Cinematography typically assigns women roles that display them as the intimate acquaintances of the male protagonist. In order to escape the stereotypical female role assignment, women often have to assume masculine characteristics, in order to prove their credibility in physical skills. In films such as Kill Bill Volume One, the Bride, depicted by Uma Thurman, is a vengeful and athletically talented martial artist, who wants to kill the four members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad after they attempt to kill her and presumably kill her unborn daughter. Her lover is also the leader of the squad and handed down the order to have her executed. After sustaining multiple blunt force traumas and a gunshot wound to the head, she succumbs to a coma for four years. Upon reawakening, she is determined to seek the ones accountable for the attack. The Bride and other female fighters legitimately defines female stereotypes by: assuming male stereotypical roles by counter stereotyping, transforming from a feminine to a masculine character, and becomes a brave dame in the process of the transformation.

            Female stereotypes are often defined as attributes generalized to females; these generalizations are often reinforced in films. The female stereotypical role encourages women to be loving, caring, compassionate, nurturing, and sympathetic. Women are often physically attractive and place their focal point on marriage and children (Abbot, Wallace, & Tyler, 2005). In the film, Kill Bill Volume One, the Bride was initially a female stereotype when she walked into the chapel anticipating marriage to her lover, Bill. She was pregnant and no longer wanted to be an assassin; instead she was looking forward to becoming a wife and mother. Upon awakening in the hospital bed from the coma, she remembers that her lover is responsible for conspiring to murder her and her unborn child with the other four members of the assassin squad, and she decides to seek out revenge against those responsible for presumably taking the life of her child. At this point, the Bride adopts overly exaggerated martial arts skills that allow her to defeat those that challenge her in a dual (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). This shows that she is no longer seeking affection from the lover that betrayed her; instead she is finding ways to adopt a masculine image. The process of adopting a masculine image makes her a counter stereotype. A female who exhibits counter stereotypical characteristics often take on the male stereotype, which encompasses: courageousness, competitiveness, independence, and physical violence (Abbott et al., 2005).  The Bride exhibits all of the aforementioned characteristics; as she seeks revenge on those responsible for her loss. Instead of designating herself to female stereotypical reactions, such as crying and seeking help from a male hero to save her, she opts to be her own hero, by killing the people who inflicted harm against her. She goes on a solo mission to Okinawa, Japan, to find a man who specialized in sword making to create her weapon for combat and used that weapon to defeat her most challenging opponent, O-Ren Ishii (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). 

            What makes Kill Bill Volume One interesting is that there are gender role reversals throughout the film. Men, who are often stereotyped as the fierce, bold, and unbeatable heroes, are often defeated by the Bride with one slash from her sword. In the scene where the Bride goes to find O-Ren Ishii at a Japanese restaurant, O-Ren Ishii sends out her lieutenants to defend her; one by one, the Bride defeats them all. When the Crazy 88, which consists of 88 men from a motorcyclist gang come to defend O-Ren Ishii, they are all defeated effortlessly by the almighty Bride. The Bride can defeat any man who crosses her path. When it came down to the last remaining survivor of the Crazy 88, he stares in fear as she spanks him and tells him to go home to his mother. He runs away, shaking and crying in fear. However, when the final defender, Gogo, who is the personal body guard of O-Ren Ishii, goes out to challenge the Bride in a one-on-one dual, Gogo and the Bride put up a vicious and longstanding battle that includes the use of skillful martial arts weapons and undeniable athletic endurance. When she eventually defeats Gogo and finally faces her intended opponent, O-Ren Ishii, they also put up a brutal fight.  In the end, the Bride prevails. At the beginning of the film, the Bride goes to find Vernita Green in her Pasadena, California home, and the two engage in a physical brawl that resulted in complete destruction of Vernita’s living room. The two women wrestle, punch, kick, choke, and throw each other against furniture (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). The battles that the aforementioned females engage in are a display of counter stereotyping because normally females use verbal abuse, by spreading rumours or gossip about one another, to intentionally inflict harm, while men tend to engage in physical altercations to determine the individual who deserves the triumphant title as the dominant hero (Abbott et al., 2010). In Kill Bill Volume One, the men are depicted as useless fighters, meanwhile the females are all very difficult to defeat and every single one of these women refuses to surrender and rather sacrifice their own lives to prove that they are capable and independent fighters. This is evidenced by Vernita’s  acceptance to fight the Bride in a private park. Vernita knows there is a chance that she may lose to the Bride; however, in order to protect the lives of her husband and daughter, she is willing to fight the Bride to prove that she is the better fighter. These are normally characteristics labelled to male stereotypes; by giving this title to the women in Kill Bill Volume One, these women assumed masculinity and abdicate their feminine position in patriarchal society as submissive and meager individuals, and assumed the position as dominant and bold leaders.

