EURIPIDEAN ASSEMBLAGES

In the final scene of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015), Daisy Domergue, the sole female character among the titled eight, hangs suspended from the ceiling of the cabin in which they all have fought an operatically violent battle to the death. From her cuffed hand a chain dangles, at the other end of which is another cuffed hand, minus the rest of the body to which it had belonged. Its owner was her bounty hunter, who spent most of his time onscreen physically abusing her, including struggling with her over the control of weapons (e.g., machete and gun). We meet her with a black eye, to which are soon added a broken nose and teeth and a face repeatedly doused in her own blood and that of others. Two equally bloody antagonists string her up, pitting their injuries against her near-dead weight, so that for a time her body is triangulated by her attachment to them as well as to the remaining bit of the bounty hunter.