Dale Luck Kick-Ass AS Media Studies

Mr Ford

How are the seven areas of representation formed?

The film Kick Ass has portrayals of all 7 areas of representation we’ve studied in class.

Firstly, the representation of gender is both conformed to and deviated from, mainly within the
characters of Dave (the protagonist), Katie (his eventual girlfriend) and Mindy/Hit-Girl:

The character of Dave is a teenage boy, and, along with his friends, is represented as being obsessed
with girls (as seen by the various conversations they have), socially awkward around said girls – such
as the scene when he stammers when he mistakes Katie’s greeting to her friend for a greeting to him
– and somewhat oblivious to the consequences of his actions. This last characteristic is very
stereotypical, in that teenage boys are often represented as being reckless, but of course the way it
shows this through the character of Dave has been emphasized dramatically – how he becomes a
superhero and is oblivious to the consequences of it, which results in him being hospitalized, but
then he goes out and does it again, which then results in him almost dying until Hit-Girl steps in,
etcetera (his lifestyle seems like a constant cycle of recklessness and lucky escapes).

Katie is a fairly stereotypical girl in most respects – in the things she talks about, the way she acts
towards others, etcetera. For example, she speaks to Dave freely about always wanting a gay best
friend, which is generally a stereotypical interest of females, and the way she acts when she’s first
shown (in the scene mentioned above, where Dave mistakes her greeting to her girl-friend as one to
him) is rather girlish, in that she calls her “beautiful” and then giggles wildly afterwards with her at
Dave’s mistake. This last scene also shows another common stereotype for girls, in that they gather
in close knit groups of their own gender – think Sex and the City, but less wrinkles and more
technology. Later on in the movie she becomes friends with Dave, being more willing to be his friend
after hearing the rumour that he’s gay, which yet again is another stereotypical feature of women:
being gossipmongers/believing in rumours very easily.

The age of each of the characters is also used to project stereotypical qualities on them. There are
representations for both the young (Mindy/Hit-Girl), the young adults (Dave/Katie/all the teenagers)
and the adults (Big Daddy/Dave’s father/Chris’ father).

The young adults/teenagers conform mainly to the stereotype, in that the boys are prone to copious
amounts of masturbation (as detailed, to comical effect, by Dave in one of the narrated sequences
early on) and cocky (as shown by Dave’s friend Marty), and the girls are shown as being together in
groups of friends (as shown by Katie’s friend later on saying the only reason she was at the comic
store with the boys was because Katie was busy) and prone to gossip (as seen by the belief of Katie
that Dave is gay). The teenagers in general are also seen to be distant from their parents, mainly
seen in the characters of Dave and Chris – whilst Dave shows a connection to his father, he doesn’t
often act very caring towards him (nor uncaring – a sort of neutral interaction between him and his
father), and Chris shows a great interest in following in his father’s footsteps, though doesn’t really
have any great connection to him (until the end of course, where he shows signs in avenging his
father’s death at the hands of Kick-Ass, which also nicely fits into the hint of a sequel).

The adults also conform, mainly, to their respective roles to the other characters – the main adults
are all father figures, and they perform that role appropriately. Big Daddy, despite his plot of
revenge against Frank d’Amico and putting his daughter in danger because of it, shows great love for

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Mindy and a high amount of protection towards her, as shown by the scene where she’s about to
get stabbed in the back by the doorman and he shoots him in the head, as well as the main fact that
he’s taught her how to protect herself and rewards her with what she wants (ice cream, butterfly
knives, etcetera.). Dave’s father, despite being in some ways distant from his son (which, I guess, is
somewhat stereotypical, as males in general are often portrayed as not being able to express their
emotions as well as females), shows great affection for him at various points, such as the hospital
where he asks if the mugger’s sexually assaulted him (mostly through implication in his dialogue)
and then hugs him out of empathy. Frank d’Amico also keeps to his role properly, but starts off at a
different place from the others – whilst the other two father figures start off the film with a loving
connection between them and their sons, Frank starts being somewhat distant from him (takes him
to the cinema, but only has a hired bodyguard take him to the comic store, etcetera), and shows
signs of being disappointed in the way he turned out, at least to an extent. This later changes though
as Chris manages to lead Kick Ass to the warehouse and eventually helps capture him, which Frank
shows great pride towards Chris for doing.

