Kick-Ass KICKS ASS!!

Cafe Society
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Well, as you can probably imagine I was already aware of this, and in fact never suggested that depiction equals endorsement. My complaint is that the Hit-girl scenes were seriously disturbing. Her violence and lack of a reaction to carnage don’t make her a spoof of child super-heroes just because she wears a goofy costume. What I am seeing is a gross caricature of child soldiers.

The fact that she spews “cool” one-liners and has amazing special effects and choreography to back her up does not change this, nor does it make it less disturbing.

I have not read the comic book that this film is based on, but I have read a lot of comic books and comic book violence does not look anything like this. Hit-girl is like a disturbingly realistic child version of Johnny The Homicidal Maniac.

The Powerpuff girls are themselves an obvious satire and spoof, much more so than Kick-Ass. It’s simply not feasible to hold them up as a model that this movie is satirizing.

It is a satire of American media (or at least American dominated film and television) much more so than it is a satire about comic books. The comic book connection is there, yes, evident if rather shallow, but the fact that we have a heroine who swears like a sailor and commits carnage like no other child in the history of entertainment is a pretty large indicator that something else is prowling around here.

This movie raises many more important questions beyond the facile and simplistic comic book related ones. Like, why is this kind of hideous violence and vulgarity OK, but something as harmless as a nipple is utterly taboo? Is it really appropriate to become desensitized to such graphic violence, and has it gotten so bad that we only take notice when it’s committed by a child?

These sort of questions strike me as far more interesting than the ones raised by yet another comic book spoof. The movie clearly has its merits but that is not what I am discussing. I am perfectly willing to admit that this is a better movie than nonsense like The Dark Knight (which, excepting the amazing Joker, was a case study in how to make a sloppy movie). What I was curious about was why there was such limited reaction to the (disgusting) sight of a child soldier mutilating and killing rooms full of men. Even reviews in popular media (like Time magazine) kind of glossed over this aspect, but it hit me like a truck.

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I don’t disagree (and I think you have stated it extremely well). What I am saying is that this movie has scenes I found extremely disturbing, and I would have expected to see more discussion/concern about the elements I outlined. Ebert, who seems to share my reaction to these scenes and who did state his objections while praising other aspects of the film, was savaged and mocked up-thread for making valid points.

123

I see where you’re coming from, but do you realise what a massive old fuddy-duddy you’re coming across as?

Kick-Ass is a satire on the entire Superhero Genre- what would happen if an average person decided to become a costumed crime fighter? They’d get their ass kicked. Repeatedly. And almost certainly knifed and probably shot, too. And if someone took the idea of becoming a superhero seriously and tried to go about it in a “realistic” way, then they would end up like Big Daddy, who’s become so engrossed in his Mission To Fight Evil that he’s moulded his own daughter- a child- into an cold-blooded but completely absurd and over-the-top killer.

There’s no “satire on the American media” in the film. It’s purely about why the entire superhero genre is A Bit Silly.

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I’m almost with you on this, but not quite. Yes, I found the violence very disturbing. I watched the “green-band” trailers and didn’t notice the R rating (my fault). I’m not usually a blood-and-gore type of person, I hated Kill Bill, so needless to say, the violence of this movie shocked me. As you say, it’s not just a little girl killing a man in a given scene, it’s grotesque slicing, blood-spurting, limb-amputating badness. But I also think that’s the point. What I took away from the movie is that superheroes are actually quite bad people, to put it simplistically. We watch superhero movies all the time and fantasize about vigilante justice, but this movie seems to show just how horribly wrong that can go.

I also think you have a point with violence being more acceptable than sex in American media…but the way to fix that is not to have the 11-year-old have sex. That’s just wrong, and if that doesn’t disturb you just as much as the violence, then I don’t really get where you’re coming from.

As a last note, I do want to say that I actually did think this movie was quite good. I think it was well-crafted, had excellent characters, and a rare message. Had I not had a panic attack because of the violence, I might have enjoyed it. With distance, I am able to appreciate it more than I did while watching it. (I definitely wouldn’t go see it again though.)

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Really now, I am fuddy duddy because I am disturbed by images of ultra-graphic ultra-violence by and to a preteen? I submit I am not the one with the problem here.

On the contrary, this film is rather more than that. You appear to have considered it at face value only. At face value yes, this is a superhero satire, but that’s not all it is. To me this is also a glaring commentary on pop culture media and its biases - American film and TV as I suggested earlier.

Kick-ass is not anything new. Superheroes have been satirized just as ably if not better in films like Mystery Men. There is no shortage of movies in which kids kick ass, like Home Alone or those ridiculous kiddie ninja films.

