For Roger Ebert, there is something deeply disturbing about watching a young girl engage in a violent action film. His review of the film Kick-Ass says so repeatedly. However, it seems that if she were to be engaged in a highly sexualized role, things might change a bit. It might be a different story. To me, there is something bizarre and almost Laura Mulvey-esque about the fact that he seems critically “okay” with seeing young women put in positions of sexual submission and yet bursts out with fire and brimstone tirades upon seeing a female action hero of the same general age.

For a man who has championed such highly controversial films as Pretty Baby (Louis Malle, 1978) and Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), two films that center at least partially around extremely young women playing roles that are severely inappropriate for their Real Life ages, it seems raucously hypocritical for Ebert to label a film as “morally reprehensible” based primarily upon the fact that a young girl within the film is involved in countless acts of violence, both visited upon her and acted out by her.

I contend that Ebert’s knee-jerk reaction to Kick-Ass comes primarily from a gender-based locale (although I will concede that age is certainly a factor), and that, while he may have taken the heavy violence in the film to task, he might not have had this kind of untamed response had the most charismatic and powerful figure in the film not been an 11-year-old girl.

To be perfectly honest, I take no issue with his enjoyment of the aforementioned films. They are, indeed, good films. However, based upon his Kick-Ass review that seemed more like an eruption than a piece of cinematic criticism, I have to wonder: what is it exactly about the representation of Chloe Moretz as Hit-Girl that nearly causes an aneurysm while Jodie Foster’s Iris remains safely within the boundaries of acceptability?

At first, I bought Ebert’s “unholy amounts of violence” argument. Kick-Ass is, indeed, insanely graphic. While the comic is moreso, the film is definitely beyond the pale, even if it is done within a very “comic book-like” manner. But then I realized something: Taxi Driver is an incredibly violent film. And it was especially violent for its time! And in 1976, Ebert called this film a “brilliant nightmare” and “compelling.”[1] So, Rog, what’s the deal, dude? What’s up with the double standard?

Using Laura Mulvey’s seminal text, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, and giving a brief study to ideas of scopophilia and feminist film theory’s discussion of the representation of women in film, we can, perhaps, see why the primary figure in Kick-Ass becomes so problematic for Ebert and several other major critics of the film. Regardless of her age or her uncouth tongue, she is not a figure who can be controlled. I believe that raises some issues for people in a way that no female superhero has ever really done before. These individuals chose to circumvent the more pro-active and narratively positive aspects of the Hit-Girl character in favor of pursuing the negatively charged arenas in which she dwelled. I won’t deny that Hit-Girl is a difficult character to come to terms with. She repudiates every single “sugar and spice and everything nice” argument that you could ever make for what little girls are “made of” and interprets femininity as tough-as-nails-independence. This certainly removes her from “object-to-be-looked-at” territory and places her firmly within the realm of “subject-that-acts-out” territory. And what the hell could be scarier than THAT?

Hit-Girl: Fear of a (Female) Pre-Pubescent Planet

Laura Mulvey writes,

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.[2]

Within the world of the superhero film, Mulvey’s discussion is extremely potent. If one were to do a visual archive of all the female figures within all the superhero films, it would be virtually impossible to locate a character who is not working within the spectrum of eroticism, male fantasy and “to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Like Superman can’t hang with the kryptonite and Batman has more psychological issues than a room full of PTSD patients, it is a well-known fact that, within superhero comic book culture, women have been consistently coded for the male gaze. Like the film industry, men have consistently been the main creators of the product so it is not a shocker that they draw and write what they want to see. Who wouldn’t? Additionally, the superhero-comic-reading-population has always been primarily male so the audience simply reflects the creators. We can clearly see the line of logic from production to consumption of women-as-object. While the female characters in these books seemed to be forces to be reckoned with, they were always coded for “erotic impact” first and character integrity second, thus diluting the power and impact of the given character. OK, so the male superheroes and villains are not reasonable representations of the average male either, but they are posited in such a way that they retain all power and are seen as Powerful Figures first and attractive/sexually charged second.

But things change. And sometimes when they change, they change drastically. I believe that in the case of Kick-Ass, this is precisely what happened.

