Kick-Ass

After watching Kick-Ass you need to write about the film in relation to the 7 key areas of representation: Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Sexuality, Social Class, Physical Ability/ Disability, Regional Identity.

Also refer to the 4 key areas of Textual Analysis: Camera Shots, Angle, Movement and Composition ,Editing ,Sound, Mise-en-Scène.

Kick-Ass as a film contributes to the 7 key areas often breaking the boundaries of stereotypes, for example Genre; men are typically viewed as the strong ones, whereas we witness Hit Girl killing all the men, breaking the stereotype of Women being weak. We see this most ironically when she enters the building to seek her revenge; here she plays with the idea that all you girls are ‘innocent’ and it is this that allows her into the room where she kills and murders everyone. When she enters the building she is dressed in old school uniform comparing this to the mise en scene, which is modern and marble floors, this makes this appearance of Hit Girl more dramatic. The idea of her being in ‘old’ clothing is shadowed by the backing music which is ‘Spaghetti Western’ which brings the tension together but also contradicts the age and gender stereotypes.

            Whilst inside the building she contradicts the idea of Ethnicity, a lot of the guys she is fighting are coloured, this is because they are door men and are more likely to hurt the little girl stereotypically. However Hit Girl fights the guys, where they are dark could this be a metaphor for good & bad? The good is fighting the evil here and the good fight back better.

             The clothing of Hit Girl, Kick-Ass and Big Daddy is loud, obvious and makes them stick out for the others, so their identity is easily seen however we struggle to identify the other men. They all look like an army for Frank that gets destroyed, and he also uses his son as a man in order to protect him. In this fight we seen very clever camera work, we see the picture swapping to the professionals to the armatures. How it swaps back to one and another but yet ironically the armature (Kick-Ass) beats the professional (Frank).

             The second time we meet Big-Daddy is in the factory when we see him destroying the factory, although Big-Daddy looks like a child playing ‘dress-up’ he is the one who wins in the end. Big Daddy plays on the idea of surprise, which contradicts his clothing this is because he is dressed so that he stands out, when the audience see what Red Mist has to show his dad (Frank) we are shown from the hand held camera and then switches back to the film camera and back, I think that this is to symbolize the social class, and how even though Big Daddy is of lower class than Frank then we understand that he can still mess with him. For example they use camera that are of high quality when trying to show Kick-Ass and Big Daddy’s true identity. This is the higher class and then they log into the CCTV in the building that is weak quality, but yet it is intruding into Frank’s place, when Hit Girl is seeking her Revenge. When we see them run out of the factory trying to escape Big Daddy’s place we see the name fall off the factory I think this is foreshadowing Big Daddy bringing down  Franks business.

            The only sexual things that we see is between Kick-Ass and his girl friend, we see how he try’s to impress her being an ordinary guy where we see him struggling to keep their friendship when he likes her so much I see this as Kick-Ass’s own disability as he feels as though  he is not good enough for her and that he needs to be someone else when they are together and we see this in contrast to him being Kick-Ass, it is when his two personas merge that we witness him meeting Big Daddy and Hit girl, So it is this that gets him into trouble but it is also when he gains the courage to tell her and it is then that he gets what he wanted all day along, she loves the real him. He doesn’t have to be different. I think this is also shown in Hit Girl she should have the disability of being a young innocent girl and that she shouldn’t ever do anything wrong however we soon she is not however she does have the awful situation of being a Orphan at the end however we witness her defending herself even when she does go to school she is still able to stand up for her self so it shows her physical ability in contrast to the disability of being a Orphan.