Matthew Dalby

How are the characters represented in the film Kick-Ass (2010)?

Include:

 Representation of Age, Gender, Ethnicity, Social Class, Regional Identity, Disability and
Sexuality.
 Also refer to the four areas of textual analysis: Cinematography, Mise en Scene, Editing
and Sound.

Kick-Ass (2010) is a comedy and action film that includes a variety of different personas (with
actors/actresses from different backgrounds) which enhances the narrative for the audience and
composes effective representations of the characters. In this essay, I will discuss how the seven key
areas of representation are portrayed to the audience and how the cinematography, mise en scene,
lighting, editing and sound add to the humorous side to the film and place it in the action/comedy
genre.
Firstly, the representation of age and gender are really well presented to the audience because
the different characters show a range of views on today’s society. The main persona, Dave Lizewski,
is said to be an ‘ordinary teenager’ by the plot description and some of the factors that are
represented support this idea. At the beginning of the film, we first see Dave walking through college
(which immediately tells the audience that he is a teenage student). The audience then see Dave at
home talking to his friend on the computer, before fantasising about his English teacher. His shows
that he is hypersexual, and represents him as a typical teenage boy because of his sexual activities
being higher than that of an older person – when comparing to the stereotypes. Humour is also
added to the scene because the audience see what he is thinking when he daydreams about his
teacher because of the echoing of her voice and the fact that he is actually fantasising about her in
that way at that moment in time.
Furthermore, all of the technology that he has (such as the Apple Mac) shows that he is modern
and is up-to-date with the new technologies that teenagers of today have. The cinematography and
editing that is used at the beginning are fast paced and therefore can be compared to how Dave’s
life moves (which is either him doing a lot of activities or that his hormones are all over the place).
The soundtrack that is used during the college scene is called “Stand Up” (by the Prodigy) and comes
from the studio album called Invaders Must Die. Because the genre of the music is electronic, it tells
the audience that Dave maybe likes that kind of music and that he is modern for his age group.
Moreover, the title of the album Invaders Must Die, (which most of the songs in this album are
incorporated into the film), could suggest that the villains of the city must be killed by Kick-Ass. It
therefore could also suggest foreshadowing and adds to the drama of the film as the electronic
music is used in the fighting scenes as well.
The representation of Mindy (or Hit-Girl) is a mixed one because the audience’s stereotypes of a
young girl and a superhero are supported as well as contrasted throughout the film. Mindy is mainly
represented as a revengeful child that is incredibly good at martial arts and is foul-mouthed. This use
of bad language shocks the audience because they would not expect a young girl to talk in that way
to others and therefore links her to the lower class because it is them that are suppose to show no
respect when talking to other people. However, Mindy is then shown as a girl that just wants peace
for her mother’s death and we see her as the ‘typical’ school girl when she tricks D’Amico’s men into
thinking that she is just looking for her mother and father. It can also support the idea that young
girls use their feminine and polite manner to get what they want; when they could be exactly the

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opposite in reality (as she is).

The binary opposition of young verses old is portrayed in this film, but however the stereotypes say
that the younger generation are the criminal ones, when actually it is the older people in the film
that commit the crimes (D’Amico). D’Amico could then be considered to be foolish because he thinks
that he can control everyone in the city - when not even the police can. This then contradicts the
stereotypes of an older person being wiser (because of their experiences through life) and portrays
him as naive. Also, we see that the relationships between the characters really represent the young
and elderly well. For instance, Mindy and Damon Macready have a strange bond that a typical father
and daughter wouldn’t have. Their relationship is about revenge on D’Amico for their mother’s
death and is mainly built on this hatred for him. However, we see before Damon gets captured that
him and his daughter were going to have a hot chocolate together – which shows a fatherly happy
relationship. But, this was disrupted by the crime fighting that they also do and makes the audience
feel sympathy for Mindy as all of her childhood memories of her and her father have been put aside
for the bitterness of D’Amico and when her father is killed, the audience are shown that D’Amico has
taken away a childhood; creating him to be more of a complex villain; so it is not just violence that
he creates but also emotion pain.
Relating to this, the women in the film are represented differently to the audience’s stereotypes
because females are represented as being the emotionally and weaker of the genders through
stereotypes. In many traditional stories, it is the females that are the ‘damsels in distress’ by a villain
(D’Amico) and are the males that save them heroically. Although, it is Hit-Girl (or Mindy) that saves
both her father and Kick-Ass from the henchmen and manages to kill all of them easily, which
contrasts to the stereotypes and represents the males as the weaker gender in this scene and shows
that gender and age (as she is only a young teenage girl) have nothing to do with emotional and
physical strength. The strobe lighting used in that scene adds drama and action to it and the Point-
Of-View camera cinematography enables the audience to relate to war games (which most of the
younger audience will be aware of the Call of Duty game for example) and contrasts to the narrative
because it is not a game. Justifying the cinematography though, it could have been cleverly used by
the director in order to show to the audience that this murdering is just a game to Hit-Girl and that
she doesn’t have any emotion about what she is doing – making her seem as a false hero (Propp).
Sexuality is well represented to the audience throughout and the main issue with sexuality is that
Dave is only able to hang around with Kate (Lyndsy Fonseca) because she believes that he is gay. This
supports the idea that females feel more secure around gay males because they know that they will
not take advantage of them (which is why she allows him to rub the fake tan on her in her
bedroom). She did not however realise that he actually likes her and is straight until half way
through the film. What shows the stereotypes in this is that Dave acts gay in order for her to keep
believing that he is – for example, he talks more feminine and walks differently to what he usually
does. This shows sexuality well because the way that he behaves shows how today’s society think
gay males act (and also is used for humorous reasons).
Likewise, Lyndsy Fonseca could have played Kate because she is an attractive woman and therefore
could have been used in order to stereotype teenage girls as only being fully interested in gay males
so that they can have a ‘gay best friend’ and that beforehand she wasn’t interested in him and
thought he was a stalker.
Disability is illustrated to the audience in order to show that Kick-Ass was given ‘powers’ by natural
causes; and not the cliché scientific experiment that went wrong and caused mutations to occur to
give him supernatural abilities. Dave’s cause for ability was when he was stabbed and was run over