            Not only does the Bride assume the role as the powerful counter stereotype, but O-Ren Ishii is also another example of a counter stereotype. She is the leader of an underground gang named the Tokyo Yakuza. O-Ren Ishii’s parents were murdered in front of her eyes when she was a child; instead of feeling sorry for herself, she learned martial arts, and even obtained justice for her parents’ death by killing the man who masterminded the hit, Matsumoto, at age 11. At the tender age of 11, she was able to disguise herself as a helpless and innocent child. Matsumoto, who happens to be a pedophile, succumbed to her seduction and she used this as an advantage to lure him into the room alone in order to murder him in cold blood. After this, she gained the title of being a world-class assassin (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). This shows that both the Bride and O-Ren Ishii underwent traumatic and life-altering circumstances that encouraged them to obtain justice for their previous misfortunes in life. Both characters refuse to admit to defeat and bravely take on the male stereotype by acting as fierce warriors that constantly fight fulfill an underlying vendetta. In order to fully take on the male stereotype or become a counter stereotype, most often, these women must undergo a process of defeminization and masculinization.

            The transition from being a female stereotype to becoming a counter stereotype requires a process known as masculinization. Masculinization requires a female to abdicate her female responsibilities in a patriarchal society, and take on the identity of a male, by gradually transforming her psychological, mental, and physical appearance into one that resembles a male (Abbott et al., 2005). According to Katy Gilpatric, she asserts that “female characters were masculinized when they engaged in violence” (Gilpatric, 2010, p.735), and “the ‘good’ characters, who successfully accomplish masculinity, and the ‘bad’ ones who challenge their dominators, repeatedly resorted to violence and crime” (Gilpatric, 2010, p.736). In Kill Bill Volume One, the Bride is a perfect example of a character that undergoes masculinization. After four years of being comatose, she discovers that her muscles have atrophied from being bedridden. However, she wakes up recounting the fact that her previous lover betrayed her and attempted to kill her. She discovers that she is no longer pregnant, and the loss of her child angers her. She also discovers that during the time she was bedridden, the orderly often raped her and even recruited men from outside of the hospital to rape her in exchange for money. When the orderly brings in the trucker to rape her, the Bride allows him to climb on top of her, but she bites his tongue off and he bleeds to death. Despite her deteriorated state, she manages to climb out of the bed and kill the orderly out of anger for sexually violating her (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). Her choice of violence defeminized her and proves that she is taking on masculine approaches to defeat her opponents. A predictable feministic approach to solve the problem would be to complain to the hospital staff; however, because she is a masculinized female, she decides to take matters into her own hands and kill the offenders without anyone else’s assistance. She is adamant to ensure that no one dares to cross into her territory of comfort, this proves that she is masculinized because males are often labelled as protectors of their space; when threatened by trespassers, men have the responsibility to defend or remove the offending agent (Abbott et al., 2005). Therefore, she defends herself against the men who try to violate her sexually, by taking matters into her own hands, by killing whoever attempts to rape her (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). She is making a loud and clear statement that under any circumstance, she will not fear or hesitate to punish those that dare to impose a threat to her well being. The Bride is truly a warrior that refuses to allow anyone to make any impingement on her without her prior consent; however, not only does her self-heroic efforts deem her as a masculinized female, but her physical strength and long-lasting endurance further reinforce the fact that her agility and athletic skills can overcome any male predator.

