SPOILERS
Quentin Tarantino loves women. This much is evident in five out of six of his feature-length film releases where his female characters are placed on immaculate pedestals fit for indie queens on whom the filmmaker discharges a slew of tender love letters. But the recipients of the kind of affinity the director so warmly offers are a product of favoritism, whereas the other ladies receive an offering of denigration and neglect from a guy who has preferences. Tarantino’s favorite women are heroic, empowered, appealing, energetic, intelligent, brave and violent while the other girls are often naggy, dense and vulnerable to violent and sexually-oriented treatment.
While these female protagonists are resilient and capable figures who seemingly represent women positively, one might question the man as a full-blown feminist by highlighting clear misogynistic and sexist elements found in said protagonists. Are his films necessarily odes to the doctrine advocating social, political and all other rights of women equal to those of men? Or are these “empowered” females who curse, maim and do drugs simply women disguised as men living out ultimate male fantasies mentally conjured by the writer/director?
Tarantino represents both extremes, though the favorable examples greatly offset the others. The circumstances in which the filmmaker’s characters find themselves are dangerous and present rough obstacles that film audiences traditionally see a man face. Claiming to have never met his biological father, his bias for women developed early with his mother, Connie McHugh (who married a man shortly after giving birth to Tarantino), who almost single-handedly raised him in Southern California.
Tarantino’s latest feature-length release (as part of the double feature Grindhouse, which was marketed and distributed as one movie), Death Proof (2007), is the newest and most formidable example of the filmmaker as a feminist thinker whose intentions involve emphasizing the capability of females as action movie heroes. Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 each feature prominent female characters – in the last three they are the protagonists – but it is in Death Proof where Tarantino’s affinity for his opposite sex punctuates this theory of the man as a feminist filmmaker. With male characters as the violent and sexual stalkers and females as the defiant vixen warriors who fend them off, Tarantino establishes planet earth as a ladies’ paradise.
In their book, Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, editors Martha McCaughey and Neal King write that “most feminists oppose violence, define it as patriarchal and oppressive, yet often enjoy scenes in which female characters defend themselves, save the day, seek revenge, and get away with it in the end,” (2). This sentiment was a collective one upon the releases of Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, which were scene as a celebration of a female’s entitlement to avenge her near-death and the loss of her unborn child. A woman who wielded a samurai sword and literally chopped her way through countless bodies to a get a taste of vengeance towards a “dick” (a man, Bill) who was responsible finally revealed to audiences that not only women could “kick ass,” too, but this was the new cinematic representation of female empowerment.
McCaughey and King later wrote that “many feminists insist that we can and should do better than patriarchs; hence, they celebrate images that define women’s heroic power in ‘female’ terms – giving birth, forming community, and remaining nonviolent even in the face of violence,” (2). Kill Bill’s Bride combines the two arguments for female heroism, using patriarchal violence and maternal aim to accomplish the same objective.
In their book, Hollywood Divas, Indie Queens and TV Heroines, authors Susanne Kord and Elizabeth Krimmer write that in the Kill Bill films, “Beatrix’s orgy of vengeance originates in her devotion to the most sacred of womanly quests, motherhood, and her wrath is fueled by the most heinous crime, the killing of her baby girl in utero. Beatrix transgresses against every commonly accepted notion of femininity, but she does so because her attempt to sacrifice everything for the best of her daughter and lead a traditionally female life as been thwarted,” (108).
With Jackie Brown, Tarantino pits the titular character (played by Pam Grier) against an ominous male villain (Samuel L. Jackson), who attempts to kill her on multiple occasions to save his own skin. Ultimately, Jackie outsmarts the man and makes off with his illegally-earned fortune. The other significant female role, Melanie (Bridget Fonda), is portrayed as a lazy, drug-addicted toy used primarily for sex among Jackson’s character and his friend (Robert De Niro).
In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino introduced his first substantial female character in Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), a trophy wife of a crime boss (Ving Rhames). While Mia seems independent based on her appealing personality, shared with us through her dinner date with Vincent Vega (John Travolta), and willingness to match witty banter with her husband’s henchman, we gradually find that her status as a strong female character is contradicted. Mia is a cocaine addict who attempts to live freely and invincibly through her rich husband’s power and wealth.
And finally, reaching back to his directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, we find that here are no significant female characters, excluding the pregnant woman who shoots Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) and is subsequently killed by him. Outside of this sequence, women are nonexistent. In an interview transcribed in the book Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, edited by Garry Peary, Tarantino said, “There’s no place for women in this movie. It would be like women turning up on the submarine in Das Boot,” (44).
The ladies in Death Proof, on the other hand, display little to no maternal qualities, with the exception of “forming community,” as they masquerade as vulnerable and beautiful sexpots primed for their murders handed to them by a lethal, muscle car-driving stalker, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell). That is, the second set of women we see, as there are two halves to Death Proof, each focusing on a faction of female friends whose extensive character development is nullified once Mike enters the pictures and attempts his slaying. During the first half, we meet Jungle Julia, a sovereign and vivacious African-American woman who doubles as Ausitn, TX’s favorite radio disc-jockey and leader-of-the-pack among her girlfriends (of different ethnicities) who live to party at the local chili bar.
