ABSTRACT
Using Kill Bill as an example, this chapter demonstrates how to perform a critical analysis of a screen text by 'thinking on both sides of the screen,' considering the text itself, its contexts and influences, production and reception. In the process, it investigates new directions in and influences on screen culture, such as the gradual erosion of clear demarcations between film and television styles and structures; developments in digital media technologies and techniques; and the impact of video games, anime and Asian cinema. The chapter shows how understandings of genre hybridity, globalisation, postmodernism and postfeminism are central to theorising contemporary screen culture and are relevant to the analysis of screen texts. While it may seem that Kill Bill is a product of the globalisation of communication that characterises the new millennium, the Chinese and Japanese swordplay films and the Hong Kong martial arts movies from which Tarantino drew inspiration are, and always have been, transnational generic hybrids.