            The Bride displays her physical strength and long-lasting endurance by trying to escape the hospital even though her lower limbs have atrophied, by crawling and pulling herself across the hospital floor. She manages to steal the orderly’s uniform and car keys and makes a desperate escape from the hospital by getting herself in a wheelchair and she crawling into the backseat of the orderly’s vehicle with just two arms. Exasperated, she refuses to admit defeat or request for help.  The Bride manages to stay in the backseat for 13 hours, where she slowly rehabilitates herself and regains the use of her lower limbs. Her will power, alongside her physical strength that is retained from years of combat from her life as an assassin, allows her body to easily regain strength. She manages to escape the hospital grounds and travels to Okinawa, Japan, to obtain a weapon to defeat the four individuals responsible for putting her in the hospital (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). Asides from defending herself against individuals who attempt to make an encroachment into her territory, her ability to work independently and not eliciting the help of others is the most notable event of her masculinization process.

            Independence is an inherent masculine trait. It has been proposed that “more than half of female offenders act alone (53%)” (Galpatric, 2010, p. 737). Females are often overlooked as weak and require assistance from other females or males. Upon tragedy, females often require assistance from a male hero in order to escape defeat. However, the Bride is a contrary depiction of what societal norms define as feminine. Because of her choice to be a violent female, they “are usually alive but left on their own at the end of the films” (Neroni, 2005, p. 85). Her sense of independence is obvious in scenes where she is travelling alone to Okinawa, Japan and going individually to find her enemies to challenge each one of them in a dual. By doing so, she must assume characteristics, such as: self-confidence, relentlessness, and ferociousness. She never requests for help from a friend or family member, or recruit others to assist her in a battle. Her outstanding intelligence, perceptual skills, and multi-lingual talent allow her easy navigation in Okinawa. Upon arrival, she effortlessly impresses the sword making master, who is finally convinced to help make her a personalized weapon to fight with, despite the fact that he swore 28 years ago that he would never build another weapon that would be used to assassinate another human being. When the sword master throws a baseball at her, she manages to use one of the sword master’s swords to slice the baseball into two equal halves. As a result, he is not only impressed by her ability to understand and speak fluent Japanese, but he is taken aback by her skillful martial arts background. He is also amazed by her assertiveness; when he refuses to give her the sword, she replies, “I’m not asking to buy it from you, I’m asking you to give it to me” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). Thus, her unique skill in slicing the baseball, on top of her multi-linguistic talent and assertive personality separates her from society’s expectation of a female. This allows her to breach over and masculinize herself to prove to men that she deserves respect, despite being a female.

