As most pre-pubescent adolescents do, I wanted to be a super hero. My attire was a black cloak – an old Halloween costume from an early obsession with the Grim Reaper; its hood was large enough to cast a shadow over my face, but allowed enough horizontal space so that I could see clearly without an impeded periphery. Underneath, I wore black armor – sweatpants – that fit firmly around my calves and slipped into steel-toe boots – or more accurately, old black, winter boots that resembled today’s Ugs with strips of Velcro to keep them tight.
I had two weapons of choice. One was a bo staff – a long black tube that resembled a staff, but would buckle if I actually struck anything with it – and a sleek, black gun that I pilfered from my Sega console. For some reason, wrapping the input cord around my wrist made me feel a bit more impervious even if, logistically, it made it impossible to drop the gun if I had to go to the bo staff – or the nunchucks I kept wedged inside my right boot in case things got ugly.
With my bedroom door closed, I created a microcosmic Gotham City, or Cadencia: the name granted to my territory. The venetian blinds were closed and black sheets were tacked with push pins around the windows.
(For a while, my mother thought I had joined a cult. I sacrificed three Saturdays in a psychiatrist’s office to preserve my secret identity.)
Cadencia had to be dark. Only doctors, lawyers, and bankers commit crime during the day, and I didn’t want them; I wanted the big fish: the drug distributors, the armed robbers, the villains who wore make up and had strange deformities that gave them animalistic qualities and pseudonyms.
Light enough to perch upon a desk and climb a bookshelf that was built into my bedroom wall, I leapt from these “balconies,” “fire escapes,” and rusty “catwalks” that existed as aeries above my apoplectic city, landing delicately and composedly on my bed, balancing in a moment of poise and grace before leaping again to the floor and facing whatever imaginary criminal had just robbed three women outside of a theater or pencil-thin marauder wearing a crushed velvet costume in paisley, purple or aqua blue.
The battle would begin. My boe staff drawn, my nunchucks coming loose, and my sleek gun dangling from my wrist, coming dangerously close to hitting my face each time I lunged toward my opponent…
Then there would be a knock at the door, and each weapon that wasn’t attached to my person was tossed to the other side of my bed and the cloak would be quickly peeled off (yet another benefit) and dropped in a pile on the floor where it was left to blend in with the other random pieces of clothing that made up the clutter in the alley/floor so I could answer the door with only a mildly asthmatic “just a minute!”
Typically, my babysitter would be standing there – a villain in her own right, but not always: kind of like Catwoman, but without the latex.
“What’re you doing?” she’d ask.
“Nothing. Just–” the pendulous barrel of my videogame gun graces the back of my knee “playing Safari Hunt,” which was Sega’s rip-off of Nintendo’s Duck Hunt. In hindsight, the smirk and the eye roll suggests that she never believed me, and it probably didn’t help that my television and video game system were always off, but at least my identity was preserved, and I could live to fight another day without scrutiny.
So, why risk such grave exposure?
Because there is a time when we all search for superficial autonomy without the repercussions of embarrassment. We don costumes and emulate superheroes to create an alternate existence that has the agency to absorb faux pas and prevent the world from attributing our shortcomings to an identifiable face. However, very few of us maintain these costumes, upgrade them with iron-mesh lining, purchase a graphite bo staff with retractable blades that emerge from each end with the simple push of a button, or transform an innocuous video game gun into an electro-pulsar taser.
Why? Because our babysitters knock on the door, our parents wonder why we aren’t outside on a gorgeous day, schools bombard us with afterschool programs and activities, and – overridingly – our libidos kick in, which means fighting faux crime becomes secondary to having faux orgasms. Don’t judge me. Sometimes, you just want to go to sleep.
It’s this illustration of the parent/child dynamic that struck me as most poignant about Kick Ass. Don’t misunderstand me, the actions scenes are stellar and fluidly choreographed – particularly those with Hit Girl and Big Daddy. The violence is filmed in quick cuts, but it not so quickly cut that it resembles the mishmash of The Dark Knight’s often convoluted/no climax action sequences. In addition, they are often overlaid with appropriately mordantly morbid comedy that breaks the tension while still making you squirm. In the same vein, the jokes aren’t pedestrian or overly juvenile – even though they are often delivered by the adolescent characters within the film, which only reminds us that adolescents are the people who want to emulate superheroes and don’t see them as real people – unless they happen to know who resides under the mask. This is what separates us from the characters.
