Wham! Bam! Pam!: Pam Grier As Hot Action Babe and Cool Action Mama
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~I Chris Holmlund 1979, 179- althou!:h most 83. Monti Wham! Bam! Pam!: and Mas. Pam Grier as Hot Action Babe and Cool Action Mama tbc<>Unlters leads to preUingt>ist.ic jouis. Alive and Kicking: "On the Seventh Day She Didn't Rest" stereotypes Now fifty-four, Pam Grier has almost as many films to her credit. One of the most charismatic action goddesses ever, she often works, by choice and by necessity, in TV and theater. As the Norwegian film magazine Z puts it: "on the seventh day she didn't rest" (Koutsvik 1998, 11). My goal in reviewing Grier's action-and occasional other-film output is twofold. I want to recon sider how action heroines have been characterized in relation to femininity and masculinity, and I want to emphasize how crucial "playing the race card" is with respect to female action stars. Most critics who appraise female action stars begin by talking about 1980s white "hard body hardware heroines" like Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). 1 Action ancestresses are bypassed, in part because the action "mode" has been defined, Jaws-like, in terms of "high con cept" blockbusters, that is, by the big budget films that swallowed up inde pendents as blaxploitation was ending.2 Unfortunately, this amnesia regarding earlier female figures hampers appraisals of today's action trends: for the most part, white women get all the attention, and they are typically measured in terms of masculinity. Still kicking after all these years, the voluptuous, 5 8, Grier offers a salutary counter model to the white "hard body hardware heroines" of the 1980s. Even in middle age, she flaunts what she sees as her femininity; when younger, she proclaimed that "Foxy Brown was every woman: able to be assertive, yet feminine, the goal of the women's movement!"3 Unlike white 1980s action heroines, moreover, wits and wiles usually matter more to Grier's gals than do muscles and guns: the blaxploitation babes in particular excel at invention and seduction. Yet there's been a salient shift: while in the 1970s This version copyright © 2008 by Chris Holmlund. An earlier draft was previously pub lished in Quarterly Review of Fihn and Video 22, no. 2 (2005): 97-112. 62 Cliris Holmlund "melodramas of racial abuse" (to adopt Linda Williams's term) fueled Grier's characters' vengeance, this is much less frequently the case in the early years of the twenty-first century' Today Grier is a cultural icon. Popular films like Austin Powers in Goldmember (lay Roach, 2002) and Undercover Brother (Malcolm D. Lee, 2002) send up her blaxploitation characters; she's won awards;' she's even been the subject of an experimental video (Inyan Etang's 1996 Badass SupermamaJ. Nor should the box office draw and cross-over appeal of her 1970s films be under estimated. Grier was not only the first-and in the 1970s the biggest-female action star, she was also one of only three female stars (with Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand) who could be counted on to open a film, and (with Streisand and Ellen Burstyn) one of the three most bankable female stars.6 Several studies of Grier's prison and blaxploitation films have been pub lished, but to my knowledge there have been no academic assessments of her career as a whole.' To begin to measure Grier's impact as (then) hot action babe and (now) cool action mama, therefore, I axe my observations around three key contradictions subtending her casting, characters, and performances: (I) kick ass and in control, she is nevertheless frequently positioned as beautiful spec tacle; noteworthy exceptions exist, however, from the 1980s onward; (2) artic ulating black power and proto- or quasi-feminist positions in the 1970s, she simultaneously functions as exotic "other"; this is less frequently true today; (3) connected to the family and often figuring as an "icon of home,"' many of the 1970s but none of the 1980s films and few of the 1990s films also reference queer sexualities. Throughout this essay I invoke a range of industry-connected discourses, from critical appraisals, to the film texts, to studio publicity, to mainstream and alternative reviews, to star and director interviews. I have organized the body of my piece historically, and subdivided it into three sections titled with lines taken from her films. The first, "Blaxploitation Blast-Off: 'She's a whole latta woman!'" concentrates on two of Grier's biggest 1970s American International Pictures bla.xploitation hits, Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973) and Foxy Brown (lack Hill, 1974); I mention Friday Foster (Arthur Marks, 1975) in passing. In all three, Grier is the heroine. As backdrop I reference her first screen appearances in prison films, also for AIP; in one, she's a villain. The second section, "'Something