whether or not they just heard what they think they did. From that point on it is a mystery as to what her name is. This aspect of the film is very unique and it changes the way that we see everything in it and also the way we view other movies and the world from that point on. Tarantino used a convention used to sensor curse words in music or other things like that, to create a sub plot in his movie. He basically changed the usage of a commonly used convention and changed the way that we think of it and of movies. Then when we finally do find out her name the film is edited with a clip scene of a grown Uma Thurman sitting in a children’s classroom replying to her name being finally said as if she is just responding to the roll call. The clip is just a snippet and we go back to the film. This is very post modern because it is as if we actually take a pause from the movie for this little snippet that is not an actual possible scene in the story but it is part of the plot and solves a mystery in the film. This is like having mixed media and genre in the film.
One of the most striking and interesting postmodern aspects of Kill Bill is the mixture of cinematic styles that Tarantino uses in the film. The movie is filled with a variety of different visual styles and although he jumps from style to style at times, he manages to maintain a consistency throughout the film. Everything is refreshing and fluid because he has developed his very own postmodern style. The beginning of the film and for certain scenes throughout the film, everything is in black and white. These are mainly the parts that tell the story of what happened in the massacre at the church in the past tense and in memories. The majority of the film is in color and the color scenes are mostly scenes that can be considered the present tense of the story at any time and the scenes that are progressing forward in time in the film. A couple of examples of the color scenes are those in Vernita Green’s chapter, in Japan, and in the hospital scenes. One of the most amazing changes in cinematic style comes when the movie that the audience is viewing suddenly transforms into an animated feature with unique and distinct style. These scenes are the ones that tell the story of Oren Ishii’s history and how she became an assassin. The use of anime for these scenes is interesting because they are the scenes that deal with a child. In a way they reflect Oren’s innocence and youth. Also, these scenes contain some very graphic subjects such as the killing of parents in front of their child, and the sexual act between a “sukebe” or perverted old man and a young girl followed by the act of her murdering him. It definitely affects the viewer differently to see these scenes animated as opposed to acted out physically by real live actors. The use of animation in the middle of the film is very creative and changes the way in which we view the world within the film and also around us.
The final fight scene in Vol. 1, is set in a traditional Japanese garden where the bride and Oren Ishii have a Japanese sword fight reminiscent of the sword fights in Japanese samurai movies. In Vol. 2, there are scenes that are filmed in a traditional Chinese kung fu film style. These scenes depict the bride’s training with Pai Mei. The camera does high speed, quick zooms to the face of the kung fu master, which is one major characteristics of the kung fu film style. Also in Vol. 2, there are scenes in which the bride is driving her car to find Bill and these scenes are in black and white. However, unlike the other black and white scenes, these scenes take on an old Hollywood cinematic look. The scene is lit with Hollywood lighting and everything looks dramatic, exaggerated and glamorous. Even the car seems to glide through the scene alone on the road. The style is reminiscent of a classic film noir movie. During the crazy 88 fight scene in Japan we also see black and white while there is tons of blood shed going on. This takes away the redness and gore of blood and allows us to view this mass murdering as entertaining and exciting as opposed to disgusting. When the film switches from color to black and white, it switches with the blink of the bride’s eyes while we are focused in on them.
Kill Bill is also very postmodern in that it deals with and questions the concepts of gender and race. The main character and all but one of the members of the assassin gang (minus their leader Bill) are women. In fact the name of the gang is the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad and if this is broken down into an acronym it becomes DVAS which can easily read as DiVAS. This definitely has a female connotation. Although the bride is getting married, pregnant and protecting her baby, which are typical female conventions, she is a deadly assassin and a hard-core killer. Oren Ishii is a half Japanese and half Chinese female who avenges her parents by killing their killers. This defies the typical ideas of what a woman could or would do but even more so defies these ideas because she is in Japan where traditionally women were very subdued and passive and subordinate to men. Furthermore, she becomes a highly renowned professional assassin and the leader of the Yakuza, which is the Japanese Mafia. This is considered highly atypical because she is a woman and because she is only half Japanese. These questions of her race and gender are directly referred to in the film when her challenging of these traditions and common stereotypes angers Boss Tanaka. Oren responds by chopping off his head to settle the argument once and for all. This directly challenges the idea of females and mixed race people being subordinate to others. Gogo also questions these ideas and also ones of social and cultural contexts. Gogo is a hot young Japanese schoolgirl, who represents a Japanese pornographic icon. She is the epitome of a little-girl like sexual taboo. However she counters these ideas of gender, race, culture, and social context. She is strong, empowered, and aggressive, and one of the star killers in the film. Something similar is also repeated in Elle Driver’s character that appears as a hot, blond nurse when we first meet her. This is also a typical male pornographic stereotype and stereotypically a very feminine profession, and Elle defies this stereotype as well by being another of the assassins in the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad. Vernita Green also defies her social role of being the housewife, mother living in the suburbs, married to a doctor when she fights the bride to the death in her kitchen. She is also one of the assassins. She protects her home and her family the way a male would.
