Bill: Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S”, that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears – the glasses, the business suit – that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He’s weak… he’s unsure of himself… he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.
Bill’s speech about his idol superhero is one that leaves an indelible mark on a person watching Kill Bill. There’s vulnerability throughout the scene as Beatrix lies painfully injured on the couch while Bill tries to patiently give the answer to the question he has created for the Kill Bill volumes: why did he attempt an assassination on Beatrix? Unlike some movies when the antagonist blatantly tells viewers why he did such a terrible thing, Bill lures the viewer in and keeps them on the edge of their seat.
All superheroes have weaknesses; it just takes time for a person to figure out this flaw. If a superhero did not have a weakness, there would be no story, no adrenaline, nothing to keep a fanatic waiting to see if their idol will conquer once again or be ripped to shreds and never see the light of another day. On the flip side, all villains have weaknesses as well, but unlike superheroes, viewers seem to know their vulnerability from the beginning. We, as viewers, know what it takes in order to destroy the one person we dislike the most in the story that has us engrossed, but it takes time for the protagonist to realize his enemy’s weakness.
Bill is known for being the villain of the film. In cold blood we watched him murder the mother of his unborn child. Bill is the antagonist of the entire Kill Bill series; his presence is everywhere, whether it be a memory or his actual body, finding Bill is the ultimate journey for the protagonist Beatrix Kiddo. Unlike many villains, a viewer does not find out Bill’s tragic flaw from the very beginning. A person could figure that his weakness was love for Beatrix, but that is only from context clues; why else would he decide to murder her at her own wedding rehearsal? Throughout the volumes we discover that Bill’s weakness is more precise than the act of love; as fans learn that Superman’s weakness is kryptonite, viewers learn that Bill’s kryptonite is blondes.
In all of Tarantino’s films the lurking evil is not necessarily a person, but an object centered around a certain color, white. Beatrix Kiddo throughout the Kill Bill series has white-blonde hair, a fascination of Bill’s that his brother, Budd, admits to Bill’s girlfriend as they confront one another. “I never saw nobody buffalo Bill the way she buffaloed Bill.” The white weakness not only shows up in Kill Bill, but also makes its presence in Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, and Death Proof.
Tarantino does not make his underlying connection to all of his films obvious, but if a person views these films closely he/she would see how Tarantino creates a flaw in his characters so that whenever the color white comes into play, the character ends up weaker than they were before. In Pulp Fiction Mia Wallace is introduced by snorting a line of cocaine in her bathroom; her addiction to the “white lady” eventually caused her to overdose and almost die. Subsequently, Mr. Bennett, a minor antagonist in Django Unchained, is known for his white supremacy and attempted formation of the KKK; his extreme belief in white power ultimately causes his death from blindly viewing the world. The Australian in Death Proof makes it a point that the car she is going to test drive is white, this white car attracts the psycho car killer and is able to overcome the power of his death proof stunt car, causing the psycho to lose the battle of car power and his life. The white lady, white power, and a white car – three objects in three different movies that cause the demise of a character in Tarantino’s films. White is the kryptonite for these characters, and a person can only wonder why Quentin Tarantino has a fascination with the white downfall.
Typically, white is the color known to resemble purity and peace, not downfall and destruction. In an old western film the “good” cowboys always wore white hats, while the “bad” cowboys wore black and rode black horses. Looking at Tarantino’s white demise, it is almost as if he is going against the understanding that white is “good” and turning it around so that white is evil. His movies seem as if Tarantino has his own color synthesia associated with white. Synthesia is a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. (Duffy, 1) It is as if when Tarantino sees the color white, his senses are stimulated to bad feelings, a smell he does not like or a sound that makes him cringe.
As Gilbert Keith Chesterton once said, “White is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.” Tarantino paints white in his films to resemble extreme love, extreme power, extreme drugs, and an extreme thought process. Quentin Tarantino’s critique of the human race is that if a person gets too extreme and caught up in their white passion, they will eventually fall.
1.) Duffy, Patricia Lynne. Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens: How Synesthetes Color Their Worlds. New York: Times, 2001. Print.
That's 30 minutes away...I'll be there in 10 