Kick-Ass, the comic book is an entirely different monster than Kick-Ass, the motion picture. While I am certain that it would make Mr. Ebert and his supporters cringe at the thought, the comic book is actually a great deal more violent and delves even further into the realms of misanthropy than the film ever does. At the same time, the narrative scope of the comic travels squarely within a space that all of the characters share equally. It is a space that, incidentally, is more about adolescence, growing up and questioning ideas of violence and modern media culture than anything else.

The problem is that Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s literary Kick-Ass is not Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass. Just as in any cinematic adaptation from a literary work, there are changes made.  Pieces are added or detracted, transitional elements reworked and most times there are major conciliations made in regards to the character or thrust of the film’s focus in comparison to the originating text. The filmed version of the comic book, while attempting to bring as much of the written/drawn version to the screen as possible, did not do so because of one simple rule: the comic book was the literary version and belonged to Millar/Romita, Jr, et al; the movie was the filmed version and therefore a product of its authors.

Most of the general public operates under the assumption that “the book is better than the movie.” Primarily, the genesis of this comes from the fact that film has always been seen as literature’s poor and trashy cousin; a media form less worthy of cultural esteem. It has been this way since its birth. Thus, when people argue about the book being better, it generally comes mostly out of sociological training and not necessarily from actual personal experience with the literary text. The problem is, we are not instructed on how to appreciate these media forms on their own merits, thus they must be held up against each other. So, when one is adapted from another’s narrative, it is only natural that the “book is better” argument gets raised. While this aphorism is used often, it is also overused, tired, and extremely lazy. Each media is created and consumed through individual means and while they may share a story and even themes, it is much wiser to appreciate each piece upon its own value and not use the parent text as a jumping off place for criticism.

Millar’s Kick-Ass world will not be the bulk of what is discussed here, due to the fact that the things that he involved were of another ilk. From my perspective, even Vaughn’s Kick-Ass was a little bit hijacked by some of his actors. But I believe that once he saw what was happening, he went with it, and decided to amp it up a little, making it the picture we see today. I also believe that while Millar’s work was a total collaboration between himself, John Romita, Jr (artist), Tom Palmer (inker), and Dean White (colorist), Matthew Vaughn’s film was also communally created by him, co-screenwriter Jane Goldman, and the entirety of the cast but primarily Aaron Johnson (Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass) and Chloe Moretz (Mindy Macready/Hit-Girl). This “hijacking” as it were became more pronounced when it became clear that not only was the film seized from going the direction in which it was “supposed to go,” but through this accident of fate it essentially laid the focus of the film cleanly between the crosshairs of Chloe Moretz’s 11-year-old superheroine, Hit-Girl.

I say “accidental” due to the fact that the story is, for all intents and purposes, supposed to be equally shared between several characters and the central figure (and voice-over narrator), Kick-Ass aka Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson). However, it becomes stridently clear at a certain juncture within the film that this is really Hit Girl’s show and Kick-Ass is simply her foil. That said, having this be her film, it takes this piece to a whole different level and what was a simple film about a high-school loser trying to be a superhero and the trials and tribulations that occur in a somewhat Bizarro World-type set-up has now become one of the first films to feature a strong female superhero going about the business in a particularly hardcore manner, without being displayed with any sense of real eroticism.

Hit-Girl is, in fact, a cinematic disruption. She is, pure and simple, the antidote to the scopophilic gaze which Mulvey discusses in her article. While she may be on display, it is for no other reason than to reconfigure a kind of new type of feminine power structure. This interruption in the traditionally pleasured male-gaze is anarchic and insanely potent, causing the more-than-slight discomfort of Roger Ebert and numerous other critics.

Mulvey writes,

[t]he cinema offers a number of possible pleasures. One is scopophilia. There are instances in which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as, in the reverse formation, there is pleasure at being looked at…the cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect. The conventions of mainstream film focus attention on the human form.[3]

If the audience finds pleasure in looking at Hit-Girl, one would hope it is not for her “form.” She is not rendered sexually attractive, she is posited in the manner that one would hope an 11-year-old girl would be: generally child-like. When out of costume, she has pigtails, scrunches her face up at things she dislikes, and talks about being rewarded with bowling and ice-cream sundaes for succeeding in tasks well-done.