The young in the film, mainly (or even only) through the character of Mindy/Hit-Girl, are represented
very differently from their stereotype. The stereotype for young children is often being innocent, as
well as somewhat oblivious to punishment and, more importantly, are very often seen as being
weak, unprofessional and unintelligent. However, the character of Hit-Girl shows characteristics
more akin to those of the teenage stereotype, in both her dialogue and the way her character acts
throughout. The more obvious difference is that she is a trained killer, who easily overpowers the
hired, armed thugs of Frank d’Amico, and even shows a great level of intelligence and maturity after
the death of her father, Big Daddy, as she plans (or performs an already planned attack, it’s one of
the two) an attack on the headquarters of Frank d’Amico in order to avenge him and make his death
have meaning. If anything, these are characteristics you’d expect to find from an adult, rather than a
child. Her innocence as a child, however, is often portrayed, both in-costume and out of it: the first
scene that we’re introduced to her character has her being shot in the chest by her father, to which
she says she’ll do only if he takes her for ice cream (a common thought about children, and anyone
really, is that they like ice cream – who doesn’t like ice cream?); after Big Daddy shoots the doorman
about to stab Hit-Girl in the back, she shows a level of fear in the way she talks and acts, showing her
child-like obliviousness to punishment – in this scene, she even acts like the whole slaughter of the
thugs is a game (which links in to Big Daddy’s later talk with Marcus Williams, where he says he
made the revenge plan into a game for her). At one point she also uses the stereotype to her
advantage, in that she pretends to be a girl who’s lost her father (which to some extent is true) in
order to gain access to the building of Frank d’Amico.

Ethnicity is represented in three ways – the black characters (mainly the large henchmen of Frank
d’Amico, first introduced as Chris’ bodyguard at the comic store), the white characters (essentially
everyone that isn’t in the other two categories), and the Italian American characters of the film
(portrayed by the family and employees of Frank d’Amico).

The black characters are seen as rather stereotypical, if looking in any depth at the character of Stu
Riley, as they are seen as being strong, somewhat gun-obsessed, and just thuggish in general. For
example, the fact that he’s stationed as being a bodyguard to the d’Amico family, accompanied with
the man’s size in general, are clear signs of him being put in the role as “strong guy”. His obsession,
or at least fascination with guns, is shown in the scene where they storm ‘Safehouse B’ and kidnap

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Big Daddy and Kick-Ass, where he then finds a rocket launcher and says “I’ve always wanted one of
these”. His thuggish and violent attitude is shown in the scene where we’re first introduced to him,
when he’s in the comic store with Chris and Dave attempts to greet them, at which point he accosts
Dave and tells him to “fuck off” – their reaction is also a good way of seeing the way they wrote Stu’s
character, in that they joke afterwards about Dave urinating and they hurriedly leave the store. The
character of Marcus, however, is the completely

The white characters, simply put, are just not like the stereotypical black characters at all, but nor
are they quite like the stereotypical white characters either. They aren’t necessarily well-off, as
Dave’s family is middle-class and Katie’s family no doubt is too (a distinct lack of security on her
house shows this), and Big Daddy was fired after being framed for a crime he didn’t do (though, I
suppose, he is rich, as seen by the amount of money Mindy tells Kick-Ass she has). There’s not much
else to say about that, other than the vast majority of the “just” characters are white, and the few
black characters in the film are “bad” (bar one) – this could be a classic representation of white
(good) versus black (bad), but the inclusion of Marcus kind of eliminates that idea.

The Italian American character are extremely stereotypical – they conform in almost every way to
their stereotype of mobsters. They have the classic gang hierarchy, with the “godfather” like figure
being Frank d’Amico, and have disguised themselves as a lumber business – this is very like the film
Godfather, where the groups actions are disguised as a separate business too. All their other
elements are used to emphasize this characteristic – the accent, the thugs, the use of torture to get
information, the son who gains the pride of his father, their heavy use of violence, etcetera. Overall,
not much else to be said about them, other than they’re very stereotypical mobsters, both in
dialogue and actions.

