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LaaF…Culture!

“random musings and unfounded theories with pop culture”

August 24, 2013 Hit Girl Grows Up

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If you liked “Kick Ass,” I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy its sequel.  Like the original, it is a mix of absurd comedy and gratuitous violence.  You won’t be disappointed if you like that sort of thing, and I like that sort of thing.  I also love Hit Girl.  Watching a little girl spit expletives at thugs while punching them in the face was transgressive and hilarious.  I guess I just love the unexpected.  So it is with “Kick Ass 2” that I loved Hit Girl again as well as the unexpected way her character developed this time.

I’m going to skip plot summary and analyze Hit Girl’s development in this film.  Beware of spoilers if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

“Kick Ass 2” picks up a few years after the first movie.  Hit Girl/Mindy now lives with her foster father Marcus and ditches school everyday to go back to her secret lair to train and keep her crimefighting skills up. When Marcus finds out she’s taken on the mantle of Hit Girl again, he grounds her and makes him promise not to suit up again.  Amazingly, she complies, and that’s when things get interesting. Forced to go school and act like a normal fifteen year old girl, Mindy faces a terrifying duo, the likes of which she never fought before as Hit Girl: hormones and Mean Girls.

Marcus helps his daughter assimilate by having her go to a sleepover with the most popular girls in school. Unfortunately, the most popular girls in school are always the mean ones who run the place like the mafia.  Mindy feels awkward in their presence as the MGs chat about clothes and make up and Union J, a 1 Direction boy band knock off.  The girls show her a video of moppy haired boys singing a cloying teenage love anthem and something happens.  She’s instantly smitten. The camera focuses on her face. She’s clearly uncomfortable, but instead of rejecting this new life of teenage trivia and spouting off some profanity, she loves it.  Welcome to the world of boys, Hit Girl.

There’s no going back either (until the last act).  Mindy quickly becomes the most popular girl in school. She translates her fighting style into a spot on the varsity dance team, which poses a threat to Queen Bee Brooke, the leader of the Mean Girls.  Brooke hatches a plan to put Mindy back in her place by ruining her first date.  Mindy’s date ditches her in the woods, forcing her to walk home alone, fists clenched against her sides, humiliated.

This was an interesting moment.  The scene in the woods appears quite sinister at first as if a series of thugs was about to attack. For a second, I even wondered if her date was attempting to rape her.  If either of these two scenarios occurred, Hit Girl would’ve been ready to handle it.  We would’ve gotten what we came to “Kick Ass 2” to see, some ass kicking.  But we get something much more mundane: teenage drama. Hit Girl is disarmed and defeated by a clique.  She could easily strike back and injure the popular kids, but she doesn’t know what to do. At one point, she asks Dave, “What should I do, cut out their tongues?”  She learns that while criminals intimidate through physical injury, high schoolers intimidate through humiliation.  You may get hit in the head in high school, but your enemies are really aiming to break your heart.

Watching Mindy/Hit Girl respond made me think about why Hollywood can’t get female superheroes right.  While fans have been clamoring for a Wonder Woman film for sometime, the closest we’ve come is a failed tv pilot.  Where are the Buffys of this generation?  Why can’t we see a superheroine dealing with the complexities of a normal life without crumbling into an ice cream eating emotional mess? Hollywood may think that female superheroes must have an irreconcilable dichotomy. Either they be female or they be superheroes.  They can’t be both.

The problem is, there is nothing to reconcile.  Everyone has different facets to who they are.  I was happy to see by the end of the film that Mindy doesn’t abandon her femininity to be Hit Girl.  She’s still a teenage girl, interested in boys, and still a crimefighter.  Her kiss with Kick Ass shows that she’s incorporated this new aspect of her life with the existing one.  It’s not one or the other but adding one to another.

In the end, Hit Girl faces the same problem many women face, the juggling of multiple identities.  Modern women struggle to be moms, wives, and employees.  They too wear a lot of hats or, as with the superhero genre, a lot of masks.  Hit Girl isn’t exempt and that’s a good thing.

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