            Not only did the Bride exhibit counter stereotypes and take on roles that masculinized her, she is also a bold and unrelenting brave dame. When accosted by her former lover and former colleagues on her wedding day, she transforms their betrayal from a negative event into a motivational impetus to convert her from being an expecting bride to be, which is a typical female role, to become a strong dame that does not back down to other’s perpetrations. The brave dame is defined by one who is passionate about a personal desire. During difficult times, she refuses to give up. A brave dame is confident and competent; she is someone who is willing to face moral and psychological challenges. She also follows high ethical standards and stands up to injustice. A brave dame is a true friend to others and herself (Abbott et al., 2005). The Bride exhibits all of these characteristics: she is driven by her passion to obtain justice for her unborn baby’s death. Even though she experienced debilitating atrophy from a four year coma, she does not allow herself to succumb to her injuries and redirects her aim to kill the four people that are involved in her child’s demise. She is independent and able to recover from the physical debilitations. Although she is psychologically tormented by the fact that her previous lover is responsible for presumably killing her baby, she uses that hatred as an effective source of motivation to obtain revenge. When she encounters Vernita Green and Vernita attempts to kill her with a hidden gun, the Bride throws a knife into the middle of Vernita’s chest, killing her. The Bride does not know that Vernita’s four year old daughter, Nikki, is standing behind her and witnessing the entire scene. The Bride says to Nikki, “It was not my intention to do it in front of you” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). She threatened Vernita before her death that the only way she could obtain justice is to “kill you, your husband, and your daughter upstairs” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). She also claims she does not have any compassion, yet, she is moral and merciful enough to not kill the little girl. She realizes that even though she lost her own child, this child is innocent and not responsible for her daughter’s death. In order for the Bride to obtain full revenge, she could force Vernita to witness the death of the daughter, Nikki; however, she is ethical and spares Nikki’s life. A similar incident occurs when the remaining young Crazy 88 boy is left after the entire gang is defeated by the Bride, she spares him his life and gives him a lenient punishment by spanking him and sending him home to his mother. Because she was once a mother to be, her maternal instincts prevent her from killing the young children. When faced with the 17 year old Gogo, she says to her, “Gogo, I know you feel like you must protect your mistress, but I beg you, walk away” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). She wants to spare Gogo’s life because she was once in Gogo’s shoes and she understands what it is like to be under the influence of a powerful leader; therefore, she can commiserate with Gogo’s loyalty and asks her to leave. She has no intention of killing Gogo because she is still a child who is wrongfully influenced to violence because she wants to gain the approval of her leader, O-ren Ishii. Because the Bride once admired Bill, her leader, and followed his dictation, she understands how it feels like to be under the constant pressure to impress the leader. 
            Despite the fact that the Bride faces many psychological challenges, such as having to overcome the death of her daughter, she remains resilient to stress. She experiences flashbacks from time to time that show how each one of her fellow assassin colleagues physically assaulted her. It strikes her as a hard reality that her lover is the one who shot her mercilessly, even though he knows she is pregnant with their child. Instead of succumbing to her tragedies by having a mental breakdown, she opts to transform her losses into victories. This can be seen when she kills her enemies; she will cross off each one of the names off a list that she has created. She derives a sense of satisfaction and comfort whenever she realizes that she is no longer the victim and at the mercy of another human being. She has full control over her own life. Using this as her motivation, she never loses sight of her aim. She stands up to injustice by fighting against the people that attempt to harm or kill her. Whenever she faces an enemy, she has a flashback of how that person intentionally attacked her and she uses it to rationalize why she must kill that person. Although it may appear that she does not have friends because most of her friends from the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad betrayed her, the fact that she did not end up killing Vernita’s husband or daughter shows that she retains some level of friendship. Especially when they are fighting and Nikki happens to return home from school, both stop fighting and conceal their weapons behind their backs. She respects the fact that Vernita chooses to pursue a different lifestyle that is quite the contrast to her previous life as an assassin because at the time of her wedding, she also wanted to change her lifestyle and devote her time into being a wife and mother. Therefore, she can understand why Vernita chooses not to display violence in front of her daughter. Even though she intends on killing her, she knows that she does not have to do so at the expense of her daughter’s presence (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). All of these characteristics truly make the Bride a brave dame; however, there is another character that is a brave dame, and she is O-Ren Ishii.

            O-ren Ishii is passionate about obtaining revenge against her parents’ death. Once she kills the man responsible for the crime, she works as an assassin and gains the renowned and infamous title of being a world-class assassin. She later becomes the newly elected Head of the Council of all the underground Yakuza bosses. In the scene where they are all gathered at the meeting table, one member objects to her promotion because she is of mixed race origin; she is Chinese-Japanese American. She becomes enraged and decapitates him with her sword in front of the entire council and issues a warning that if anyone dares to invalidate her as a leader, they will suffer the same fate. She declares, “so that you understand how serious I am, I’m going to say this in English: as your leader, I encourage you from time to time and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic if you’re unconvinced of a particular plan of action that I’ve decided is the wisest. Tell me so, but allow me to convince you and I promise right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo; except for the subject that was just under discussion. The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or my American heritage as a negativism, I will collect your head just like this person here. Now if any of your sons of bitches got anything to say, now is the time! I didn’t think so” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). When people discredit her because of her ethnicity, she gets offended. However, she is a resilient leader who forces all the men to comply to her demands, she will not hesitate to kill anyone who overtly express his or her discrimination against her ethnic roots. She wants everyone to be aware that she is appointed leader for a reason and she expects full respect (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). As a woman in a patriarchal society, being the sole leader, while men are forced to comply to her demands show that she is competent. She is quite the contrast to the Bride because she always dresses in beautiful kimonos and she wears makeup to look beautiful. However, even though she dresses like a female, she assumes masculine characteristics. She uses violence to threaten her henchmen because she wants people to fear her and admire her for her superiority.