The views on sexuality within the movie are expressed through the rumoured homosexuality of
Dave. His character shows some level of homophobia to begin with when he finds out people are
saying he’s gay, but that could just be the average dislike for not wanting to be seen as something
he’s not. However, he then decides to pretend to be gay after Katie takes an interest in him, which
later shows the general female view on homosexual men – that having a “gay best friend” is fun. In
some ways though, the film could be somewhat offensive to gay men – I’m mainly referring to the
scene where Katie talks about him being a gay best friend, where after hearing it he acts somewhat
flamboyantly (a stereotypical characteristic of a homosexual).

The representation of three classes (working, middle and upper) are portrayed very differently from
each other, yet remain very stereotypical in their own way.

The working class family of Dave and his father has its characteristics shown through the interaction
between the father and son, as well as the home they’re in. The home itself isn’t particularly big, nor
clean, and looks like the kind of house that a working class family would have (not particularly dirty,
but not exactly very clean like those of the higher classes). The father himself seems tired, a lot of
the time, showing either stress or repetition. They also aren’t very receptive of each other, though
show levels of care that are usual for a father-son relationship (though that probably has nothing to
do with social class of the family). The amount of money the family has is also shown in the food
they eat – namely the brand of cereal – in that it’s generally not top-brand stuff, but rather the
cheaper kind you can get at much lower prices.

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The middle class family of Mindy and Damon (Hit-Girl and Big Daddy) is a step up, both economically
and relationship wise, from the working class family of Dave, and again these main differences are
shown in the home and the relationship between parent and child. For example, the house is well-
furnished and very clean, as well as rather spacious (as opposed to the small rooms of Dave’s house),
and the father and daughter seem to be much closer than the other parent-child relationships in the
film – they do everything together, and are very much alike (clearly shown by the daughter’s high
level interest in violence, wanting a butterfly knife instead of a dog, being just like her father’s
interest in revenge). They also are a lot richer than Dave’s family, shown both directly by the number
given by Mindy later on after her father’s death, and the passive attitude towards money when they
order the jet-pack online, as well as the security of their home (being very secure, a characteristic of
richer homes).

The upper class family of the d’Amicos is probably the most stereotypical, again both in terms of
their house and their interaction between the family. Overall, the family isn’t very close, which is
often the stereotype for upper class families – that the child is looked after by paid professionals,
rather than having much time with the parents, which is exactly the way Frank and Chris are. The
house itself is also massive – in fact, it’s a tower, where each room is absolutely massive. The father
also lets his work interfere with his activities with his son, shown by the way that Chris complains
towards the beginning about how they were going to be late for the cinema, which the audience
knows was because Frank was questioning someone before ordering his finger to be cut off.

Physical ability is represented within the film by the metal implants that Dave gets after being
attacked and hospitalized. This, in terms of representation, would be referred to as being the “super
cripple”, in that his function isn’t impaired, yet he feels a lot less pain than usual – this is shown
clearly in the scene where his friends are knocking him about to see how little he feels (culminating
in him being hit in the head with a dinner tray). This “disability” encourages him to carry on with his
crime fighting, which obviously leads to the majority of the rest of the film’s events, and encourages
character development in the form of confidence, as seen by his distinct lack of fear when
confronted by the thug he tazers in the face – until, of course, he’s about the be cut, at which point
the fear returns, possibly showing that this disability has probably just increased his age-related
obliviousness to consequence.

