The phrase ‘blaxploitation’ already implies the medium was used by Hollywood to exploit blackness, or black bodies, through stereotypical characterization and glorification of violence in these films (although few characters were depicted as heroes). The films Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, is credited for the invention of the genre, but its inception began further back with films such as Uptight, as they depicted Black Power ideology on screen in earlier periods. These films brought light to the black experience and allowed black actors to control their own narrative, often depicting issues that were ignored in mainstream cinema. Sweetback and Shaft, both inspired by Black Power ideology, integrated Marxist elements, while using violence and sexual tropes to enhance storylines. The films were considered controversial for their stereotypical depictions of black people, but some (or many, etc.) said they depicted forms of black life that were neglected in mainstream cinema and television. Often low-budget features, they formed an avenue for performers and filmmakers to come together and create these stories. The films in which Grier starred -- Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975), and Friday Foster (1975) --featured elements similar to those seen in earlier blaxploitation films, mixing gritty naturalism with sex and violence, whilst sensationalizing social issues present in the film. In her most famous roles, Coffy and Foxy Brown, she combined these elements to create characters who exude sex appeal while using savvy to outsmart the bad guys, sometimes being stripped of their dignity and power to reach their objectives. So was she a powerful heroine or an unknowing victim of exploitation?
Pam Grier was discovered by Jack Hill, noted film director in the exploitation genre, after her move from Denver to Los Angeles to secure acting gigs, while working on the switchboards at American International Pictures. While working at AIP, she worked other odd jobs to save money for film school at UCLA. Her first film credit was as a party extra in Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, before she secured starring roles for American International Pictures. Meyer was a filmmaker known for sexploitation flicks starring voluptuous women, and Grier obviously fit the bill. In the party scene where the band The Kelly Affair is performing, she is seen among a group of partygoers, but so briefly that if you blink you’ll miss her. Her role was not prominent as she did not speak but merely served as a curvaceous fly on the wall. The following year, she starred in two women-in-prison films, The Big Doll House and Women in Cages. In the former film, she played a lesbian prisoner who assists her fellow cellmates to escape from their island prison, and in the latter, she starred as a sadistic prison guard with a penchant for torture. Grier then cut her teeth on small roles in early blaxploitation flicks, Cool Breeze and Hit Man, a film more famously adapted as Get Carter.
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Screen grab from Black Mama White Mama w/ Pam Grier (right) and Margaret Markov (left).
She then went on to perform in two other women-in-prison flicks, The Big Bird Cage and Black Mama White Mama, an exploitative remake of The Defiant Ones. In these films, nudity was shown so much, you’d think it was the best thing since sliced bread. Black Mama White Mama starred Grier, who played a prostitute, and Margaret Markov, a revolutionary, who plan to escape prison together even though they hate each other. Regardless of the film’s exploitative nature, it is empowering for starring two strong female leads. Revolutionary Karen Brent (Margaret Markov) seeks to overthrow a corrupt government while Lee Daniels (Pam Grier) conjures up a plan to exact revenge on her misogynistic pimp. Black Mama White Mama shows that two women from different backgrounds can band together and defeat the system despite their differences. Their strength overpowers the men around them when they use their intelligence, sexuality, and firepower to break free from dangerous situations. The film also had elements of Black Power, which also showed up in Grier’s later work. Despite playing a prostitute, Grier showed audiences one of the first roles that did not show black women in a subservient light (Simms, 2006). She wears her hair natural in an Afro and is seen as an action heroine, traits which both present an antithesis to the Mammy figure (Simms, 2006).