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by a car. The surgery that he had to go through made his nerve endings damaged and he had metal
plates inserted to strengthen his bones. These damaged nerve endings allowed him to take blows to
the head without him feeling the full pain and so he effectively was enhanced with an ability to
withstand pain; although it is still classified as a disability. Dave therefore is disabled because of his
injuries, but can use them to his advantage when fighting. Also, the disabled are suppose to be
reliant on others, and this is shown sometimes because he needs Hit-Girl and Big-Daddy to help him
defeat D’Amico’s men and relies on Hit-Girl to get him out of the hostage environment.
Furthermore, the disabled are stereotyped to be less sexually active because of their disability, but
the audience are clearly shown that this isn’t the case with Dave because when Kate finds out that
he is straight, there is a sexual scene to show that their relationship as friends has moved forwards.
There is intertextuality displayed through the representation of the disabled because the
reinforcement of metal plating is associated with Wolverine from the X-Men (2000) plot. In relation
to this, Big-Daddy stands in front of the mirror to get ready to meet Kick-Ass and Red-Mist and could
remind the audience of Batman from the Batman series of comics. He also talks like Bruce Wayne
from the film Batman Begins (2005) and the audience can relate to this and it becomes humour and
almost like the director is trying to mock other superhero narratives.
Ethnicity is shown to the audience only through the crime scene when there is one black man and
one white man that attack Kick-Ass and leave him to die (which is when he gets ran over). Criminals
are associated with the black community and less with the white community, but by using one white
man and one black man, it shows that both ethnics can be violent towards others and the narrative
is portraying to the audience that we should not stereotype people just because of ethnicity and
that anyone can be violent. Also, it is Rasul (Kate’s harasser) that is a drug dealer and is black. He
however is outnumber by white people as his henchmen and therefore supports the stereotype of
black people and drugs being together but there are also white druggies. White middle aged men
are always associated with being the villain in the narrative and this is true in this film because
D’Amico is the boss and he is white and powerful (wealthy).
Additionally, D’Amico becomes an import persona in representing the social class and regional
identity because it is the lower class that is represented to be the criminals, yet he is the main villain
in this plotline (and he is upper class). D’Amico also supports the idea that the inner city of New York
is more violent than the rural areas because even the police are scared of D’Amico and they go by
his orders and not the laws. This bending of the rules meant that Damon (Big-Daddy) was wrongly
accused – or so the audience are told – for drug handling and was thrown into prison. This caused
him to become violent himself and take the law into his own hands, which included murder. The
mise en scene used in the scene when we are first introduced to Mindy and Damon’s ‘collection’ of
weapons tells the audience that they are violent and that although he is an ex-policeman, he doesn’t
exactly follow the law himself. This makes the audience think that is he just as bad as D’Amico
(another false hero).
Dave himself is portrayed as being in a working class family – as his dad works night shifts and so
maybe balances out the loss of money that they do not have from his mother’s death. As most of the
people that live in New York are working class, it makes him seem like a typical teenager in that
region of the city.
The fighting scene at the end of the film involving Hit-Girl and D’Amico’s henchmen really
represent her and them well. For example, the mise en scene shows that D’Amico’s apartment is full
of expensive objects and his office is full of books – which contrasts to the violence because people
that are higher class and read books are not suppose to be associated with violence (by stereotype).

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Furthermore, the fact that D’Amico’s men are fighting a school girl and are not winning is turned to
humour because she makes no effort to move through the apartment and kill everyone in her way.
Towards the end of this scene, the audience are shown a fighting scene between Red-Mist and Kick-
Ass, and also Hit-Girl and D’Amico. Both of the teenagers fighting in the martial arts training room
fail to win as they both hit each other at the same time – showing that they are not superheroes but
can fall the same as everyone else. In the meantime however, we see Hit-Girl being violently hit by
D’Amico and she screams; this sound effect (which was probably enhanced in post-production)
enabled the audience to realise that this is a man versus a child and that the whole scene can be
seen as disturbing to the audience.
Sound effects are thoroughly used throughout the film in order to enhance the audience’s
responses to the situations. For instance, in the scene with Rasul’s men being killed by Hit-Girl, the
audience hear spattering noises as she stabs them with the blade. This enhanced sound is not only
used for humour (because of the thought of her doing that), but is also used to bring out the violent
dark side to this film. Corresponding to this, the editing used in this scene makes it more dramatic
because of the faced paced shots and the positioning of the cameras allows the audience to get a full
view of what is happening in the scene and realise the full horror of what is going on.
To conclude, Kick-Ass has been a successful film overall because of the combining of a comic book
narrative with violence and bad language in order to widen the audience and change it to not
children, but adults instead. Some reviews have described the film as ‘disturbing’ but as a whole I
think that it was cleverly thought out and ensured that and older audience could enjoy a comic book
plot.

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