Does it matter that those tasks involve wearing bulletproof vests and being shot with high-level guns? Maybe, maybe not. The basic idea is still there: she’s a kid.

Can we say the same about Iris in Taxi Driver? Not so much. Nor can we dispense with the fact that Violet in Pretty Baby is still in for a life of prostitution, even as we watch her engage in childlike behavior. And as for the countless superheroines in the cinema…well, I believe that the casting of Malin Akerman, an actress in her late 20’s/early 30’s, to play a middle-aged retired superhero in Zack Snyder’s version of Watchmen(2009) tells you all you need to know (if her exceedingly tight and sexy latex outfits didn’t).

These are displayed female figures, there for the looking at, the pleasure of their characters isn’t about their strength as heroes or their integrity or their interactions with the storylines at all but based on the experience of looking at them and, indeed, visually possessing them to a certain degree. This is due to the eroticism they have been endowed with which is innately tied into a “fetishistic scopophilia [which] builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself.”[4]

As a character, Hit-Girl exists almost entirely to frustrate that kind of satisfaction. This character does serve as a source of gratification, but it is in an entirely different manner than your standard young female character or female superhero, primarily because of the removal of the sexual element.

Blogger Kate Harding at Shapely Prose said it best when she was discussing Hit Girl’s presence and the construction of action films. She states that she generally hates action movies where women are the protagonists or “asskickers-in-chief.”

They’ve never appealed to me much, probably because they tend to be sold on the fuckability of the heroine more than the relatability of her; the primary market is still young, straight and male, after all, so a female lead is drawn to evoke fantasies…And because it’s all aimed at the same young, straight, male market, this doesn’t really go both ways. While I certainly don’t mind looking at Matt Damon or Clive Owen or Jason Statham fighting bad guys, I am generally not thinking “God, that was so totally badass, I want to fuck you right now”…If I like the film enough…then I am thinking, much like the young, straight men in the audience, “God, that was so badass, I want to be you right now.”[5]

Harding’s deconstruction of the viewership of the action genre is integral to the manner in which Hit-Girl is satisfying to the audience. She is, like any other superhero or action hero, an audience surrogate. Harding’s discussion in regards to fantasy vs. idolization is of particular value in this instance. Were we treading in Halle Berry/Catwoman waters or even dealing with Anna Paquin/Rogue situations, we would likely be experiencing a large percentage of fanboys/males drooling and female audience members frustrated once again at the over-sexifying of potentially powerful characters. It sounds essentialist, but if you ask most women who like superhero films, you will probably get more positive responses for the male characters than the female, having nothing to do with sexual attraction. I would much prefer to be or hang out with Professor Xavier or Batman than any of the female counterparts. They simply contain more substance. It goes part-and-parcel with Mulvey’s argument and Harding has clearly had her own experiences with the male gaze, as she notes above. Objectification is a nasty bugger. However, this type of reaction is not what occurs with Hit-Girl, with men or with women. And it is due to her lack of erotic exhibition. Because she is not eroticized, she is like a pint-sized icon for all members of the audience to enjoy together (in a somewhat wholesome way, if you disregard the foul language and violence), making this character’s gender-stereotype-destruction fairly radical.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to infer that this film is bringing people together in some hippie-dippie communal-type way. But it is creating a space in which gender is taking a back seat to character, and in many ways this is a big step. Sure, the excessive violence tends to make Hit-Girl much more problematic due to her youthfulness. But it is her gender that drew the ultimate amounts of attention and if the audience were now gender-blind for their female superhero, it’s no small feat that has been accomplished. As Julia Rhodes of the California Literary Review wrote, “Would critics be as upset if Hit-Girl were Hit-Boy? I doubt it…I can appreciate a girl who knows what she wants and gets it. I still spent parts of the movie chuckling uncomfortably with widened eyes, but I have a love for a girl who outperforms the boys.”[6]

A Superhero of One’s Own: Is Hit-Girl a Feminist Figure?