In Coffy, Pam Grier stars as the film’s titular character, a nurse who seeks revenge on those responsible for her younger sister’s heroin addiction. After the success of Coffy, Pam Grier went on to feature in more starring roles such as The Arena, where she again co-stars with Margaret Markov, Foxy Brown, Friday Foster, and Sheba Baby. Through these successes, Pam Grier ultimately became the undisputed queen of blaxploitation films. Jack Hill designed the role of Coffy specifically for Grier, even allowing her input on the dialogue in the production stage in hopes of creating a more authentic character.We first see Coffy feigning for a quick fix in exchange for sex unbeknownst to the dealers who discover her in their car's backseat. After going back to their apartment for an assumed tryst, she stands up with her gun cocked and declares, “This is the end of your rotten life, you motherfuckin’ dope pusher,” blasting the dealer's head off while the camera cuts to his henchman’s look of disbelief. She asks the henchman if he is familiar with her sister Lubelle, to which he refutes before being injected with a lethal dose of heroin. This introduction to Coffy shows how she is able to use her feminine wiles and beauty to facilitate her revenge. She is able to fluctuate between militant Coffy and sexy Coffy, maneuvering between the two identities whenever she sees fit. The film drew on the sexual victimization of women while allowing the subjects to fight back against their subjugation.
Grier’s role as Coffy came in the wake of the Black Power movement, which fostered the rise of black female revolutionaries like Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver, which “served to contain the threat” that was posed with being a strong revolutionary (Johnson, 2012). Her sexual objectification in these films were used to placate the fear and anxiety she causes when seeking her revenge, while reinforcing the stereotype of the angry black woman. For example, in a scene from Coffy where she attempts to thwart the assault of her friend Carter, she ends up getting assaulted herself, shown in a position with her blouse ripped open, exposing her breasts. She is disempowered and humiliated while fighting back against the burglars. The black female action heroine is used in place of real revolutionaries to reinforce the idea that they posed a threat to society. Grier was rendered a glamorous sex symbol because directors at the time wanted toto control the imagedea of the revolutionary black woman by, setting them in an inner-city characterized by drugs, crime, and violence.
This is done intentionally to distort the image of the black revolutionary that was seen as a dangerous weapon threatening the status quo, feeding into society’s fear of black militancy by usurping it with sexual deviance through the eyes of the overly, aggressive black female. Foxy Brown was released in 1974, the same year Elaine Brown assumed the position of party chair to the Black Panther party, giving audiences a more palatable image of the revolutionary. Foxy Brown reinforced the notion of black women being seen as threatening while redirecting their rage onto “othered whites -- whites who are drug dealers, prostitutes, lesbians,” white people who deviate from societal norms and become the heroine's primary focus (Johnson, 2012). Regardless, we can see how being seen as a threat and a symbol of Black Power can be empowering as it denotes strength and the ability to summon fear into others. This is especially significant for women, since women are more often seen as weak and inferior.
Movie poster for Coffy (left) and Foxy Brown (right). Courtesy of IMDb.
Lakesia D. Johnson asserts that the promotion for the films Coffy and Foxy Brown were used to contribute to mitigating the fears of the increase in militant black men and women. Johnson presents three images, which include the film poster for Coffy and two other promotional images depicting scenes from the film. The movie poster for Coffy juxtaposes images of violence and sexuality, showing Coffy’s exposed stomach and a halter exposing her large breasts while she totes a gun. Her size in relation to the other characters, and particularly a black man positioned between her legs, professes dominance, establishing “a clear hierarchy where black men are subordinate to black women” (Johnson, 2012 pg. 49). The image of Pam Grier towering over the other characters reaffirms the myth of the emasculating, strong black woman usurping the weak black male. I saw the images representing Grier as the focal point of the film, since she is amplified on the posters.
The second image shows Coffy at a party capturing the gaze of those both black and white, using her sexuality to gain the attention of her target, simultaneously having the attention of a black man and a white woman gawking at her breasts. The third image shows Coffy in a revealing dress preparing to shoot her target. These images combine sexuality and violence to minimize the black female heroine’s “latent danger through her erotic appeal” (Johnson, 2012 pg. 50). We can see a similar focus on her sexuality in the trailers for Coffy, which mostly consisted of scenes showing Grier disrobing and seducing her prey. Another instance is the film’s tagline “They call her ‘Coffy’, and she’ll cream you!”, a sexual innuendo alluding to the what could be seen in the film. On the other hand, we could view these images as a form of empowerment, amplifying her strength and ability to use her sexuality to conquer her surroundings. The black female heroine was not a victim of her environment, but a super woman who is able to use her brains and beauty to destroy her victims. By assuming the role of the militant and sexual version of the lead character, she is able to achieve her goals of delivering justice.
