Guest post: Rachel O

Warning: Big Spoilers For Kick-Ass Ahead

This weekend I went to go see Kick-Ass.  I went to go see it for a couple reasons.  First I’ve been a fan of superhero action films since I was dragged to X-Men when I was 16.  Second, articles about the character of Hit Girl, an eleven year old assassin, were popping up everywhere, something that’s increased 100 fold since it opened on Friday.  The response to the foul-mouthed and hyper violent adolescent has been overwhelming, with everyone chiming in to voice their opinion.  However, while I found the purple haired killer plenty problematic, there were some issues I had with the other women in the film, that I haven’t yet seen addressed.

Kick-Ass has only a handful of female characters.  This is the doing of the original author of the comic the film was based on, Mark Millar, when he decided the original main characters of Hit Girl and Big Daddy, were “…not lead characters…too cartoonish…”  Two of the three mothers are dead (one dies of a brain aneurism in the first five minutes, the other dies of a drug overdose in a comic book panel.)  Red Mist’s mom, the only one who’s alive, has two lines, and is never present, despite the fact that many scenes take place in her home.  A final scene shows the family penthouse in lockdown in preparation for a final battle, but the mom is mysteriously absent – I guess she was out that day?

The main character, Dave (Kick-Ass), is just a quiet nerd at school, who has a crush on Katie (the only female character besides Hit Girl who gets sufficient screen time.)  When he returns to school after being stabbed, Katie offers to go out with him – it’s later revealed she’s being so nice to him all of a sudden because she thinks he’s gay.  Dave plays it up, taking advantage of the fact that her guard is down, going over to her house, helping her apply spray tan (while she’s nearly naked), and sleeping in her bed.

Katie spends all her free time volunteering at a needle exchange – this is where things get weird.  Apparently there, she met Rasul, a big drug dealer who appears to be in his thirties.  The writing is so convoluted that it’s difficult to tell what exactly her connection to Rasul was, but  from what I gathered they used to date.  (If you got a different impression, please let me know in the comments.)  Nothing is really fleshed out in this storyline – Katie tells him there’s this asshole Rasul, and so Kick-Ass shows up at the apartment to intimidate him.  He’s in way over his head, but luckily Hit Girl and Big Daddy show up to save the day, and the girl brutally kills everyone in the apartment (including a prostitute running for the door, but that’s another post, for another day.)

After that, Katie tells Dave she hasn’t heard from Rasul in a while, and he smiles.  (I guess when an entire apartment of people are stabbed, shot, and tazed, it doesn’t make the local paper?)   Dave continues to hang out with Katie, who has admitted she has a crush on Kick-Ass.  He comes in through her window one night, dressed as the non-superhero superhero, but she freaks, thinking it’s an intruder and grabs a baseball bat.   He takes off his mask, revealing that he, Dave, is in fact Kick Ass, and oh, by the way, not gay.  Lucky Dave, Katie doesn’t feel upset or betrayed by his “I pretended to be gay to see you naked and sleep in your bed” and instead invites him to stay the night.

The women in the film are never shown without a man present (even when Katie is alone at the Needle Exchange, she’s on the phone with Dave.)  When Kick-Ass and Big Daddy are caught by the bad guys, and their execution is being broadcast on the internet, Katie’s friend hugs one of Dave’s friends at the comic book store.  The fact that she’s horrified, distraught, and upset, looking for comfort, ends up being played for laughs.

In the end, Katie simply exists to serve as a vessel for Kick-Ass to get out of the superhero biz, because HE NOW HAS SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR!  While searching for a still from the film of Katie to accompany this post, I checked the official site, IMDB, and Yahoo – not one picture includes any female, with the exception of Hit Girl.  A few pages of Google Image Search yielded the same result – nothing.  (The above image is a screengrab I took from the trailer.)  There’s no real dimension to any of the female characters – either they get no screen time, or when they do, it’s either cold blooded killer or doting girlfriend.  This movie certainly did not pass the Bechdel Test.

The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies created by Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency and originally posted at Feminist Frequency.