Interesting Racism Angle (mild SPOILERS)

Don't worry, this isn't me accusing the movie of anything - this isn't about modern socio-political ideologies or anything. I just noticed a minor thread in Kill Bill, both volumes, that pertains to racism. Specifically: there are several people who are racist towards the Bride.

The most obvious is Pai Mei. Pai Mei is almost proud of his racism towards basically anybody who isn't Chinese. He's so entrenched in his prejudices that it seems likely to me that Pai Mei would probably have a hierarchy of regions in China for superior and inferior groups even among his own people. Interestingly, despite his racism towards white people and Americans in-particular (not to mention sexism towards women) he agrees to take on the Bride and becomes so impressed with her that he divulges his greatest secrets.

This leads to an odd question: does he really care about any of his bigoted attitudes? His rhetoric is all bile and disdain for other races and the opposite sex, but he respects skill and dedication above any of that. Is he really racist, then, if he is willing to look past anything else and see a person's true merit? He recognizes the virtue of the Bride above her fellow assassins, after all. Just something to chew on...

However, there's more. The Bride experiences racist attitudes from two of her former Deadly Vipers teammates.

Vernita Green comments that she, "...should have been motherf***ing Black Mamba." The comment displays jealousy of the Bride's skills, or possibly the favouritism Bill showed her (right up until the, uh, brutal massacring took place, anyway), but this jealousy is filtered and manifested through remarks on the Bride's race.

At the end of Vol.1, when the Bride confronts O-Ren Ishii, O-Ren remarks, "Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords." O-Ren is taking a dig at the Bride. It seems like she might be miffed by "cultural appropriation." Maybe she just isn't a fan of Caucasians in-general. This is all the more odd given that O-Ren responded to racism in a pretty...direct way earlier. "The price you pay for bringing up either my Chinese or American heritage, as a negative, is: I collect your f***ing head." This is another example of racism entering the motivations of characters in Kill Bill, but it's interesting that O-Ren seems to have a double-standard here.

Now, where am I going with this? I don't know. It could just be that these characters go to these places because real people do that, too, and it's part of the authenticity of the world. It could be that Tarantino has a point to make about the multi-cultural DVAS and the globe-hopping motifs he put into the Kill Bill flicks - he draws from samurai movies and westerns - East and West - across the films. I don't know.

I don't want to read too far into this, I just thought it was interesting and worth muddling out in a post.