In a particularly violent, yet solidly filmed scene, Big Daddy and Kick Ass are being savagely beaten while it is broadcast over the internet. While we squirm, and the eyes of those who know our superheroes well with tears, those who do not associate an actual personage with the persona use the opportunity to move closer to their crushes or cheer for heightened violence. This social disconnection illustrates our love of the superhero because he or she is not one of us, but at the same time, this disconnect progenitizes from a familial disconnect that is apparent in the film.
Dave Lizekwski (Aaron Johnson) dons a green wet suit and becomes Kick Ass in order to find an identity, but it seems that his identity is crippled because of a lack of familial connection. Early in the film, Lizewski exposits that his mother died from an aneurism over breakfast while discussing her decision to purchase this brand of cereal over another, but it seems like a blip in an ordinarily boring, quiet day. The mother’s head crashes against the table as Dave and his father continue eating. His mother’s image fades from screen, and they continue eating the same cereal without a moment lost, or conversational word uttered between them. It’s as if the caretaker and decision maker of the family – in other words, the adult – has been obviated from the picture, so the son and father have little to do but symbiotically exist.
This familial disconnect is also apparent when Dave finds the costume that he has ordered in a large box, neatly placed in his room. If the suggestion here is that the father received the package and brought it up to Dave’s room, the father’s lack of interest also suggests a lack of connection and ultimately, guidance. This is also evident when Dave dons his suit and wanders outside for the first time, encounters two men trying to rob a car and ends up stabbed in the gut and eventually hit by another car. As he lies in the hospital bed, a narrative voice tells the audience that he begged the paramedics to trash the costume and not mention it to his father. Ostensibly, Dave’s plea might suggest he believes his father will be upset, though I think the underlying issue is that Dave doesn’t want to explain everything that’s impelled his route to faux-superhero –loneliness, confusion, parental absence, a sense of meaninglessness.
In contrast, Big Daddy (Nic Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) are a father-daughter crime fighting tag team in which both are true, ass-kicking superheroes. However, the family construct is thrown into chaos inasmuch as Big Daddy, whose real name is Damon Macready, a former top cop, is constantly doting on his daughter and portraying a genuine parental love, though this is clouded by his reasons for raising a superhero daughter – to avenge the death of his wife who committed suicide when Macready was wrongly incarcerated because Frank D’Amico, the mob villain of the film, conspired with the chief of the police to have Macready taken off of the street.
In a completely, socially detached existence, Macready turns to Mindy Macready, his daughter and only person he can trust to implement his plan to take down D’Amico who has “taken [his] daughter’s childhood!” While a guiding, encouragement-filled relationship exists between the Macreadys, Mindy functions as both Damon’s impetus for revenge and his excuse for it, which casts her as both an agent and an object. At the same time, Damon’s encouragement and commitment to Mindy’s training makes her the best assassin/superhero since Beatrix Kiddo, but somehow Hit Girl is the more developed and complete character, primarily because she has had guidance – however wonky or misguided it might be.
What Kick Ass offers on the exploration of the parent and child dynamic might also have been seen in the confines of the theater. Since the movie has been released, film critics like Roger Ebert and Anthony Lane have dismissed it for encouraging violence among the youth or “nudg[ing] a child into viewing violence as slapstick.” One thing to note about Kick Ass is that the film is rated “R.” Granted the M.P.A.A rating is not a panacea to stop children from viewing violence, but this is where the same parent/child dynamic is illustrated outside of the movie theater. This movie is not meant for children, and truthfully, it’s not aimed at children.
As the film began, there were about a dozen young teenagers – thinking under 14 – in the audience. About twenty minutes in, half of them left with their parents. Perhaps the parents realized they made a mistake and would now have a discussion about the realities of violence depicted on the screen. Perhaps those who stayed didn’t care because they spoke about it before the film. Perhaps the parents of those who remained were absent and are obliviously delivering boxed-up superhero costumes to their child’s room.
DYL MAG Rating: 8