Sexy vs. Militant
Coffy was ahead of its time for its use of a strong female lead and particularly a black woman lead. Although she had some input on dialogue to make Coffy more authentic, Pam Grier did not have complete control over the development of Nurse Coffin. Jack Hill wrote the script specifically for Grier after her turn in The Big Doll House, using the women-in-prison genre as a nexus to feed into the genre’s “quasi-feminist dimensions (Quinn, 2012, pg. 270). Coffy’s roots were “heavily masculinist”, with the bulk of the film’s production involving men who sought to produce “male-driven filmic fantasy” (Quinn, 2012). This was not entirely the case, though, as she did have a say in the conception of Coffy. Grier, like many other black actors of the period, sought to take control over the central narrative by “[adding] elements to the characters and scripts in… to make the movies more dimensional” (Quinn, 2012, pg. 270). Grier worked on the script for free with Hill, but the film’s producers did not offer any assurance that she would land the role. The directors used Grier as free labor to gain insight into a “life they weren’t familiar with” incorporating black and female social matters to develop the film’s generic formula— this exemplifies the racist division of labor in filmmaking.
Grier had a strong following among black men, but held influence over black women as well for redefining black female sexuality, beauty, and womanhood, and straying from the typical portrayals of black women as mammy-fied and haggard. Women across all ethnic lines also responded to Grier’s roles positively. In Pakistan, women were not allowed to be depicted showing skin, fighting, or holding guns, so moviegoers instead found Coffy in underground theaters. The violent action sequences are “feminine coded” since Coffy feels “ambivalence towards the violence she perpetuates” and uses weapons which feminize the violence, such as wigs and razor blades and kitchen staples like sugar and knives (Quinn, 2012, pg. 278). Hill created a character that any woman could envision herself as— not one trained in fighting or holding a gun, but one who could use her beauty and eroticism to exact her revenge.
Coffy and Foxy Brown both exploit Grier’s beauty and sexuality to its advantage, with the films’ primary focus surrounding Grier’s cleavage and “the fetishistic treatment of Grier’s sexual body via her breasts”, exemplified by the numerous seduction scenes involving her disrobing to expose them (Dunn, 2008, pg. 880). Women’s bodies were still being objectified and seen through the male gaze, but veiled as sexual liberation. Women were sexually objectified in these films to offset the rise of women’s liberation, allowing men’s titillation to be “augmented by the graphic violence that usually followed the sexual display (O’Day; Tasker, 2004, pg. 203). Despite this, it allowed black women to be seen as assertive and heroic, doing all the things men had done in blaxploitation with a sense of agency.
These portrayals often showcased black women’s bodies as more attuned to black nationalism while denying the needs and desires of the black woman. The Black Power movement asserted that feminism was simply a white woman’s issue, and female centrality could not coexist alongside antiracist ideals. An example is the scene where Foxy Brown goes to a local black community organization to receive help to take down Ms. Kathryn’s prostitution ring. Foxy is seated before a poster depicting a nude black woman, while an all-male council, positioned as overshadowing an image of Angela Davis, decides her verdict. This scene minimizes Foxy’s needs by upholding black nationalism and “privileging a male perspective, while diminishing the existence of black revolutionary women” (Johnson, 2012). Foxy’s sexual assault is minimized in place of avenging violence against black men. The privileging of black men’s needs are presented through Foxy’s revenge.
