Momyer, Genre, Identity, and Ethnic Representation
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characteristic or identity o f women. Like the ethnic body, the m other’s body is
signaled as different, but motherhood as an identity, like ethnicity, is negotiated.
It is not defining and cannot be definable as all mothers in the film maintain all
other identities that they hold at the same time. Beatrix Kiddo, AKA The Bride,
AKA Black Mamba, AKA Mommy, maintains her separate fragmented sense of
self at all moments in one body. While she privileges her status o f Mommy, it is
an emotional privilege, and not a privileging that suggests this is her one true
authentic self or identity. She always remains the assassin.
While the film consistently argues for a concept o f multiple identities that
are negotiated depending upon context, the content of the film also provides the
counter-argument through Bill. Bill asserts that these identities are merely masks
and there must only be one authentic identity underneath. He recognizes that
B eatrix’s life as a bride to a record store owner could never have worked
because she is no Arlene M achiavelli, another one o f her pseudonyms, “a
worker bee trying to blend into the hive.” No, he states that she is “a renegade
killer bee.” “You would have been a wonderful mother,” he says. “But you are a
killer.” Beatrix herself consents that life as Arlene would never have worked,
but not because she can only be the assassin at her center. She disproves the very
idea by readily accepting the role o f Mommy and moving into this new
construct o f herself. Bill, on the other hand, is only capable o f seeing him self in
one term, that o f “a murdering bastard.” Consequently, he is only capable o f
seeing others in a single construct that relates directly to that one vision o f
himself. W hile he loves Beatrix, he can only see her as an assassin. Her
projection o f anything else is seen as a personal betrayal and a falsification.
However