Even though all of these characters in the film question the social roles of these women in regards to sexuality, culture, and social context, the questions go further to rethink or question themselves within the film. For example, the bride still has an underlying traditional conservatism because she is about to become a mother and a bride and she is happy to take on these traditional roles and it is when they are taken away from her that she becomes enraged and she fights for them. Also, Gogo is strong and empowered but she is also psychotic, which is shown when she kills the businessman in the bar. This example could be questioning the role reversal and suggesting that perhaps there is something that deforms a woman when she becomes too much like a man.
In the movie Kill Bill, Tarantino creates a world of his own. In his world, there are cool assassin gangs of hot girls and cool cavalier men. In this world, there are no police officers ever. The world is real and not fantasy, however it is tweaked or bent a little. It is a world where the Yakuza boss rides in her black Mercedes Benz while being escorted by a gang of Yakuza henchmen who surround her car riding motorcycles with their samurai swords attached to their sides in plain sight. The bride also keeps her samurai sword next to her on the airplane. It sits in the empty passenger seat of a public airplane, at her side. The cops never come while two women have a sword fight outside a restaurant in the snow, while inside the restaurant there are pools and pools of spilled blood covering the floor and dead or dying bodies and limbs scattered all over the place. This is like the opposite of hyper reality. Instead of using natural like effects, Tarantino uses extremely exaggerated dramatic effects to make what seems to be real become a new kind of real. It is not supposed to be fantasy but it is not really replicating life, as we know it. It is like real life with a twist of the imagination.
The music in the film Kill Bill also adds to the postmodern style of the film. The original soundtrack of the movie is composed and produced by the RZA who is an amazing and very renowned producer in the hip-hop world. He is a member of Wu Tang Clan and also produces all of their songs and albums, basically creating their unique, important, and influential sound. The songs that RZA produced for the movie give the movie a cutting edge sound and add a great feel to the film. The movie is also filled with other types of music that make it a beautiful eclectic masterpiece.
In Vol. 1, in the restaurant scenes leading up to the massacre, a band plays a live set on the stage in front a dance floor full of parting people. The band is a real Japanese rock band called The 5.6.7.8’s. The band consists of all girls who are rockers with American style up-do hairstyles reminiscent of the hairstyles worn by American girls in the sixties. It is also interesting that the rock band consists of all girls, which is also against the stereotypical rock band image, which is usually all men. Furthermore, the girls have tattoos and are rocking out, which is something that is not what old traditional Japanese women would be able to do. Oren Ishii still wears the full Japanese traditional attire of the kimono, tabi socks, and zori slippers, which cover her up and are not revealing and sexy like the little gold dresses that the band members wear. This brings attention to the previous topic of gender roles, and social context. It also references culture and tradition and brings to our attention the way that we view the world.
Later, during the scene with the crazy 88 fight in the restaurant, a very fun, up-beat, rock n roll, party song is played and it really spins the scene and gives the fight a fun, crazy, entertaining feeling. The scene could have been completely different if a different song were juxtaposed with all of the killing and madness. In the final fight between Oren Ishii and the bride, a rendition of the song “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by The Animals plays. The juxtaposition of the traditional samurai sword fight in a snow-covered traditional Japanese garden is amazing. This juxtaposition crosses time and era as well as culture and style. Not long after this fight, during the end credits of Vol. 1, a very traditional Japanese enka song is played. The song is very old fashioned and traditional in the Japanese culture. It really gives an amazing feeling to the end of the movie. Where as this is the song played at the end of the movie, the song that is played at the very beginning is “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down” by Nancy Sinatra. It is an American song by a very American artist. The song is mysterious and even a little eerie. It is the perfect introduction song to the film especially because of its subject matter mirroring the event that occurs at the beginning of the film. It is very interesting that the movie begins with an American song and ends with a Japanese song. The mixture of all of these different musical styles definitely complements the mixture of all of the cinematic, structural, and narrative styles of the film. The music is used in the film to sometimes contradict what is happening, which creates an irony and a contradiction. Other times it just brings out the emotion or feel of the scenes. All in all the mixture of styles in the soundtrack help to shape the way that we interpret this film and the soundtrack is definitely one of the postmodern elements in Kill Bill.
Kill Bill Vol.1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 are both excellent examples of postmodern films. They truly change the way that we interact with them, with other movies, and with the world. Among other things, these films question and transform our ideas of social context, gender roles, culture, race, and communication. Postmodernism is very complex and with these films, Quentin Tarantino has truly created a postmodern masterpiece. Through a mixture of styles, impeccable taste, and amazing artistic ability, he has become one of the greatest postmodern filmmakers of our time.