Catholic school girls and guns: How Kick Ass addresses stereotypes in mass media

The girls at St. Greg's didn't mess around.

There's this moment in Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass, at the beginning of the third act, when Hit Girl fakes the little-girl-lost-in-the-big-city routine to waste three thugs guarding the doors to a crime lord's high rise. Before she guns all of them down, one of the thugs approaches the cute little 11-year-old in the plaid Catholic school dress, and just before he offers help the camera stays on her just a beat too long. Like it's giving the men in the audience another minute to consider: Am I supposed to be turned on here, or is ogling this little girl as wrong as I think it is?

It is wrong. So very, very wrong. Ew. And as I do for the downfall of American culture, the rise of Trailer Park Chic and communism, I blame Britney Spears. At least she was 16. NOT 11.

Because you were going to look it up anyway.

As the recipient of a 12-year-long Catholic school education (beginning with St. Greg's, then St. Joe's and finally, St. John Fisher), I don't remember the girls ever seductively hiking their skirts up or unbuttoning their blouses to their navel, and I really don't remember them carrying concealed weapons. I remember a girl named Katie stealing a kiss on my cheek when I was in second grade and me running away from her. I remember an awkward first kiss with another girl, years later, much in the way of Kick Ass' first kiss in the movie.

She was not armed either.

For some reason this scene with Hit Girl made me pause, and I think it's because to this point the movie had me guessing at what Vaughn would change next. The whole first act is beat-for-beat the same as the comic book (minus the Big Daddy/Hit Girl back story), but the gleeful gore splayed across every page by splatter-happy John Romita Jr. was, for the large part, missing. No, that's not right - it was there, just not as in-your-face and uncomfortable as the comic. (SPOILER: When the bullet slings through Big Daddy's skull and forces his eyeball out, I literally stared at that image for a full minute to comprehend what I was seeing).

So Vaughn swaps out this discomfort for other moments - Kick Ass' awkward first kiss (another watery change from the book), the bumbling-ness added to Red Mist, and the subdued sexuality of Hit Girl ... WHO IS 11 YEARS OLD (it's even referenced by one of the nerdy characters that are Kick Ass' friends, who pledges to save himself for her when she gets older!!! DUDE.).

It's weird to see how pop culture (and the Japanese) picked Catholic School Girl as a sex fantasy, but maybe I was desensitized at an early age. When you have to look at 50-year-old nuns wearing similar outfits, well ... there are some things you just can't unsee.

As for Kick Ass, I'd see it again. Yes, the entire second act is reworked to give it more mainstream appeal. Overall, the changes work - it sacrifices the character arc of the comic for a more palatable storyline suited to the tastes of a wider audience, one that is looking for more than violent images threaded together with an angsty storyline.

And frankly, I left all my angst back in Catholic School.