Deconstructing the Butterfly:
A Feminist Criticism Analysis of Tarantino’s Death Proof
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
-Robert Frost
From the beginning of his film career, Quentin Tarantino’s movies have placed a spotlight on women in various roles: women as assassins, women as convicts, women as burglars and smugglers, women as just about anything that their male counterparts can be. His depiction of women in the same (often violent and gruesome) roles as men has led critics to question whether his films should be considered feminist or whether they may perpetuate the issue of violence toward women. In this paper, I will analyze the movie Death Proof (2007) using the feminist criticism model to show how the female protagonists transcend the patriarchy.
Tarantino has said, in an interview with Spinoff that he “absolutely” accepts and embraces the title of “Feminist Filmmaker” that some critics and viewers have given him. From Kill Bill to Jackie Brown to Death Proof, his intention has been to show women in the same roles as men, with no favoritism or punishment dealt to any character based on gender. But does this necessarily classify a work as feminist? Tarantino has received heavy backlash over the portrayal of one woman character in his recent film, The Hateful Eight. A reviewer from RogerEbert.com states that the singular female character serves as a “literal punching bag” from the beginning of the movie until the end and many other critics have pointed out the same. I had a similar problem while analyzing Death Proof. Does a movie that depicts extreme violence toward women deserve to be called “feminist” because the women come out victorious in the end? In a society where 1 in 3 women have been the victim of sexual violence in their lifetime, is it acceptable to depict violence toward women to motivate the plot of a movie?
Death Proof is a modern take on multiple classic film genres. The filming style is a homage to 1960’s and 70’s “grindhouse” films. These movies were typically low-budget and highly exploitative, centering around the theme of either gore or porn. Reminiscent of the grindhouse-era film, Tarantino used a style of filmography that included flickering picture and sharp scene cuts. He also shot in mainly dive bars and used classic cars, adding to the feeling that apart from cell phone use, the movies could have been actually filmed in the 70’s.
In many movies from the 60’s and 70’s women have little to no role. They were frequently been portrayed as “damsel in distress”, motivating some of the action but leaving the heroic duties up to the males. Another genre from this era, road movies, holds some inspiration for Death Proof as well. Themes of the classic road movies usually involved mobility and freedom, typically attributed to males. “When a man steps onto the road, his journey begins, when a woman steps onto that same road, hers ends (Veselka).”
Forwomen.org defines feminism as “the social, economic and political equality of ALL genders.” One of feminism’s main goals across sub-categories is to question and overturn the power of the patriarchy, our typically male-dominated socio-economic system. There have been three predominant waves of feminism, the first beginning in the early 1900’s, the second spanning from the 60’s and 70’s, and the third starting in the 1990’s with some debate as to whether we might presently be in feminism’s “fourth wave” or a time considered to be “post-feminism”. Created in 2007, we can see influences of third-wave feminism throughout Death Proof. Feminism’s third wave aimed at reconciling some of the perceived failures of the second wave, such as the presence of racial inequality throughout the feminist movement. We can see aspects of intersectionality throughout the film. The two groups of girls are almost overtly intersectional in their inclusion of one white woman, one black woman, one woman of a latina background, and one woman with stereotypical “lesbian” characteristics.
We can also see aspects of what might be considered “post-feminism” at play. Post-feminism is a controversial topic with many perspectives and definitions. For the purposes of this essay, I will refer to the version of post-feminism outlined by Andrea L. Press in “Feminism and Media in the Post-Feminist Era”. Press calls “post-feminism” our “paradoxical cultural moment” that has only partially taken feminism into account. The dangers of post-feminism include pushing both feminist and pre-feminist ideals onto young women. It is a cultural time where feminism is assumed, but not always accepted. Women living in a post-feminist era experience the dual pressures of acting in accordance with the demands of feminism while also feeling the desire to uphold traditional feminine duties. The entirety of the film can be read as a critique of post-feminism, with a hyper masculine psycho killer stalking and killing young women for attempting to manage the dual roles thrust upon them by post-feminist society.
Feminist criticism aims to analyze an artifact from the perspective of the roles of the women it features. By looking at which characters are rewarded and punished, which are in positions of power, and which are considered heroes and villains, as well as by analyzing the imagery used to tell the story, we can theorize as to whether the artifact reinforces, reverses, or transcends the patriarchy.
Death Proof turns the stereotypes of women in 60’s and 70’s movies on their heads by featuring women as the main characters and heroes as well as victims. This movie features women as much more than “damsels in distress”. They are multi-faceted characters, with fully developed personalities and background stories who do much more for the movie’s plot than to motivate the action of a male hero.