The movie uses a lot of close-ups at various points, mainly on the characters faces – this is probably
done in order to keep attention on the characters actions, as well as keeping the general feel of a
comic going throughout as well. The film itself was developed side-by-side (to an extent) with the
actual comic, with both the comic and film being made along side each other and making certain
choices determined on what would be better for a film audience and comic audience – for example,
the choice to have a more optimistic ending and past for Dave and Big Daddy, respectively, was
made due to film audiences being much more used to having those types of endings, but the comic
had Dave not ending up with Katie (who instead got her then boyfriend to punch him in the face)
and Big Daddy turned out to be a man who had just created a back story to give his daughter an
interesting child hood, and whose wife hadn’t been killed by Frank d’Amico, but rather had simply
divorced him – his fixation on being a superhero stemmed from a great love for comic books, with
his suitcase actually being full of them. So, back on track, a lot of the camera shots were done in
order to keep the film true to the comic, with long shots being done to set the scene (like shooting
the outside of a comic store before going inside), mid shots being used for fight scenes and the like,

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and close ups being done when characters are talking, etcetera in order to get the audience to focus
on the character’s dialogue and actions.

The angles of the shots are also usually done at eye-level, and in the direction of the character’s
perspective, which I personally think was an attempt to keep the audience immersed in the actions
and focus of the characters – this is emphasized a lot by the movement of the camera often being in
sync with the characters movements. A great example of this would be the scene where Kick-Ass
goes to confront the thugs in the apartment, and when he enters the apartment the camera comes
from essentially his site, following his sight around the doorway and into the apartment, and then
around the apartment as he asks for Rasul. His stereotype of being a horny teenager (mentioned
earlier) is also shown in this scene as the camera focuses and zooms in on the woman’s breasts.
Another part of this specific scene that suggests the angles throughout are meant to keep the
audience immersed is when he’s brought down to the floor and the camera focuses on Rasul, at
which point the camera is clearly pointed upwards (from his position on the floor) whilst he gets
stabbed through the chest.

The sound used within each of the scenes matches the feelings of the character(/s) whose
perspective the shots are coming from, at least for the majority of the film. For example, the
introduction scene for Hit-Girl where she kills the room of thugs is accompanied by very childish, fun
music, showing Hit-Girl’s childish nature and how the fight scene is from her perspective (before and
after it, however, are from Dave’s perspective, hence the either lack of music or deep, serious toned
music). The

Mise En Scene

The mise-en-scene, just like the angle and movement of the camera (but to a much greater extent,
of course), is done in such a way that the film feels very true to the comic, which is mainly done via
the bright colour schemes and the choice of costume for each other characters (along with their
colour schemes as well). At the same time, however, the colour schemes they use also seem to be
somewhat foreboding about close events – the main scene with this, as mentioned numerous times
before, is the scene where Dave enters Rasul’s apartment, and the wallpaper is red (a colour
obviously associated with blood which, moments later, there is plenty of), as well as the woman’s
dress being red as well. All the costumes also seem to be somewhat stereotypical in order to keep a
superhero-comic-feel to the whole thing – the teenage boys wear baggy clothes, Kick-Ass wears a
skin tight outfit (which even he is ashamed of after he gets hospitalized, afraid that if people find out
he was wearing that they’ll think he was some sort of pervert), Big Daddy has a costume that is
mistaken for Batman in it’s description to the mobsters, the thugs in the apartment wear sport vests,
hoodies, etcetera., the woman is wearing a revealing dress and the mobsters are all wearing suits. A
key feature of classic superhero comics is the use of stereotypical characters (with, of course, some
deviation) and outfits, so I think the film does a pretty damn good job at emulating this feel – Big
Daddy’s portrayal even has some inspiration from Adam West’s portrayal of Batman back in the day,
another famous live action portrayal of a comic book. The tone of the film in general is also adjusted
to be a lot more comical (no real pun intended there) via these colour schemes and costumes, which
adds to the immersion in that this tone is kept whilst the characters are remaining optimistic or
oblivious to consequence. For example, the scene where Kick-Ass fights the two muggers in the alley
way has, obviously, him being fairly optimistic about his chances, despite only donning a skin-tight

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suit and a baton, and the scene is fairly hilarious to start with as well. The black mugger has a placed
laugh that has been made to be hysterical, and it does so, and the tone is kept up until the point
when they stab Dave – at this point, the whole tone turns pessimistic, with a slow motion effect over
deep tones to show Dave’s pain, and the removal of the costume shortly after could be seen as
somewhat symbolic of this change in tone.