Brats in Bondage: Lessons in defi­ance from Tank Girl

AI over­lords, envi­ron­men­tal dead­lock, obscene wealth inequal­i­ty, and emer­gent author­i­tar­i­an­ism – it all reads like the open­ing crawl of some cult-clas­sic dystopi­an flick, but unfor­tu­nate­ly for us, it’s just the state of things in 2025. Dystopia looms. How is one to man­age? One sug­ges­tion: Fight fic­tion with fic­tion and cope like a main character. 

For inspi­ra­tion, look no fur­ther than the petu­lant, per­for­ma­tive, and per­pet­u­al­ly horny pro­tag­o­nist of Rachel Talalay’s Tank Girl (1995). Sure, Tank Girl is raunchy and ridicu­lous (and that’s what makes it won­der­ful) but look clos­er. Beneath the absur­di­ty lies a play­book for protest and defi­ance that (also unfor­tu­nate­ly for us) feels dis­con­cert­ing­ly rel­e­vant. Although every third coun­try or so seems to be mak­ing a hard turn right, there’s still time to course cor­rect – time to push back against the fledg­ling dystopias. 

And Tank Girl tells us how. 

It’s 2033. Eleven years pre­vi­ous, a comet crashed into Earth and destroyed the cli­mate. The result­ing drought led to the cre­ation of Water & Pow­er (W&P), a cor­rupt cor­po­ra­tion led by the com­i­cal­ly depraved Kesslee, who ​“control[s] most of the water and got all the power.”

Enter Tank Girl, played by Lori Pet­ty: A water-steal­ing, tank-obsessed waste­lander liv­ing it up in the desert until a W&P raid destroys her hap­py-go-lucky life and launch­es her into a kink-cod­ed bid for revenge. 

Let’s be clear: There are a lot of dif­fer­ences between a bad dom with a poor grasp of kink essen­tials and an author­i­tar­i­an régime like W&P (and its non-fic­tion­al equivalents)…but there are also quite a few similarities. 

In her dal­liances with W&P, Tank Girl illus­trates an ethos most in the kink com­mu­ni­ty will rec­og­nize. Con­trol is achieved con­sen­su­al­ly, or not at all. It exists only when giv­en, and can be revoked at any time. In this equa­tion, sub­mis­sion is an informed, freely-made choice, and defi­ance is always an option. For Tank Girl, defi­ance is just a way of life – she’s a quin­tes­sen­tial brat and rec­og­nizes pow­er strug­gles for the poor­ly dis­guised game that they are. 

These moments of defi­ance often hinge on Tank Girl’s under­stand­ing that her appear­ance and man­ner­isms cre­ate a set of assump­tions about her strength and intel­li­gence. She uses these assump­tions as ammu­ni­tion, trans­form­ing them into a weapon rather than a tool of her own subjugation. 

Dur­ing the W&P raid, for instance, Tank Girl unknow­ing­ly per­forms a strip tease for a W&P guard she incor­rect­ly assumed to be her boyfriend. As the bar­rel of a gun intrudes upon the scene, the dynam­ic changes: The guard nods for her to con­tin­ue, and she does, lean­ing into his (false) assump­tion that she is a sex­u­al, sub­mis­sive crea­ture for the taking. 

That assump­tion is his undo­ing. She knows the role expect­ed of her and plays it well. The illu­sion of con­trol lasts until the very moment she decides to revoke it – the very moment the guard meets his fate at the end of his own grenades. The strip show turns into a mur­der scene. Con­ven­tion­al pow­er dynam­ics turn on their head. And Tank Girl emerges on top.

Whether fac­ing impris­on­ment in a claus­tro­pho­bia-induc­ing tor­ture device apt­ly named ​“The Pipe” or shiv­er­ing after a night spent in a freez­er, Tank Girl defies fear. She elects not to give her cap­tors the response they expect. In doing so, she dis­arms them.

This phi­los­o­phy is implic­it through­out the film, but is at its most overt while Tank Girl is impris­oned in a W&P labor camp. There, she meets Jet Girl (Nao­mi Watts), a beat­en-down pris­on­er. After Tank Girl saves her from yet an obsessed prison guard who doesn’t know how to take ​“no” for an answer, Jet Girl explains her ethos for sur­viv­ing under W&P’s thumb: ​“The bet­ter you behave, the more they leave you alone.” 

Yet audi­ences of 1995, 2025, and 2033 all know this to be patent­ly untrue. In restric­tive envi­ron­ments such as these, no one is safe, no mat­ter how meek­ly they sub­mit to the shack­les. Tank Girl knows it too.

