Kill Bill

Tarantino begins with the logo from a 1970s Hong Kong production

company, Shaw Brothers, the curtain-raiser for innumerable fan references.

Appropriation, borrowing or paying ‘homage’ to other films.

• The main convention of Tarantino’s homage to martial arts films, Kill Bill, is playful borrowing.

• “I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages.” Quentin Tarantino – from an interview with Empire magazine.

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Borrowing• Nearly everything in Kill Bill operates in

part as homage to other films.

• For instance, the opening credit sequence and music evoke memories of Hong Kong’s legendary Shaw Brother’s films of the 1970s.

• Why does he do this?

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David Carradine

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Actors were chosen as previous roles they played and martial arts stories. David Carradine (above) plays Bill (in Kill Bill Volume II). Widely known for his role in the 1970s TV series ‘Kung Fu’. He is playing what seems to be the same flute!

Kung Fu TV series

KillBill

Sonny Chiba• He plays ‘Hatori

Hanzo’ – the character that makes the sword for The Bride.

• Chiba played the same character in the 1970s show ‘Shadow Warriors’.

• Hanzo was a Samurai warrior from the 16th century.

Gordon LiuPlays Pai Mei in Kill Bill –he starred in a martial arts show ‘The 36 Chambers of Shaolin fame”.

In his earlier films he fought a same character as in KIll Bill.

Some members of the audience will recognise the intertextual reference. In this way, Kill Bill is strikingly postmodern in the sense that it deliberately plays with the audience’s knowledge of its source material. For certain audience members, a large part of the pleasure of watching the films is therefore the sheer frission of recognizing the references.

Why is the inter textual casting post modern?

• Film fans can be thought of as film “connoisseurs.” Numerous websites exist in which fans of Kill Bill distinguish themselves into a type of social order based on who “gets” the references and who doesn't; who’s seen a particular other film and who hasn't and how much their cultural capital is rewarded.

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Playful approach to genre

• First fight scene: martial arts fight between two assassins who used to work together.

• Standard convention for many martial arts films from the 1970s

• Post modern twist in Kill Bill is that this otherwise standard violent confrontation takes place in a quite house on a quite suburban Pasadena street.

• Even the weapons used in this fight highlight the unusual juxtaposition between the “epic” struggle of assassins and the “mundane” setting: fire irons, kitchen knives and frying pans are all used.

• This makes it post modern.8

Playing with Genre• Legendary figures from

martial arts mythology have extraordinary powers, which film’s multiple retellings further exaggerate. Here, the big fight scene plays with Kiddo’s superhuman strength and thus makes a playful commentary on the genre itself.

Subversion of the martial arts genre

• Kill Bill takes many standard elements, but takes them to extremes

• Women are the featured fighters—including Kiddo, Gogo, and O-Ren. This is counter-typical for this genre.

• It has a non-standard musical score.

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Playful with genre• In the big 20 minute fight scene few martial arts

clichés or images are left out.• Either rhythm and phrasing, imagery, sound-effect,

visual effect, weaponry, props or tableaux. • In this sense, the fight itself is not meant to be

exciting or suspenseful as much as it is meant to be intellectually entertaining and even humorous with respect to the genre conventions and references.

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Parody• In the fight sequence, he juxtaposes

stereotypical female gender roles with extremely violent—even sociopath—behavior.

• He dresses Gogo as a Japanese schoolgirl and O-Ren in traditional kimono.

• Thus the violent actions of these female characters—among the most extreme in either film—are used to parody the gender roles themselves.

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Playing with GenreJapanese samurai films

from the 1970s on often used extreme blood effects.

Tarantino takes the visual convention to even greater excess, thus playing with

genre expectations.

Some choreographic devices now border on cliché. We've

seen so many fights in silhouette that this sequence

from Kill Bill can evoke memories from the entire

Intertextual references:The Searchers (1956)

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1967)

• The music played when Sentenza (Lee Van Cleef) appears for the first time ("Il Tramonto" by Ennio Morricone) is used in Kill Bill: Volume 2 when the Bride exits the church and finds Bill.

Intertextual references: A Professional Gun (1968)

Intertextual references: City Of The Living Dead (1980)

• A woman is buried alive, like The Bride in Kill Bill: Volume 2.

Intertextual references: Dead And Buried (1981)

Intertextual references: Gone in 60 Seconds (1974)

Intertextual references: Black Sunday (1977)

Intertextual references: Lady Snowblood (1973)

Intertextual references: Samurai Fiction (1998)

Intertextual references: Peanuts

Intertextual references: The Simpsons

• Shooting through the cereal is a reference to the episode of the Simpsons called "Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-D'oh-cious," which features an episode of Itchy and Scratchy called Resevoir Cats (a parody of Resevoir Dogs), guest directed by Quentin Tarantino. In the cartoon, Tarantino turns up and says : "What I'm trying to say with this cartoon is that violence is everywhere. It's, like, even in our breakfast cereal, man."

Intertextual references: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Intertextual references: Reservoir Dogs (1992)

• Extra twist:• You can think about

what Tarantino does that is different to Michael Winterbottom.

• You can include this in your essay.

HOMEWORK

• An essay: “How post modern is Kill Bill is compared to Pulp Fiction?”

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