What Kick-ass does is present us with new combinations of kiddie violence and vulgarity in a comedy. I am as disturbed by these depictions as I would be if I saw a film in which a pre-teen gets raped graphically and explicitly for the sake of comedy. If you think Kick-Ass delivers an excess of violence and vulgarity merely to satirize the superhero genre, then I think you are missing out on other important discussions (suggested previously).

Obviously I am not calling on little Chloe to perform sexual acts. I was trying to point out that we would consider preteen nudity and sex in such context completely unacceptable, yet we have much less trouble with graphic violence and profanity under identical circumstances. The public greedily gobbles up media containing extreme violence and profanity even when it is (covertly) marketed to children, but anything involving a female nipple is considered dangerous and harmful. This is rather concerning.

I too think this movie has value. I appreciated that it was a LOT deeper than just a superhero spoof and that it made me (if not everyone, clearly) question my reactions to what I was seeing. Nonetheless, this film employs brutal shock tactics and I was surprised to hear so little discussion about them specifically. That’s all.

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Yes, you are, IMHO. Because you miss the point of having a preteen committing said ultra-graphic ultraviolence in a comedy. It’s not a serious movie. It’s Silly and Absurd. It is Silly and Absurd for an 11 year old girl to be dual-wielding 9mm handguns, busting out the Wire-Fu, and single-handedly wiping out an army of Bad Guys. It’s not real. It can’t be real. It’s a live action cartoon. Similarities have been noted with the Adam West Batman series, which I think are warranted. Respectfully, I think you’re reading far too much into the film.

Honestly, I think you’re reading way, way too much into it. Not everything has to be Deep & Meaningful With Hidden Complexity no matter how much people want it to be sometimes.

Here’s the thing: Profanity is harmless. We might not like hearing kids calling each other “Motherfucker” but at the end of the day it’s meaningless. And as for violence: The first full-length feature movie (or something approching it) was The Story Of The Kelly Gang, in 1906. And it involved people shooting each other. Before that, there were plays involving swordfights and murders and other acts of violence. In other words: Violence in entertainment dates back to… well, I bet there was a Neanderthal version of Ow! My Balls! or The Glorious Retelling Of How We Kicked The Asses Of Those Guys In The Next Valley.

Also, it’s only really American culture that has a major problem with nudity in the media. They show nipples on free to air TV here after about 8:30pm, and both Oz and The Pacific have been broadcast here on free to air TV with full-frontal male nudity. And all the swearing.

That’s because most of the film’s target audience plays computer games and are used to people getting shot or graphically blown up. The violence in the film is and was no more “real” than shooting a Nazi soldier in a WWII game. Are you familiar with the Civilisation or Defcon games? You can deploy nuclear weapons to wipe out entire cities and kill tens of millions of civilians in those games.

No-one has a problem with them. Personally I’d be more worried about people being OK with virtually killing tens of millions of civilians for being in a city that’s unfortunately in the way than a silly comedic movie which pushed the envelope in some respects.

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So you maintain, but there is a lot more going on here than just a silly parody or satire. A parody - even one that explodes a concept to utterly illogical extremes - does not need to include this level of explicit language and violence. The mere fact that the film makers put these elements in the film and kept them in the film in the face of stern opposition suggests so.

You seem to be greatly expanding the argument. Why are you trying to justify violence and profanity? I never argued against them. Violence and conflict are integral parts of narrative tradition.

I’m not really sure where “here” is, but yes, this is a hangup common in some parts of the world, not everywhere.

That is not true anywhere. And some video games are indeed pretty disturbing. But, anyway, how many videogames do you know of that are like Kick-ass, mixing graphic gory violence and preteen action? I have been playing games for decades and don’t recall ever seeing one. Even offenders like *Manhunt * or Postal can’t keep up with Hit Girl. GTA? That’s like a Hello Kitty game compared to Kick-Ass!

That’s not comparable. If as a result of dropping your bombs in a videogame you were to see (for example) children burning to death, their clothing melting on to their skin, their eyeballs running out of their sockets, the flesh carbonizing as they writhe in pain, their charred stumps waving feebly about, then yes I would say this hypothetical game contains extremely disturbing images. Would you not agree?

There is also an important difference when you see a representation or icon of something versus a hyper-realistic depiction of it. Playing chess does not make you a psychopath - even if you are the type who likes to sacrifice pieces - because the conflict is representational. You can apply this argument to all games. Even games from the last 10 years - the advent of realistic graphics - almost always have non-realistic portrayals of violence.

Cartoon violence is representational. That includes Tom and Jerry, Home Alone, the Powerpuff Girls, etc. The violence in Kick-Ass is definitely not representational, it is very graphic and very extreme. If the film is merely and only a satire, it could easily have done without the violence and profanity. The fact that Kick-Ass does contain this material informs us that it is most likely there for a more interesting reason than gratuity.