When Foxy is held captive, she is tied down and bruised, with one of her captors drugging and sexually assaulting her. She eventually escapes and burns down the shack with her captors inside. Foxy has to handle her vengeance herself without the aid of the black male figures. Instead of her final act of revenge being centered around her rape, her suffering is diminished in favor of “a narrative that privileges justice for the black male characters”, with her own vindication being placed on the backburner (Johnson, 2012, pg. 55). An example is when the Black Panther brothers castrate Ms. Kathryn’s boyfriend, Steve, who was not even responsible for Foxy’s rape. Foxy then presents a pickle jar containing Steve’s genitals to Ms. Kathryn, which could be seen as a symbol of the emasculation of black males through their sexuality. This reinforces the values that were present during the height of the Black Power struggle, forcing women to sacrifice their bodies for the cause, in turn neglecting their wants and desires.
Tamara Dobson’s kung-fu fighting CIA agent, Cleopatra Jones, was considered to be more classy, in comparison to Pam Grier’s portrayals of street-wise, scantily clad women. Some scholars assert that there was a “bourgeois-versus-street” rivalry between the two portrays, as Cleo was more respectable, “leading to an under acknowledgement of the latter’s class flexibility. Coffy was able to maneuver herself between middle-class and working-class settings, being able to remain comfortable in both. Grier represents a dichotomy of the street and classy, nurturing and vengeful, being able to navigate both the low-class and high-class worlds. Although for Dunn, she purports that Coffy and Foxy Brown positions “real black femaleness” in a facile rendering of “lower-class black females in the figure of the prostitute or hot mama” (Dunn, 2008, pg. 116). But Coffy works as a nurse, placing her between upper-working and lower-middle classes. By functioning between these two worlds, she is able to move secretly and disguise herself to her targets. Coffy and Foxy Brown both pose as prostitutes, using their sexuality to control the situation at hand. Instead of being forcibly stripped naked, which happens more than once, they both are able to distinguish between a woman who is “in control of their sexuality and [women] who are exploited” by others because of it (Clark, 2006). Grier accommodates the typical male heroic figure to fit she and what black women represent.
The following year, Pam Grier starred in Sheba, Baby and Friday Foster, playing a private eye and magazine photographer respectively, deviating from the hypersexual roles she played earlier on screen. Despite playing more “classy” characters, she was still being sexualised in these films. In Sheba, Baby, Grier plays Sheba Shayne, a private eye confronting those attempting to take over her father’s insurance business, and eventually father’s murder. In these films, she still had to be groped by the bandits she pursued, as if they fondle her, it would lessen her power and curtail her pursuit. In Friday Foster, she is seen as a damsel in distress, as she is the target of death, instead of being the one handing out beatdowns. This was also unusual for the time as black women were rarely painted as women in need of saving. Friday Foster features Grier in an obligatory nude shower scene, although this is the only time Grier is seen naked throughout the film. Grier’s roles showed that women did not have to be masculine to have power and that they can stand up for themselves.
Film critic Nelson George asserts that Pam Grier remains one of the few female actress who were given roles that “emphasized her physical beauty but also her ability to take retribution on men who challenged her” (George, 1995). Being one of the first action heroes, Grier was instrumental in shaping gender roles by portraying strong female characters who not only used their sexuality, but were able to renounce those trying to cause harm, embracing vigilantism in the process. She showed that women were able to addressed with deference, not to be seen as victims, but survivors of their circumstances. I still view her as a symbol of empowerment, as she was able to perform roles that were not afforded to women previously. Her presence on screen showed audiences that she demanded respect in spite of her sexualization. I have realized that I can enjoy watching her films, but still be able to note the flaws and critique them. It doesn’t mean that I will like the films any less. She redefined what could be seen as beautiful and feminine for women, especially African-American women. At the time she came onto the scene, it was rare to see women fighting on screen and toting guns, exemplifying that women embody vigor as well. In the end, Pam Grier was more of an empowering figure than one who was subjugated by the powers that be.
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