There has been much talk in and around Hit-Girl and whether or not she is a feminist figure. Many writers have found her to be quite troublesome in this arena, and I cannot help but agree with them. It is far easier to say that she is within the spectrum of feminist iconography due to her character’s basic skeleton structure. Hit Girl has numerous qualities (independence, strong survival skills, high intelligence) that female characters in films are generally lacking and she is presented in such a way that is not predicated upon some kind of sexual promise. But the real issue resides in the fact that we must differentiate between a strong female character and a feminist figure. They do not always mean the same thing.

Reading the reviews of this film from online magazines, newspapers and blogs, one can easily decipher the writers who qualify for the fandom category and those who are clearly part of the critical thinker section. While both groups have sincere and wonderful qualities and are valid sources for types of media scholarship, one is clearly a more problematic zone to operate from, due to personal bias. However, it is entirely possible to be a fanboy/girl and be a critical thinker (I consider myself part of this hybrid group), even if it is an extremely difficult location to exist in. It takes a great deal of training, and is one that I still struggle with on a daily basis. When dealing with a film like Kick-Ass, it is of the utmost importance that one attempts to balance these two sides properly and not just gush all over the page. There are too many dilemmas present for it to be treated in such a simplistic fashion.

In an article in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott discuss what they see as the new trend of hyper-violent young women in cinema. Together, they attempt to come to a conclusion in regards to whether or not these images and storylines are in any way, shape, or form forward-thinking. Dargis states, “Part of me thinks the uptick in bloody mama and kinder-killer movies is about as progressive as that old advertising pitch for Virginia Slims cigarettes, meaning not very. You’ve come a long way, baby, only now you’re packing a gun and there’s blood on your hands (or teeth).”[7] And she’s got a solid point. How does putting a weapon in a woman’s hand or placing a young girl in a violent situation transition them into becoming feminist icons? Just because Uma Thurman’s character in Kill Bill survived every single level of hell and then a few more doesn’t make her a feminist figure. She was still a revenge-driven former assassin who enacted hideous violence upon folks she was involved with. The desire to survive and the competence and know-how do not a feminist figure make. Add hyper-violent behavior into the mix and you’ve got some very big issues to contend with.

In many of the articles that I read, several pro-Kick-Ass writers mentioned the fact that if Hit-Girl had, in fact, been Hit-Boy, there would have been no controversy around the fact that she swore like a sailor and took a physical battering like a UFC champ. In this, I agree 100%. However, I would like to turn the tables in a very similar fashion and think about something. Many of these same reviewers saw Hit-Girl as a feminist figure. This was due to her physical dexterity, tenacity, independence, and uncanny ability to kick the shit out of men ten times her size and at least three times her age. Essentially, they based much of it on her physical performance which is narratively linked with intense acts of violence. They saw her survival instinct and intelligent battle tactics as symbols of Female Warrior-ness and not simply what they were: getting out of there alive and getting a job done. I submit to you, much in the “if Hit-Girl had been Hit-Boy” way, that watching a male figure engage in the very same behaviors does not make us consider, for one moment, that he is a symbol (on a larger scale) of Man At His Best and Someone We Should Look Up To.

Feminism is tricky, see. When I think feminist figures, I’m not sure I think a chick with a gun.

If I did, Ripley from the Alien series would totally be my goddess (even though she’s also tricky as she has feminist thematics running through her character arc, but that’s a whole other discussion!). Realistically, there is no shame in being a strong female character and THEY TOO are direly needed. But it is a huge and largely dangerous step for people to make the jump from kick ass, amazing and strong female character to Feminist Character. The problem these days is that the less boundaries that we have in films, the less of a gauge we seem to have to judge these things. While this sounds like I am advocating censorship or some conservative nonsense, I am not. The less classy our violence and gore gets, the less ability we have to see the difference between…well, anything. If I’m going to sound conservative at all, I’ll say this: in order to renegotiate feminism in the cinema, we are going to have to renegotiate our exploitation films, and Kick-Ass has many attributes that qualify it for exploitation.

