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and the concept of ethnicity as designated as difference is essentially
meaningless. As the foreign is everything that is “not I,” and I do not even know
myself, everything is foreign and the concept is thus void. Or, I can argue the
complications between genre and ethnicity consistently invert and subvert
themselves to the point at which meaning is nonexistent. There is only
meaningless intertextuality and surface connections. I may cite Ezra Pound with
a simple “I cannot make it cohere.” But these all seem like cop outs.
What I can say is that the murders of dozens of Japanese sword fighters,
Oren Ishii, her mother, her father, Boss Tanaka, Vemita Green, Budd, Pai Mei, a
groom-to-be, three friends of the wedding couple, a Texan reverend and his
wife, a piano player, one hospital worker named Buck “who is here to Fuck,” his
one client, and Bill are graphic, violent, and painful. Yet, death, particularly
when administered by the hands of Beatrix Kiddo, is usually associated with
honor and obligation. And for those enemies who are most worthy, there is
regret, loss, and mourning. Their deaths are never meaningless.
Columbia College Chicago
Works Cited
Heather Momyer
Boelhower, William Q. Through a Glass Darkly: Ethnic Semiosis in American
Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hogue, W. Lawrence. Race, Modernity, Postmodernity: A Look at the History and the
Literature of People of Color Since 1960s. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1996.
Kaminsky, Stuart M. “Kung Fu Film as Ghetto Myth.” Movies as Artifacts: Cultural
Criticism of Popular Film. Eds. Michael T. Marsden, John G. Nachbar, and Sam L.
Grogg, Jr. Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1982. 137-145.
Kill Bill: Volume 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A.
Fox, Daryl Hannah, and David Carradine. Miramax, 2003.
Kill Bill: Volume 2. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Uma Thurman, Michael Madsen, Daryl
Hannah, and David Carradine. Miramax, 2004.
Newitz, Annalee. “Magical Girls and Atomic Bomb Sperm: Japanese Animation in
America.” Film Quarterly. 49.1 (1995): 2-15.
Price, Shinobu. “Cartoons from Another Planet: Japanese Animation as Cross-Cultural
Communication.” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures. 24.1&2 (2001):
153-169.