The main plot of Death Proof involves a psychotic stunt driver named Stuntman Mike who stalks and kills young attractive women with his “death proof” stunt car. The film is broken down into two halves, one set in Austin, Texas and the other in Lebanon, Tennessee with two different groups of four women. The first group of girls is going for a night out on the town and then to a lake house owned by one of the girls’ fathers for a “girls night”. They are unknowingly stalked by Stuntman Mike and are killed in a violent head-on collision that he intentionally caused. Stuntman Mike survives the collision because of his “death proof” stunt car and goes on to set his sights on another group of women in another town.
But these women prove to be more difficult, they are made up of half stunt women themselves and won’t go down without a fight. The women are in town filming a movie and one of them suggests test driving her dream car, a 1970 Dodge Challenger with a 440 engine. This is where Stuntman Mike begins his evil pursuit. The girls are partaking in a daring stunt for fun, with one girl strapped to the hood of the car, when Stuntman Mike speeds up and begins to ram them. What follows is an exciting action scene where the viewer is unsure whether or not the girls will make it. They do end up surviving by the skin of their teeth and Mike leaves them just enough time for one girl to pull her concealed weapon out and shoot him in the arm. The four girls then become the pursuers, hunting Mike down and finally beating him to death.
One of the main points of analysis for this paper is to compare the two groups of women depicted in the movie and theorize as to why one group was punished while the other made it out alive. According to my analysis from the model of feminist criticism, the first group of girls represents a reversal of the patriarchy while the second represents patriarchal transcendence. The film ultimately punishes the earlier group for assuming a position of power and dominance, and rewards the latter for operating outside the rules of the patriarchy and defining their own existence.
The first group of women consists of “Jungle” Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier), a local well-known radio host, Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), a friend of Julia’s from out of town, and two more secondary characters, Shanna (Jordan Ladd), and Lanna Frank (Monica Staggs). The opening scene of Death Proof shows Julia, a young, attractive black woman, in her underwear smoking a joint. The camera angle does nothing to hide her attractive figure and we get an up-close view of the leopard print on her underwear. She is soon joined in her apartment by two female friends Arlene, and Shanna, both also young and conventionally attractive. In our first glimpse of Arlene, she is seen holding her crotch and exclaiming about how she needs the restroom.
The scene cuts to the women in their car driving to dinner. They are depicted as crass, sexy and independent. Their language is very explicit and they talk in detail of their recent sexual exploits. The women seem to be taking on the role of men in this way as this represents more of a masculine stereotype. The women are in a position of power and independence. Jungle Julia remarks how she doesn’t want to “depend on” guys for weed and Arlene tells of a recent experience with a new partner where she would only allow him to make out with her on the couch for a while and then she made him go home. “If you don’t bust their balls a little bit, they’re never gonna respect you,” remarks Julia in response to Arlene’s story. This is an obvious reversal of the patriarchy. The girls are shown as dominant, taking the power back from the men and not wishing to depend on them for a good time. We see this role of the women as powerful and controlling throughout the first half of the film. Later on, Shanna scolds a man in the bar for calling her “Shawna”, and Jungle Julia rewards another with a condescending “good boy,” when he gets her drink order correct. Further, we see Arlene again turning down her partner’s request for sexual contact to the point where he is practically begging. She then allows him 6 minutes alone with her in the car and remarks that he only has “two jobs- kiss good, and make sure my hair don’t get wet”.
The first half of Death Proof also grapples with a few situations that are commonly heard in today’s (post-?) feminist discourse. Much of the action of the film’s first half centers around the fact that Jungle Julia made an announcement “pimping out” Arlene on her radio show. She had previously urged listeners to approach them at the bars, refer to her friend as “Butterfly”, and recite a stanza of Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
The first man to recite this poem for her would, according to Julia, receive a lap dance from Arlene. When Arlene hears of this set-up, she is understandably angered. Jungle Julia responds to Arlene’s discomfort with the situation by saying that if a guy she doesn’t like approaches her, she can just say she already performed the lap dance. “No harm, no foul,” she insists. This is a very harmful perspective to have in this scenario, as it does not take into account the many real life situations where men have been rejected in bars only to exact revenge on their rejecter with physical violence. It is extremely naive for Julia to assume this position, and again reinforces her role as reversing the patriarchy. She is acting like a man in this situation, unaware that her identity as a young woman puts her and Arlene in the way of potential violence.