Wicked This Way Comes': Supporting Role Survival," surveys Grier's work as villain in two 1980s studio fihns, Fort Apache, the Bronx (Daniel Petrie, 1981) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (lack Clayton, 1983). I enlist a third sup porting performance, as Steven Seagal's "good guy" sidekick. in the 1988 Above the Law (Andrew Davis) as conduit to the third section, '"I'm Glad to See You're Still Packing a Gun ... Between Your Legs': From Cameo to Star, Revival!" This last section studies six 1990s films that variously showcase Grier's now leg- 63 \VItam! Bam! Pam/ ~'/ '"rm) fueled - 1!1 the earJy like Austin , .rower (Malcolm D. Le 8 I s h e, s; s e's even been dass Supermam I 1970s films be a · Js the D1Zi5esl'-fem,,J., vith Liza Minnelj' I and and Stre · ·>. n, (with Isanct ·. e stars.6 · 1 films have been PUb. IC assessments of her then) hot action babe ons around three key :rformances: (1 I kick ed as beautiful spec lOs onward; (2) artie- . Js in the 1970s, she ~quently true today; of home,"' many of P' ' aI so reference nnected discourses to mainstream and 5anized the body of s titled with lines >he's a whole Iotta jean International Brown (Jack Hill · In all three, Grie; ~arances in prison Pam Grier in the 1970s. ]eny Ohlingers Movie Materials Store. ion, '"Something s Grier's work as endary figure: Posse (Mario van Peebles, 1993}, Original Gangstas (Larry Cohen, niel Petrie, 1981) 1993}, Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997), Escape from L.A. (John Carpen enlist a third sup- ter, 1996), Mars Attacks! (Tim Burton, 1996), and Holy Smoke (Jane Campion, ' the 1988 Above 1999}. Save for Jackie Brown, since 1993 she has always played supporting roles, lad to See You're and in all six she is a likeable character. r, Revival!" This In conclusion, weaving my comments around two other lines extracted ~. ' ~ner s now leg- from presscoverage-"the Pam principle" and "not just another body for the 64 Ch1is Holmlund camera" (Salvo 1976, 49, 53)-and a final sequence culled from Original Gangstas, I survey who now reveres and who still ignores her, why, with an eye to what this might indicate for today's more full-bodied and, arguably, more feminine {occasionally even queer) action heroines. Significantly, several, like Grier, are women of color.' Blaxploitation Blast-Off: "She's a Whole Lotta Woman" Unlike the (white) action heroines of the 1980s who, Yvonne Tasker and oth ers have argued, were often linked to reproduction and motherhood at the same time as they were deemed "masculine,"10 Grier began her action career in the 1970s playing swinging singles, lesbians, and/or prostitutes in exploitation prison flicks. In 1973, with the extraordinary success of blaxploitation and Coffy, she became a star. The shift from prison to ghetto action films brought significant changes to how her characters were portrayed. Although Judith Mayne argues that surveillance in prison films "involves women watching other women, . women objectifying other women" (2000, 118), Grier's 1970s blaxploitation heroines are primarily the objects of male scrutiny and lust. Compare, for example, an early shower scene in Eddie Romero's cheezy 1972 remake of The Defiant Ones (Stanley Kramer, 1958 ), Black Mama, White Mama, with the opening sequence of Coffy. In Black Mama, White Mama, lesbian prison warden Denamore (Lynn Borden) eagerly watches Lee (Grier), Karen (Margaret Markov), and other inmates through a peephole until another warden, her partner Logan (Laurie Burton), cuts her pleasure short. This scene and the command "meeting" between Denamore and Lee that follows stand apart from the rest of the film, Mayne argues. For her, "the interracial friendship" that develops between Lee and Karen after they escape can only occur "at the price of expunging the lesbianism, of setting up the two pairs of women-Lee and Karen on the one hand, the two prison guards on the other-in strict opposition" (Mayne 2000, 135). In contrast, even in the opening scenes of Coffy, Grier's eponymous heroine is ogled by male, not female, characters. After displaying her ample breasts, nurse Coffy rises from a bed, wearing a micro-mini dress, and suddenly hefting a sawed-off shotgun. "This is the end of your rotten life, you mother-£' • 'ing dope pusher!" she tells the fat, black, drug kingpin (Morris Buchanan) who hoped to sleep with her, then blasts him into oblivion. Quickly she picks up a pre-loaded syringe, moves to the bathroom, and treats the junkie pimp (Mwako Cumbuka), who presum ably has procured her, to an overdose of his own "medicine." 65 Wham! Bam! Pam! ·tiled from Original }!ere, as in Foxy Brown and Friday Foster, she's certainly "a whole Iotta " as her drug-dealing brother (Anthony FargasJ says admiringly in Foxy ,er, why, with an eye 'i<•<V1Dril2lll, and, arguably, more ,;.-:;: ;, •• Aw'11 after Foxy has shot up his apartment and shot off his ear.