            Although this entire film seems to have favoured the female perspective by the creation of counter stereotypes and masculinization of the female, the director Quentin Tarantino, is a male and possibly created this film through the “male gaze”. The counter argument that anti-feminists may make is that through the “male gaze”, the Bride is not the superior character, but rather Bill is because “the male’s role is the active one of advancing the story and making things happen” (Gilpatric, 2010, p. 734). The “female images serve as signs of visual pleasure for the male gaze” (Gilpatric, 2010, p. 734). Therefore, Tarantino used caricature to create the Bride to be a stunningly tall, slim, and beautiful woman who has overly exaggerated abilities to combat during violent encounters because it satisfies the male audience’s visual purposes. According to the “male gaze”, the Bride is driven because she was previously romantically involved with the villain (Gilpatric, 2010).It is because of Bill’s betrayal, that the Bride develops the animosity and determination to kill her enemies. Bill is responsible for creating the violent aspect of her. Through the “male gaze”, the Bride is portrayed as submissive and under the influence of Bill’s manipulation. In the beginning of the film, when she says to him that, “this is your baby too” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003), it indicates that she wants to fulfill the maternal role assigned to females. There is a proposition that “female offenders usually have had some relationship with their victim, who was often intimate, relative, or acquaintance (62%)” (Gilpatric, 2010, p. 737). Upon her discovery of her assumed miscarriage when she awakens from her coma, she is devastated and that further reinforces her contempt against the four people responsible for betraying her. Even when she hates Bill, she is driven to kill because of his betrayal. He is the motivating factor, and his betrayal is the drive that is propelling her forward in her mission (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). According to Gilpatric, violent females are “most often portrayed in a submissive role” (Gilpatric, 2010, p. 746) and the violent females are often romantically involved with the male villain (Gilpatric, 2010). Therefore, under the “male gaze” she is considered submissive because she is still under his influences. It is her weakness as a female that she succumbs to her emotions; her love for Bill allowed her to follow him as a disciple in the past and her hatred and resentment later on influences her to search for him to murder him for the everlasting impact he has created in her life.

               According to Mulvey, it is through this “male gaze” that females develop the “female gaze” and women objectify themselves simply to conform to societal norms to benefit men, and thereby reinforcing the “male gaze” (Abbott et al., 2005). Using this theory, the Bride does not exhibit signs of the “female gaze”. She never dresses herself up in sexy outfits or puts on any make up; instead, she always wears a jump suit, and she does not appear to wear heavy makeup. Her focus is not to satisfy the men, but to defeat them because she is angry by the fact that the man she was previously involved with betrayed her and even presumably murdered her child. Therefore, her refusal to conform to patriarchal standards of the “male gaze” and her lack of adherence to the “female gaze” fits her into the anti-essentialist theory.