Upon meeting these women, we spend the next half-hour to forty minutes along with them in said chili bar, as they smoke marijuana, pound shots, dance to Joe Tex tunes at the bar’s juke box and juggle whether or not that want to engage in any casual sex with any of their friends or patrons. While creating a sense of loyalty and camaraderie, these women are depicted as superficial party girls with little in mind other than said vices and luxuries. They are horror movie fodder – pretty girls ripe for a killer’s attack – and they live up to the billing. Once Stuntman Mike spots them, their night is virtually over, as he has new plans for them. Hours later, when the women are driving at high speeds down a dark highway and jamming to a noisy sixties rock song, Mike meets them head-on in a gruesome collision, murdering all four of the women and leaving Mike, the invincible male, alive and almost unharmed (thanks to the “death proof” of his stunt car).
The next set of women we meet exhibit most of the same characteristics of the first, though they are maybe five or six years older than each of the slain members of Jungle Julia’s tribe. When we meet Zoë, Abernathy and Kim (along with one other underdeveloped character, sporting a cheerleader’s uniform), they are discussing a lot of the same topics as the prior women, namely men and sex. Tarantino writes as much as he knows from the women’s perspective, inciting that females are just as prone to pontificate on sex and other matters just as much as males, perhaps even more so. We then learn that two of the women, Zoë and Kim, are professional stuntwomen who get their kicks by performing dangerous (and seemingly testosterone-fueled) tricks at rapid speeds, a morsel of information of which our stalker Mike, who has been voyeuristically watching the women for hours, is not aware.
When Kim agrees to drive Zoë as she lies freely on the hood of a 1970 Dodge Challenger (an homage to 1971’s legendary car chase movie, Vanishing Point), Mike bites at the chance to chase, crash into and abruptly murder the women, all in which he nearly succeeds until it is revealed to him that he’s been messing with the wrong girls. Once both of the cars stop and Mike steps out of his to address the women, Kim pulls a revolver and shoots Mike in the arm, causing him to speed off in his car and be pursued by the vengeful, now bloodthirsty women. Needless to say, after terrorizing Mike for a good fifteen minutes of roaring road action, the women catch up with him and murder their would-be stalker, ending the movie.
So does this situation – one where the tables are turned from an ostensibly vulnerable group of helpless little girls on a murderer who was in over his head – mean that Tarantino is a feminist? Just because he let a few girls beat up and subsequently end the life of a sadistic male killer? Each side could be argued. One could feel the sense of female empowerment and glory as a minority who overcame an invincible male foe that has discriminated and burdened their sex for a prolonged period of time. Finally, it took the prey he so often conquered to trounce his evil, blood-charged libido in just as violent of a fashion as he dished out on them (ultimately culminating in the direct crushing of his skull from Abernathy’s boot heel).
Sure, as McCaughey and King addressed, some feminists should enjoy these scenes “in which female characters defend themselves, save the day, seek revenge, and get away with it in the end.” All right, maybe. But for the folks who “insist that we can and should do better than patriarchs; hence, they celebrate images that define women’s heroic power in ‘female’ terms” – are they left satisfied by Death Proof? It seems as if these stuntwomen are Tarantino’s puppets could be living out his own ferocious, perilous fantasies where he would either masochistically want to be placed in the position of these women in the film or aggressively relishes the plight of women when hunted by a perversely vicious tracker. Zoë (played by Zoë Bell, an actual stuntwoman who simply channels herself) is an affably rugged heroine found in a circumstances traditionally met by ultra-masculine heroes. The idea of a stunt person is rarely realized by audiences as a female occupation, which gives Tarantino an opportunity to let us on the fact that ladies can do it, too. The depiction of women could be seen as sexist and misogynistic, as his camera tightly focuses on these attractive women’s legs and backsides, giving a candidly sexual inspection right before the audience’s eyes.
But Tarantino’s efforts seem to favor these female characters more than hate them. In a review, a writer writes “Here, the women emerge as separate, vibrant personalities: not the slut, the nice girl, and the quiet best friend, but three rowdy, unapologetically sexual party girls who care more about each other than the dudes trying to get into their pants.” This is to say that these women are sexually liberated and independent and even free of any prevailing need or desire for male companionship or protection.
In Roderick T. Long’s review, he states that “what differentiates Death Proof from the typical slasher pic, to my mind, is the spirit in which it makes use of these conventions, and indeed the way it subverts those conventions in such a way as not simply to defeat but to deflate the male predator.” The extended final car chase in which the women terrorize Stuntman Mike is a humiliating experience for the man, perhaps even an allegory for Mike’s inevitable castration following his elongated periods of killing of women.
Tarantino’s fervor for reverently telling his stories from a female perspective through tenaciously steadfast women and their abilities is too durable an argument to counter with sexist notions and condemnations. The filmmaker said in an interview recently, “Even if you get out of America for a second and get into the kung fu movies out of Hong Kong or the samurai movies out of Japan, the female avenger is a real staple of those movies. Even the slasher movies are known now – not in their day but now, (thanks to) subtextual film criticism – you can see that the final girl in the slasher film is the warrior at the end.”
Many of the conventions Tarantino creates for his characters would hold only if they were conveyed by females, especially the role as a victim to a man’s sexual and violent desires; this is a position men just don’t find themselves in like women do. Perhaps revisiting the WWII-era feminine sentiment of “We Can Do It,” Tarantino may be reminding us that it isn’t just a man’s world, and all the cursing, car chasing, maiming, fighting and drinking – well, chicks can do it, too, sometimes even better.