Julia’s putting Arlene in the position of “Butterfly” actually does contribute to their demise later on. Stuntman Mike ends up being the man to approach Arlene in the bar, just as they are about to leave for the lake house, and recites the poem to her. Being a few decades older than the girls, they first refuse him by saying she had already performed the lap dance earlier in the night. But, Mike is persistent (and had secretly been watching them all night) . He responds by calling her “chicken shit” which appeals to her defiant nature and makes her want to prove him wrong. He goes on to say,“you look wounded, expected guys to be pestering you all night, and from your look I can tell nobody pestered you at all, that kinda hurt your feelings a little bit didn’t it?” What ensues is another instance where Arlene is acting in a typically masculine way. A stereotype that plays itself out over and over in our patriarchal culture is that of a man being called “chicken”, “wussy”, or “weak”, and getting himself in trouble by trying to prove his masculinity. In this reversal of the patriarchal stereotype, we see an unlikely situation. Arlene, instead of blowing off the creepy old guy at the bar and urging her friends to leave, performs the lap dance in order to prove to her friends and the bar’s patrons that she is sexy and desirable. The words he says calls to mind the troublingly common occurrence of street harassment in our modern patriarchal culture. Mike’s implication that women should be flattered by such unwanted attention from men is reflective of how this problem plays out in real life as well. As most women of the 21st century can attest, street harassment is usually not flattering or enjoyable, which is why it is so surprising that this helps to convince Arlene to perform the lap dance for Stuntman Mike.
It’s also important to note the symbolism present in this scenario. The butterfly is typically associated with femininity and sensuality (Gagliardi) and the use of “Butterfly” by Julia as Arlene’s code name could represent her female dominance. In order for the men to be rewarded with a lap dance, they must refer to her as this symbol of femininity and acknowledge her power as such. The Robert Frost stanza chosen also carries similar symbolism. Woods give a feeling of mystery and also represent femininity. The first line, “the woods are lovely, dark, and deep”, feels very sexual in this instance and the woods are clearly representing Arlene’s sensuality. The final line “Miles to go before I sleep,” can also be interpreted sexually in the given situation, implying that there would be something other than sleeping going on that evening. When Stuntman Mike recites the stanza to Arlene, he modifies this final line to say “Miles to go before you sleep,” changing the symbolism to foreshadow the great unrest and fear that the girls would be facing later in the night.
The final topic of modern post- feminist culture represented in the first half of the film that I’d like to address occurred after the girls had already been killed and Stuntman Mike clung to life in the hospital. There are two investigators present, discussing the accident and whether it was truly an accident. One of the officers mentions that he believes it was an intentional killing, linked to sexual pleasure. He chooses not to pursue this notion, noting that “…everyone of them girls was swimmin’ on alcohol and floatin’ on weed”, suggesting that the victims were partially to blame in their slaying by consuming alcohol and marijuana. This is another example of victim blaming which can be encountered frequently in instances of violence or sexual assault against women. It also highlights an instance of the “dual pressures” of post-feminism addressed by Andrea Press. Pressure is placed on the women to act as independent care-free sexual beings while at the same time, they are expected to account for the actions of unruly men and behave in accordance. The officer decides that a better use of his time is to go home and watch NASCAR than to seek justice for the slain girls.
Mike is therefore free to attempt the same on a new group of women. This transitions us into the second half of the film. What we see from the beginning with this second group of women is much greater depth of character. Similar to the first group of girls, they value their freedom of sexual expression, but they also have several conversations about their careers and stories of their friendships. Two of the women, Zoe (Zoe Bell), and Kim (Tracie Thomas), are stunt-women by trade. The other two, Abernathy (Rosario Dawson) and Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) are a stylist and an actress respectively. This is already more background information than the audience is given on the first group of women, of which, only one’s profession is known.
One important scene features the four women eating lunch in a diner and the conversation shifts to Kim carrying a concealed weapon. She expresses her need to carry the firearm for fear that she could be sexually assaulted while doing her laundry after midnight. Lee remarks that she could just refrain from doing her laundry late at night to which Kim replies “Fuck that, I wanna do my laundry whenever I wanna do my laundry,”. We can see this as a transcendence of the patriarchy. Kim refuses to be defined by the social structures that are in place, under which she is expected to act. She carries a gun not to be the one in power and to dominate the other sex, but to keep him from holding power over her and making her act out of fear. This is also ironic because it is this weapon that Kim uses to shoot Stuntman Mike after their harrowing chase.