                Anti-essentialists, proposes that “an active viewer who engages in her own meaning-making processes use what she sees on-screen to help construct her own identity” (Gilpatric, 2010, p. 734). Through the anti-essentialist approach, female viewers appreciate the strength of female heroes, that even when the odds are against them to succeed, they tend to prevail under all circumstances. Gender is merely a biased social construct that is ambiguous and unbalanced because it is a creation based on patriarchal stereotypical views (Abbott et al., 2005). Females can assume counter stereotypes, masculinization, and become a dame by witnessing the accomplishments that the Bride achieves due to her unrelenting pursuit for justice. The Bride makes it a priority to ensure that those that have previously caused her harm will not live. Although the Bride despises O-ren Ishii for attempting to murder her, she commiserates with her based on O-ren Ishii’s childhood. Because the Bride suffered a similar fate of losing her child, she realizes through O-ren Ishii that using violent tactics can assist her to become a stronger and highly recognizable individual. She looks up to O-ren Ishii because O-ren Ishii possesses the innate qualities of being a true leader. Under most circumstances, many will admit to defeat and become overwhelmed with depression over the loss of loved ones. However, watching O-ren Ishii bravely use her anger to motivate her to kill her murderer at age 11, allows the Bride to realize that she can also take revenge on her previous assailants. As O-ren Ishii moves on the become a renowned world-class assassin, the Bride also wants to make a statement, by sending the mutilated Sofie back to Bill to send him the message that she has defeated most of the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad and that she will eventually come and kill him too (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). 
               Just as O-ren Ishii influences the Bride to take revenge for her loss, the Bride also encouraged Vernita Green’s daughter to combat her when she grows up. After witnessing the brutality of her mother’s murder, Nikki is stunned with shock. The Brides says to her, “it was not my intention to do it in front of you, but you can take my word for it, your mother had it coming. When you grow up and you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting” (Kill Bill Volume One, 2003). The Bride is guiding Nikki to follow in her footsteps, by instructing her that she has the option of not having to sit back and feel helpless about her mother’s death; instead she can take action and challenge the individual responsible for her mother’s death. She can confront the person who causes her great misery. This is an empowering message because it shows that violent females are guiding other females to commit violence as a means to liberate themselves from the constraints of female gendered stereotypes and adapt the masculine method to confront situations. Violence is a physical representation of power and control; these women express violence to deliver the message that in order to be strong and avoid being undermined by other people, a female must demonstrate the physical ability to defend herself independently and display a lack of fear to ensure that perpetrators do not try to bully or take advantage of her. Therefore, anti-essentialists encourage females who feel helpless from a tragic event to assume the role of a violent female character. As a violent female character, she must kill those that come across as potential threats. As a violent female, she can be a leader that carries the responsibility of delivering the message to all female victims, that in order to defeat loss, one must belligerently take on counter stereotypes, masculinity, and be a brave dame.

               Many of the female characters in Kill Bill Volume One exhibit characteristics of counter stereotypes and undergo masculinization in order to become brave dames. The Bride suffers a great loss when her lover betrays her; as a result, she chooses to adopt the male gender role and use violence as a means of resolution. In order to successfully adopt the male gender role, she undergoes a process of masculinization, which requires her to disregard expectations from the “male gaze” and essentialist approach and physically transform her external appearance as well as her internal psyche to resemble socially defined male characteristics. She is also a brave dame because she follows her passion despite how difficult the circumstance may be; she competently masculinizes herself in order to face obstacles. She is an ethical character and stands up to justice, and can be seen as a friend. The intention behind creating the female characters in Kill Bill One was proposed to be a market-driven commodity (Galpatric, 2010); however, there are many aspects of the film that empower female viewers to see that a powerful female role model, such as the Bride, may undergo horrific tragedies, but due to her ability to adapt masculine traits and her resilience against defeat as a brave dame, proves that females can achieve equal and possibly greater accomplishments than males if given the opportunity and proper encouragement and motivation. O-ren Ishii is also a female leader that delivers the hidden message that a female can use her setbacks to motivate herself to conquer defeat; females can be leaders if they can prove to society that they are not weak or dependent. Overall, Kill Bill One is an empowering film that uses violence as a metaphorical means to demonstrate to female viewers that independence and will power can take a female to great lengths; females must have a goal and follow through without interruption, but also be driven by the love of family. 

References

Abbott, P., Wallace, C., & Tyler, M. (2005). An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspective (3^rd Ed.). New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Gilpatric, K. (2010). Violent Female Action Characters in Contemporary American Cinema. Sex Roles, 62(11/12), 734-746. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9757-7

Neroni, H. (2005). The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. New York: Suny Press.

Tarantino, Q. (Director). (2003). Kill Bill Volume One [Motion picture]. New York City, New    

York: Miramax Films.