Empowerment or Fetishisation?
Bibliography
Tyler, Josh (2010). Uma Thurman Toasts Tarantino By Letting Him Drink Out Of Her Shoe. Cinema Blend. 1 December 2010. Available at: <https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Uma-Thurman-Toasts-Tarantino-By-Letting-Him-Drink-Out-Her-Shoe-21973.html>
Rose, Steve (2004). Found: where Tarantino gets his ideas.The Guardian. 6 April 2004. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2004/apr/06/features.dvdreviews>
MacLaren, Izzy (2018). The Violent Female Empowerment of Kill Bill: Volume 1. One Room with a View. 12 October 2018. Available at: <https://oneroomwithaview.com/2018/10/12/the-violent-female-empowerment-of-kill-bill-volume-1/>
Dowd, Maureen (2018). This Is Why Uma Thurman Is Angry. The New York Times. 3 February 2018. Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/03/opinion/sunday/this-is-why-uma-thurman-is-angry.html>
For the well-versed in Japanese period dramas and revenge narratives; the inspiration filmmaker Quentin Tarantino draws from the 1973 film Lady Snowblood is blatant to the point of surpassing homage. Rather, it is more accurate to say that Lady Snowblood and its original manga run is the template for his now-iconic two-parter Kill Bill. Tarantino clearly utilises similar tone, themes and even the non-chronological ordering of its narrative—in which pieces from the titular character’s past slowly become unfurled. As the protagonist, Yuki Kashima is capable of the same unrelenting cruelty and penchant for dramatics as her western counterpart Beatrix ‘The Bride’ Kiddo; Tarantino parodies the work down to similarities in their promotional material.
All in all, this begs the question: why did Tarantino remake a distinctly Japanese theme of the cyclical nature of violence and conflict, re-centred on the interactions of a white woman with the destructive potential of the exotified ‘Orient’? In hindsight, this is how Kill Bill reads irrespective of intentionality—everything from Hattori Hanzo’s grief at forging katanas (which he views as ‘instruments of death’) to O’Ren Ishii’s hardened, blood-soaked stint as Yakuza boss and its subsequent culmination at the hands of Beatrix Kiddo herself. Whereas Lady Snowblood draws from post-war Japanese political anxieties, Kill Bill is admittedly stylish but without substance. Repeatedly, we see Beatrix avenge the transgressions made against her with extreme violence. This ought to be satisfying in itself, but the way in which she is repeatedly brutalised in the process, is, admittedly, less so. Oftentimes, Kill Bill seems to portray Tarantino's unnerving fetishes, rather than emancipation. After all, there is a long-standing industry acknowledgement of his overt foot fetish, which makes itself known in his films and beyond; as seen by Uma Thurman allowing him to drink a toast from her shoe at a public appearance at The Friar’s Club in 20101. He even went as far as to step in during scenes where they had to film Thurman being brutalised by main characters-spitting on her face and choking her with chains in their stead. Thurman has since expressed deep discomfort with this treatment4. Altogether, it isn’t a bold claim to suggest that Tarantino could be pushing the bounds of what many women would be comfortable indulging him in, and Thurman’s remarkable lenience during their early years of collaboration make it easy to pass off his fetishisation as a simple ‘character quirk’.
Despite the recognition that Tarantino’s films are often just ‘repackages’ (with added flair and a distinct aesthetic sense) of already existing works (2)—Tarantino remains to be a filmmaker many refuse to renounce. Many go as far as to declare Tarantino’s front-and-centre female characters writing themselves into their own empowering narratives (3). However, noteworthy women in the media are often reduced to a role where they either already possess agency or are violently seeking it—outraged and willing to take any necessary steps—despite potential moral deficit, to seek liberation. Some remark this as the ‘good-for-them’ genre of storytelling; including films such as Gone Girl and Midsommar; both iterations of Stephen King’s Carrie, and most recently Promising Young Woman. Clearly, films in which female leads engage in violence or manipulation to ‘strike back’ at the wrongs done against them. This trope relies on audiences viewing their actions as circumstantial and hyperbolic; rather than a replication of real life, instead, drawing awareness to the extremities some women are pushed to and the tragic circumstances in which they occur.
Here we can make reference to Kill Bill’s Gogo Yubari. Played by Chiaki Kuriyama, she is a nod to the Japanese horror influence of Vol. 1—having previously appeared in the cult thriller Battle Royale. For her typecasting in films of the early 2000s, she is the quintessential unnerving Japanese schoolgirl—her iconic steady, tilted gaze arresting the viewer’s attention during all her scenes. Gogo’s depiction is one through which her actions do the talking. Beyond her protective feelings for her mistress, the Yakuza boss O’Ren Ishii, she has no identifiable motivation beyond pure carnage and spite–disrupting the common trope of the meek, submissive Japanese woman. However, an intentional ‘subversion’ does not necessarily translate to a portrayal in good faith. Gogo’s entrance in her fight against the lead, Beatrix Kiddo, depicts her ominously walking down a flight of stairs as a medium shot, but is interspersed with close-ups of her thighs as she swings her chained mace against her side.