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I had an extensive rebuttal to your points made up, but I’ve realise that we’re never going to agree on this. I honestly feel your point of view is incorrect and wrong, and it’s probably best we leave it at and agree to disagree.

I will, however, point out that there’s a huge difference between Civilisation and Defcon (which no-one sensible considers “violent”) and GTA or Hitman, and that I was referring specifically to the Civ/Defcon games earlier, not “violent videogames in general”.

129

When I was a kid, I saw one of the Robocop sequels (I forget which) that has an evil 10 year old boy who shoots people. It scarred my young self a great deal, because you know what, somewhere – many somewheres, in fact – there are 10 year old kids who do take pistols to people’s heads and pull the trigger. It was a Hollywoody scene, but with enough realism to resonate.

Had I seen Kick-Ass when I was younger, I don’t believe it would have scarred me nearly as much, because there is absolutely no element of reality. No 11 year old girl is going to be able to slice-and-dice that much. It was just silly (and actually, I didn’t like it for that reason. What’s the point of having a movie about superheroes being average Joes with no powers if you’re going to have a physics-defying 11 year old figuratively gutting that message?).

Kick-Ass didn’t shock me because it was just too silly. It’s the difference between watching a dogfight and watching Tom and Jerry. Even if the former are “only” biting at each other, whereas the latter are stuffing each other with dynamite and incinerating one another, the former is clearly worse because it’s real. The latter is fodder for a kid’s cartoon.

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Really Abe? Is that really so bad? I enjoyed the movie. I’m not going to stand here and make an impassioned speech about how the movie was or wasn’t satire. Honestly, it just entertained the hell out of me. Kids killing people in a comedy? Hilarious! An 11 year old saying cunt? Shockingly amusing!

Why not push new combinations of kiddie violence and vulgarity in a comedy? Humans get habituated to things. We need more all the time, more extreme, more shocking, louder, flashier, faster. I’m happy if this film opens the door to children doing things on screen that have been generally reserved for adults. Why should the only depiction of child violence or sex or vulgarity happen in those art house independent films? Why can’t we have a Terminator who’s a kid and shoots up a police station?

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Well, Kids killing people in violently graphic and explicit ways is not something I find amusing. There’s nothing funny about it, or about kids cutting off the arms and legs of other people. It is ridiculous, it is well done, and the choreography can even be described as humorous and entertaining, but the act is not funny nor is the concept (to me, anyway). The swearing is, I agree, more amusing. But as someone pointed out earlier, no one gets hurt when a 10 year old swears. Kids say the darnest things after all.

What, really, is amusing about a little girl getting beaten nearly to death - in a comedy? To me these images are vicious and unpleasant.

In spite of this unpleasantness I am not saying it’s a bad movie. The director could be pandering to a pretty low common denominator by including this gruesome violence just for laffs, but there is probably a much better reason why it was retained, when film studios were turning down the film because of it. And this is unquestionably a smart movie, hence my thinking there’s more here than mere face value.

Graphic sex, vulgarity, and violence are not things I associate or would like to associate with preteens. When they do happen, I consider them highly unfortunate (like seeing diseased or starving children). If your argument is that people become desensitized to anything they see in entertainment, so they need increasingly harder and bigger doses of shocking material, you are describing a form of addiction - which is not considered healthy by anyone. So that would be one answer to your question, but honestly, this is a huge topic.

I don’t have ANY problem with violence or sex or profanity generally, and I believe children should be better educated on every single topic (especially sex but definitely violence and its consequences), so please do not assume this is a prudish reaction.

I did want to point out one thing, and that is the stretching required of the phrase “cartoon violence” to describe Kick-Ass. Cartoon violence is “Violent actions involving cartoon-like situations and characters. May include violence where a character is unharmed after the action has been inflicted” (that is the ESRB definition)

Kick-Ass has graphic and realistic depictions of real people being slaughtered, dismembered, or otherwise abused and killed. Of course nothing in this movie is meant to be taken seriously, but that does not make these depictions cartoonish. If this really were cartoon violence (a la Home Alone, or even Jackie Chan films) I doubt it would have been remarked by anyone.

132

Somewhat late to the Kick Ass party, but I wanted to say that:

  1. All I knew about this movie was a single still of Kick Ass in costume, and that it was about some dweeb who wants to be a superhero. Nothing else - not even a trailer.
  2. The only review I’ve ever seen was the title of this thread.
  3. I don’t like comics.
  4. I dislike the superhero genre.
  5. I watched it under some duress.
  6. I absolutely fucking loved it. It was pure unadulterated pleasure from start to finish, and it totally took me by surprise. Awesome, awesome film.
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We did try to tell you. :slight_smile: