I disagree that she is a victim of “the gaze”. The camera focuses on her body because her body is doing insanely cool martial arts! There is nothing sexualized about her in any way.

About the little girl clothes, she IS a little girl!! When innocence and childhood are fetishized, even a child is accused of being a fetishist for dressing in an innocent, childlike manner? That’s kinda sick.

Hit Girl is the first female ass-kicker I have ever seen who doesn’t come in second to any male, doesn’t become weak, helpless, or simply so much eye candy at any point, and is represented as just plain TOUGH, not tough but sexy, tough but vulnerable, tough but still needs a man. Chloe Moretz is now the only female performer on equal footing with Bruce Willis, John Wayne, Mickey Rourke, et al.

As a kid, I had to idolize men, dream of growing up to be like this man or that man, because none of the sex kittens or passive princesses seemed like anything worth wanting to be.

What would you rather have your daughter to aspire to; taking no @#$&, or just taking off her clothes?

That trailer looks more sad than entertaining.

Jonathan, you’re so right about the Banana Splits Adventure song! I didn’t recognize it until the second time I watched it, but it really does give it a more playful connotation. And I’ve never actually seen Leon/The Professional; sounds like I need to add it to my Netflix queue, stat. And yes, it might open up self-reflection on the gaze, which could certainly be useful. But for others, it might be one of these entryway paratexts where self-reflection is never allowed for some people b/c controversy shuts down certain possibilities of meaning.

Kyra, I had some similar thoughts about the young actress. But, I guess if I were a stage mom, I might actually prefer that my kid’s break out role was something like this rather than a sweet little princess role, where she might run the risk of being kept in that role or image far too long and become a girl-woman who struggles to break free (see also: the Olsen twins, Miley Cyrus, Marlo Thomas circa 1970). But alas, I’m not sure I want my kids in showbiz at all. 🙂

And Megan, yes! Great points. The trappings of femininity is another part of it that leaves me conflicted, plus, it’s also the trappings of femininity AND childhood working together that make it so interesting – I think the bellman says “oh, she’s just a little girl.” And I especially loved your points about the aesthetics of hard-core porn in the shot of her gun in the bell hop’s check. I hadn’t thought about it that way. You’re right – I also felt like the trailer attempted to engage with problematic tropes to play with them. Just like in the opening scene, when she’s talking about ponies and what not; the innocence and femininity of girlhood is set up, just to bring it crashing down with her f-bomb and description of the knife. I should have mentioned in the post somewhere that while the comic series was written by Mark Millar, the screenplay was written by a woman – Jane Goldman – whose other work (and personal life) lend another dimension to the story. (I think she started dating Jonathan Ross when she was a 16, and they’re now married with three little girls). Anyway, thanks so much for bringing up these points – great discussion!

That said, there was something about the details of how Hit-Girl is presented in this trailer that might suggest that Hollywood is complicating things in this iteration of the girl/woman warrior story. Like Lindsay and the other commenters, I noticed and raised an eyebrow at her school-girl plaid skirt, but it’s really skirts as one is part of her Hit-Girl uniform. In particular, when we see it swing around as she commits acts of blatant asskickery in the hallway, I was struck by the choice to garb her in anything like tarty tartan, but it then drew my attention to the fact that she is really covered up when in her Hit-Girl costume and not just in a we-painted-her-naked-body-in-a-full-latex-suit kind of way. If one can have age-appropriate superhero-wear (and if we agree that such a thing is at some level good), this seems like a step in that direction.

The plaid skirt in her Hit-Girl costume also called my attention back to a moment earlier in the trailer when she is wearing the school girl outfit as a disguise. I always find the use of the trappings of femininity as a trap for others to be a compelling device if also a problematic one (why get rid of those trappings when they’re so darned useful?). What I really liked here was the visual imagery here where the dolt working the door winds up with Hit-Girl’s gun in his mouth and a hole in his cheek. The way the camera focuses on the bulge caused by Hit-Girl’s gun evokes the cinematography of hard-core porn, only instead of the school girl performing oral sex, it is her gun in the mouth of a man who bought into the idea of the innocent school girl. I guess I just felt like the trailer attempted to engage with the problematic tropes in which it trafficks in ways that I haven’t seen with other similar types of stories. I felt while watching that it wasn’t just inverting binaries while still reproducing troubling associations (between gun play and sex play, for example), but calling attention to and tweaking, if not totally critiquing them.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this when it comes out and to another post on it, Lindsay!

Great blog – thanks for the link.