In addition to our gauges being screwy due to our films being less classy, we have another major issue that can cause the feminist/strong female mix-up: women get shitty film roles on a regular basis. As Manohla Dargis says, “the American big screen has hasn’t been very interested in women’s stories, violent or not, in recent decades, an occasional Thelma, Louise and Jodie Foster character notwithstanding. There are other exceptions, of course, usually romantic comedies that are so insipid and insulting…”[8] So, essentially, if a woman isn’t being eroticized and sexualized and she’s not in a crappy romantic comedy, then…? Truly, there are precious few roles in any other category. Thus, this new “trend” that Dargis and Scott are discussing is fairly radical in what it is doing for femininity- but not in such a positive way.

Is it the violence? Yeah, partially. I don’t think that there is anything empowering as a woman about the ability to kill, maim or torture another human being. Do I like watching it on-screen? In my films? HELL YES!!! But that’s fantasy. It’s a fictional world. I find that there is a severe delineation between a woman of power who I recognize as a feminist character or simply a really great and strong female character who kicks a whole lotta ass. But I’ll admit: I don’t always want that to be the case. I just know that is the actuality of the situation. My fangirl side wants to claim all sorts of people as feminist figures like Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride from Kill Bill or Hit-Girl from Kick Ass.

But I look at them again and use my better judgment. While they retain qualities of feminism, and perhaps in a different narrative they are feminist figures (post Kill Bill? What’s life like for Beatrix?), in the diegetic slices of pie we are given, they are simply extremely strong and vital female characters. They are just as worthy of respect and admiration, but they are more problematized due to certain aspects given to their respective characters within the storylines.

It is slightly disturbing to have Hit-Girl claimed by so many as a feminist figure. It seems to me that we must be really troubled and really out there in the desert dying of thirst when we must claim an 11-year-old child who presumably hasn’t even menstruated as a symbol of women’s strength and endurance for All Time. Call me crazy, but when I think feminist, I think Emma Goldman. I think bell hooks. I think Ida Lupino.

I think Annie Sprinkle. Unconventional folks, sure, but still…they are all feminist icons in my book. And Hit Girl is exactly that: a girl. Her name says everything. So tell me- why we are claiming her in the name of feminism again?

Hit-Girl is not acting with any socio-political intent within the film and just because she is not sexualized or placed on erotic display like other superheroines does not make her part of the Feminist Club either. You do not become a feminist character simply because of what you are not it is what you are and Hit-Girl is a character that should not be burdened with the strain of Feminist Character. It places too much stress on what she represents and reveals a blatant refusal to look at the violence within the text and the actual narrative and her role within it which is far more important.

However, Hit-Girl’s aggressive presence in the film may simply be a way of garnering commercial success and playing into a new scheme of films and we might have to come to terms with that, making her even less potentially feminist-y than before. Dargis worriedly states,

It’s tricky whenever a woman holds a gun on screen…I complain about the representations of women, but I’m more offended when in movie after movie there are no representations to eviscerate, when all or most of the big roles are taken by men, and the only women around are those whose sole function is, essentially, to reassure the audience that the hero isn’t gay. The gun-toting women and girls in this new rash of movies may be performing the same function for the presumptive male audience: it’s totally “gay” for a guy to watch a chick flick, but if a babe is packing heat- no worries, man!

If Dargis is right, and she very well could be, Hit-Girl’s character is actually quite damaging, as it is playing right into Hollywood’s grubby hands. With the recent slew of films that have come out that have featured Hit-Girl-like characters (Hanna, Sucker Punch), this worries me. Especially since people are jumping to the Feminist Character title and not looking at the situation critically.

In conclusion, I think I will have to agree with Carrie Nelson of the blog Gender Across Borders. While I don’t think that Hit-Girl is a feminist character, “the idea of superhero and action movies creating space for girls to play aggressive, powerful characters is innovative and refreshing.”[9] As a film, Kick-Ass is action-based and certainly not as meaning-heavy as the comic, but it contains some features that give it credibility. Hit-Girl exemplifies many qualities that adult women (and men, for that matter) should possess: self-reliance, determination, a certain dedication to improving one’s abilities. For many viewers, this was incredibly important, as I read in the comments section of a great many blogs and reviews. Realistically, there is no reason in the world that she cannot serve as a model in this respect. But to confuse her with feminist iconography would be a falsity and not one that an 11-year-old who drinks hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows would want; no matter how well she can handle that set of knives.