The Japanese schoolgirl archetype is a notoriously fetishized figure, if porn categories and its pervasive sexualisation of the seifuku school uniform and knee-high socks are anything to go by. As previously established in a scene where a young O’Ren Ishii murders the Yakuza boss Matsumoto—responsible for the death of Ishii’s own parents, it appears that he falls into the common stereotype of Japanese men as being susceptible to sexual perversions; allowing a school-aged girl close to him only because of his pedophilic nature.
A disturbing trend emerges whereby the Japanese schoolgirl, a figure of blossoming sexuality, is a vehicle for all manner of abuses. Gogo’s appeal is one of a debased innocence, fitting within the trope of the dainty Asian women as sexual objects, who use their image and suggestive stare to convey their feelings. Gogo is far from a docile family-maker, but retains a semblance of the trope in her unwavering loyalty for O’Ren as her ‘family’ of choice. Her love and devotion is maddening in its projection, reminiscent of the imaginings of East Asian women as popularized by European plays such as Madama Butterfly. The image of a Madama Butterfly-type figure is one wherein the woman possesses a force of love so strong and sexually abundant that it will inevitably culminate in ruination. Yet, she is disposable; her ultimate role is one as an object upon which her husband can project his sorrows.
Gogo’s trajectory differs in that any sexual attention turned on her is returned with malice, as witnessed in the scene where she disembowels a man she had previously behaved flirtatiously with. Her giddy joy is a perversion in itself; wherein Gogo takes a leading role–brutalizing others in her stead. It is a kind of self-preservation, it can be argued; a twisted methodology of survivalism in a world that is intent on reducing her worth to a sexual object. Although Gogo attempts to sidestep such a cruel fate by leaning into her familial bond with O’Ren rather than her attachments to men, she inevitably arrives at the same destination: the final, harrowing shot as she cries blood after being killed by Beatrix. The imagery is one of a twisted innocence, seemingly referencing weeping Virgin Mary statues and replacing her murderous leer with a distant, far-away gaze.
Cumulatively, Gogo’s image is one of an exotified, dangerous appeal, undermining any agency that might be given to her. She is less a fully-realised character and more a collection of traits made to conjure a pretence of ‘empowerment’ through their rejection of common perceptions. Gogo is given no moment of retribution, and whether she is at all given the humanity afforded to Beatrix and O’Ren is debatable– nevertheless, Gogo lives on in the public consciousness for her sadistic, sinister allure.
Within the horror genre, Gogo has notable similarities to Junji Ito’s Tomie –a spiteful, alluring woman with a quiet maturity to her, known for her deceptively alluring nature that entices men and drives women into jealous rages. Reference can also be made to the ero guro convention, in which the female body is the primary site of grotesque horror. It is a subculture within the nansensu movement; characterised by its absurdity and hedonistic nature—both self-indulgent and tasteless. Although Kill Bill does not necessarily coincide with the eroticism of the genre, it is nevertheless important to highlight as a means through which the Japanese woman’s body is depersonalized and objectified in order to project fetishes or aggression. Tarantino is reliant on such intertextualities to carry his filmmaking career, and it is important to see Gogo’s framing within such a wider context to truly comprehend the worrying scale on which the Japanese schoolgirl is degraded.
Whilst gratuitous violence is to be anticipated, given the nature of the film as an elaborate, decadent revenge thriller; the East Asian women of Kill Bill exist as the Other. An Orientalist fantasy of the Japanese as a violence-obsessed people, heavily borrowing from a broad range of East Asian cinema. Tarantino, at least, makes his references blatant and does not attempt to pass off the film as wholly original. The fault lies in his bizarre mish-mash of culture that he attempts to pass off as an encapsulation of the Yakuza world, or otherwise Japanese horror convention. Although valuable in its own right when approached from an angle of ‘mindless entertainment’, it is nonetheless frustrating to see Tarantino lauded as a singular feminist figure—when Beatrix’s conception was, in fact, a collaborative work between him and Thurman and she has since claimed she felt dehumanized by her treatment on the set of the film. If his rising star herself was given this treatment behind the scenes, it is proof enough that Hollywood has a profound and persisting issue with surface-level displays of feminism. And one that, unfortunately, audiences continue to relish in all their ‘badassery’.