F06 :: Feminist Film Studies

“Tisean, who commits the only murder in the film by one of the four leading women, is shot by a security guard as she and Stony are about to surrender. Cleo and Stony shoot their way out of the bank, but Tisean subsequently dies from her wounds in the getaway car.�
Waiting to Set It Off, Kimberly Springer pgs.191-192 (course packet pages 198-199)

Tisean’s death was in a way the most tragic of the women’s deaths because she was trying to surrender when she was murdered. This scene reinforced an overall theme of the film, that these four women were victims of the system and turning to crime was their only hope of escape.
During the film I was very frustrated by the fact that neither Frankie nor Cleo surrendered just before they were killed, because they were given the chance to. But with this quote in mind, I see how appropriate it was that they died instead of surrendering. Tisean’s death seemed to reinforce the point that even if they wanted to, the women were unable to surrender. They were in such a position where they were destined to die by the hands of the system that made living so difficult for them. Frankie and Cleo’s deaths seemed to be a conscious decision on their part that they were through being held down by an unjust system. They had decided to fight the system when they agreed to robbing banks, and their refusals to surrender were their last efforts to uphold that decision to the end. It seemed that it was an act of defiance on their part to not give up, even though they would die for it.