Modesty Blaise

Thank you all for a great conversation this week regarding the question “Is Quentin Tarantino a feminist?”

Responses were as varied as could be expected and ranged from expressions of the power and strength one may feel after watching Zoë, Abernathy, and Kim, and a desire to adapt Beatrix Kiddo’s better qualities; resilience, confidence and physical prowess.

For those of you who saw my previous post you’ll know that the 1966 classic camp film, Modesty Blaise, was shown in the early morning hours on AMC. The film, based on the eponymous character of a long-running British comic strip, is of the so bad it’s bad variety. But even so, this relatively obscure movie that inspires a love-it-or-hate-it reaction, as well as the enigmatic Modesty Blaise herself, has influenced subsequent gems of popular culture including the visual style of Austin Powers, the origin story of X-Men’s Ororo Munroe, and the ass-kicking women of Kill Bill. Modesty was a groundbreaking and progressive character that rivaled the other Spy-Fi icons she was so often compared to, but she remains relatively unknown to the American side of the pond and is increasingly distanced from her native audience.

Hello and welcome to the Grrrl on Film Blog! My name is Jennifer K. Stuller, aka The Ink-Stained Amazon. I’m a writer, author, and critic with a particular interest in the history of women in popular culture. My first book, Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, will be published this January. I’m honored to have had Bitch ask me to be a guest film blogger for the summer . . .