She takes Jet Girl on as some­thing of a per­son­al project, spend­ing the entire movie teach­ing her (and the audi­ence) how to enact through play­ful protest and deter­mined defi­ance. Through tor­ture and tor­ment at the hands of W&P, Tank Girl shows us how to play the brat – to laugh through pain and trans­form con­ven­tion­al pow­er dynam­ics into a tan­gled, unin­tel­li­gi­ble mess.

Every bad euphemism and ​‘con­se­quences be damned’ deci­sion is a rad­i­cal, rev­o­lu­tion­ary act. It’s a break from con­ven­tion that dis­rupts the sta­tus quo and grad­u­al­ly desta­bi­lizes W&P’s seem­ing­ly lim­it­less con­trol. Tank Girl’s acts of defi­ance con­fuse and con­found; they leave W&P flat-footed. 

After all, W&P expects vio­lence and cru­el­ty to inspire fear and to spark a waver­ing of con­vic­tion. In their view, that’s just how it should work. Yet, at no point does Tank Girl con­sent to this expec­ta­tion of con­trol. Time and again, she choos­es humor and ridicule – she choos­es not to sub­mit to the pow­er dynam­ic placed before her, even in the face of extreme phys­i­cal violence. 

For instance, as part of a tac­tic to break Tank Girl’s spir­it and coerce her into work­ing for him, Kesslee leaves her in a freez­er overnight, strapped in a straight­jack­et and immo­bi­lized in the cold. The next morn­ing, he con­fi­dent­ly returns, say­ing: ​“I’m going to ask you just one more time. Do you want to work for Water and Pow­er?” Look­ing at her blood­shot eyes and lank hair, he expects imme­di­ate acqui­es­cence. Instead, she replies: ​“Yeah! That sounds groovy. Do I get to wear a cute lit­tle out­fit like yours?”

Her response cuts through the illu­sion of pow­er. His uni­form – a sig­nal of his author­i­ty – is reduced to a fash­ion choice. His tor­ture tac­tics are framed as a minor incon­ve­nience. She reduces every­thing he does to val­i­date his con­trol over the world and its water into a joke and, in doing so, under­cuts his authority. 

Each dis­play of defi­ance (and there are many) show­cas­es the fragili­ty of Kesslee and W&P, whose ten­u­ous con­trol hinges on the pre­sump­tion of pow­er and the individual’s sub­mis­sion to it. Break that com­pact, and you break the régime. Every­one, Tank Girl tells us, has the abil­i­ty to choose their own atti­tude. Even in the direst of cir­cum­stances, this free­dom remains. 

Now extend that choice beyond the indi­vid­ual – when defi­ance is a col­lec­tive choice and protest a recur­ring theme, desta­bi­liza­tion is inevitable. With­out the will­ing sub­mis­sion of the mass­es, no régime (or fic­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion) can main­tain the illu­sion of total­i­tar­i­an power. 

Con­for­mi­ty and sub­mis­sion, then, are the only things that sus­tain the dystopias we fear. Some­times, uncon­ven­tion­al exis­tence is protest enough. And boy howdy is Tank Girl good at that. Her behav­ior may seem friv­o­lous and flip­pant, but it’s intense­ly cal­cu­lat­ed. Togeth­er with Jet Girl (and a crew of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered kan­ga­roo men includ­ing one played by Ice T), she over­throws Kesslee and rewrites the pow­er dynam­ic of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Earth.

It’s rad­i­cal social change, achieved one mini-skirt and dick joke at a time, and it’s not entire­ly unrealistic. 

Yes, the dai­ly news­feed is bleak, each break­ing sto­ry feels more and more fic­tion­al than the last, and in the 30 years since Tank Girl​’s release, we’ve veered ever clos­er toward clas­sic dystopi­an tropes with­out a sin­gle kan­ga­roo man in sight. But it isn’t an envi­ron­ment we’re resigned to; it’s a land­scape we can change. Tank Girl reminds us that we have agency. It tells us that dystopi­an pow­er depends on will­ing sub­mis­sion – some­thing no brat worth their salt gives up easily. 

As you face up against the morn­ing news, con­sid­er tak­ing a leaf from Tank Girl’s book: Love your whips and chains. Live kinky. Make out with a kan­ga­roo man. Be who­ev­er the fuck you want to be. Just don’t lick the boot. That’s the only kink she’ll shame.