The final two points I’ll address to support the claim that the second group of women transcend the patriarchy deal with Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), who is the most traditionally feminine of the four girls in the second half. During the scene where the girls arrive to take the Dodge Challenger out for a test drive, they are aware that the owner will be hesitant to let them drive the car alone. He emerges from the house and remarks, “What do you horny gals want?”, assuming that the four are operating under the traditional roles of the patriarchy which consider women to be little more than objects used for male pleasure. Instead of attempting to reverse this role and assert her dominance, Abernathy calmly discusses why they’d like to test drive the car and uses reason to convince him to let them take it. She is here transcending the patriarchy by stepping outside the traditional power structure and using reason rather than dominance to persuade him. Later, when the girls have been pursued and tortured by Stuntman Mike on the road and they have finally caught up to him to seek their revenge, Abernathy is the girl to deal the fatal blow. She does so with a very feminine stomp kick, holding her leg up in the air sensually and then crushing it into his skull as the song “Chick Habit” by April March plays. This represents how the women embraced their femininity to overthrow the patriarchal dominance instead of reversing the roles by assuming a masculine identity. The song choice is also a testament to femininity, as its lyrics serve as warning to men who objectify women.
We can see how the second group of girls represents a transcendence of the patriarchy and ultimately they are able to overthrow the phallic representation of male domination, the death proof car. This point will shift us into an analysis of the symbolism used in Death Proof and how it helps to motivate the theme of transcendence of the patriarchy, particularly in the movie’s second half.
Stuntman Mike’s “death proof” stunt car represents the ultimate phallic symbol throughout the film. The American muscle car (in this case a Chevy Nova) has been a classic representation of masculine characteristics throughout film and television history. The car’s being indestructible represents the seeming immortality of the patriarchy. In the first half of the movie, Arlene tells Stuntman Mike she finds his car “scary”. This exemplifies the ability of patriarchy to dominate and subdue women. Further, the hood ornament on stuntman Mike’s death proof car is a duck/goose, a customarily phallic symbol, which Tarantino utilizes frequently as imagery throughout the film. The car is often seen roaring, goose-first, down back country roads, and in one scene in the second half, Mike is watching his victims through binoculars, seated on the hood of the car, with the goose projecting from between his legs. The vehicle also symbolizes the phallic when Stuntman Mike begins his pursuit of the second group of girls. He speeds up behind them, ramming them from the rear and shouts “You wanna get hot? Suck on this for a while,” and continues to ram the girls with his car.
Color plays a role in the symbolism of the cars as well. Stuntman Mike’s death proof car is black, a color that traditionally symbolizes power, fear, and authority while the Dodge Challenger that the girls are driving during the pursuit is white. White is a mostly positive color, signifying purity, innocence and goodness (Bourn).
Frequently throughout the film, we see close-up camera shots of the women’s bare feet. This can either be merely attributed to Quentin Tarantino’s well known attraction to female feet (Berkowitz), or it can carry symbolism for the women in the movie as well. In each half of the movie, the girls’ bare feet are seen hanging out of the window of their car. At the start of the second half, Stuntman Mike actually approaches the car where Abernathy’s feet are hanging out and first tickles and then licks them, playing it off afterward as if he just brushed them while walking by. According to a University of Michigan excerpt, bare feet may symbolize the infantile phallic and can also serve as a symbol of death and mourning. We see also during the final crash scene of the movie’s first half that Jungle Julia was still riding in the car with her foot out the window and this lead to her leg being severed from her body when Stuntman Mike initiated the head on collision. This can be seen as a punishment for her attempts to reverse the patriarchy and take control of the phallic.
The girls whose actions transcended the patriarchy were ultimately rewarded with their lives, while the first girls who represented a reversal of the patriarchy found a much worse fate. Through their transcendence of the patriarchy and by defining themselves rather than letting a man define them, they were able to ultimately overthrow the seemingly indestructible patriarchy. They were able to defeat the phallic representation, the death proof car, and the man who operated it. I see Tarantino’s representation of women in the action-filled roles of this film not as helping to perpetuate violence against women, but as a reminder that women should be able to define themselves in any role, rather than ascribing to the ones laid out for them or trying to form themselves into the role of a man. The film is not without its problems; the women are, at times, highly sexualized and there is some reinforcement of the patriarchy involved in the phallic imagery among other things. But, the main message of the film promotes the women’s transcendence of the patriarchal structure. It is difficult for a male film-maker to get everything right in a movie about women’s freedom of expression. Tarantino’s attempt to make a well-rounded feminist movie is admirable. From the inclusion in the cast of Zoe Bell, a real life stunt-woman who is a role model for women defining themselves despite patriarchal influence, to Rosario Dawson, an A-list celebrity and well-known women’s activist, Tarantino has not merely made an idyllic story, but incorporated aspects of third-wave intersectional feminism as well.
Works Cited
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YztNIKA6gJA
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