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The extreme violence and bloodshed of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill-Volumes 1 and 2 (2003, 2004) makes it a Medea-level Greek tragedy with dramatic familial motifs that parallel the themes of Euripides' and Sophocles' classical Theban plays. To consider if or why Kill Bill's antihero Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) is justified in her murderous revenge rampage, I analyze the film as a Freudian Family Romance inspired by Greek tragedy. In this case, a female "son" seeks Oedipal-revenge on her primary patriarch for attempting to kill her and her unborn daughter, and for turning the rest of her Deadly Viper Squad "family" against her. In this Family Romance, the prodigal "son" (Beatrix) also undergoes a complete identity transformation. She divests herself of her girlishness to come of age as her dueling fathers' (Bill and Pai Mei) warrior son, and this grants her gender fluidity that ultimately yet ironically allows her to become a mother. In addition, she masters the superior Asian training methods of Pai Mei, her preferred father figure, and thus "becomes Asian" herself. Further, she engages in an incredible amount of violence to acquire bloody revenge on her entire Viper family who tried to massacre her. This results in her successful Oedipal-revenge against Bill. Beatrix's ability to transcend her gender constraints and her racial identity, and to enact such gory violence-an act typically considered to be a masculine power and privilege, dating back to Greek mythology yet still a twenty-first century cinematic standard-makes her the ultimate postfeminist antihero.
Most classic Greek tragedies begin with a gravely wronged and often wounded protagonist, who then embarks on an epic journey to rectify his plight through battle and revenge. Claire Henry highlights the film's connection to that tradition in her essay about postfeminist film revenge fantasies. She explains: "The issue is perhaps that Kill Bill is not just a revenge story, or even a narrative of resurrection and transformation-Tarantino also seeks to make it a narrative of redemption," meaning that Tarantino needs his viewers to approve of Beatrix's blood-splattered warpath (107). If Beatrix has set out to "redeem" something, it is compensation for the child she believes has been murdered, and to right all of wrongs done to her. Yet, the definition of "righting these wrongs" is the...
