Issue 12: Trash, Exploitation and Cult Cerian Bawdy Comedy and Bad Taste That Sometimes Approaches Something Like the Avant-Garde Rally Cry “Épater La Bourgeoisie”

Home , American Grindhouse, Bernard Wolf, Blood Feast, Boss Nigger, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Nunsploitation

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often a kind of underclass cinema caught between carnivalesque spectacle, Chau- Issue 12: Trash, Exploitation and Cult cerian bawdy comedy and bad taste that sometimes approaches something like the avant-garde rally cry “épater la bourgeoisie”. In this respect, trash cinema is an Volume 1 affront from deviants and social exiles exemplified in the trailer trash ofPink Flamin- gos, the low-life inhabitants of Morteville in Desperate Living, or the ghettoised black culture of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. 6. Trash is also the title of a Paul Morrissey film, which deals with issues of poverty, Trash n. Trash v. To Trash, Trashing, Trashes, drug addictions and homosexuality. In the work of directors such as Paul Morris- sey, George and Mike Kuchar, Jack Smith, The Cockettes and John Waters, trash 1. For those of us brought up with the British English lexicon the word “trash” seems and queer cinema converge. Such filmmakers explore the life of queers, freaks and both familiar and yet foreign. In the UK the word of choice is “rubbish”. The word dropouts. Whilst diverse in styles and approaches (such as the Hollywood pastiches “trash” is more commonly found in American English and more likely to be heard in of the Kuchars, the bad taste of John Waters or the grittier moments of Paul Mor- American movies. Trash is the discards, the refuse and garbage of American cul- rissey) such films offer a strange mixture of the camp and carnivalesque with bodily ture. In this respect, unlike the word “rubbish”, “trash” brings to mind the theme of fluids and bad taste. Americanisation and global products such as Coca Cola or McDonald; Cheap, fast, 7. From Russ Meyer’s failed attempt to direct the Sex Pistol’s film Who Killed Bambi “feel good” food often lacking in quality and nutritional value. It is in this respect to Derek Jarman’s punk filmJubilee , trash and punk have intersected in their use of that we might move from the noun “Trash” to the verb “To Trash”. “To Trash” is to low-fi aesthetics and counter-cultural rebellion. In this respect, trash might also be devalue, to denigrate, to lower the cultural standards to the level of mindless con- understood as an attempt to apply the punk motto DO IT YOURSELF to film. sumerism. “Trash” signals the destruction of bourgeois taste, the blurring of high 8. Duchamp’s Fountain urinal, Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans prints and Tracy Emin’s and low art and the globalisation of consumerism. In terms of cinema we might My Bed all exemplify 20th century art’s attempt to transform trash into high art. think of the leftover detritus of the Hollywood studios: the unnecessary remake, the Through such actions trash, detritus or everyday utility has been brought into the mindless action film or the tedious rom-com. art space and transformed. Likewise many films, apparently trashy in form, have 2. The noun “Trash” may also be compared to the noun “Shit”. Shit is something be- either moved beyond mere low-brow status and achieving accolade within the es- yond rescue or revision; it is simply something waiting to be flushed away. tablishment, or have gone beyond the merely disposable, using exploitation tropes 3. But “Trash” also denotes something positive. The trash cinephile searches through and trash aesthetics to comment on the human condition. Maybe trash has gone cinema’s garbage hoping to find forgotten or rejected gems. Whilst films such as highbrow; maybe it always was. Maybe we can invent a new term: “high trash”. Troll 2 or Myra Breckenridge have been labeled the worst films ever made, it is important to note that many such films may, in retrospect, turn out to be simply not This issue is dedicated to “trash”, or to put it another way, this issue is dedicated to the conforming to conventional or mainstream tastes. In this respect, trash films are hallmarks of underground cinema: Trash, Exploitation and Cult. In this volume, volume 1, often cult films. IfStar Wars is credited as having a cult following, it often totters on we specifically explore exploitation and blaxploitation cinema. We will journey from the the edge of being a full blown religion. Other films, such asBoom , Pink Flamingos, splatter film through to spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation cinema, critically engaging Forbidden Zone, El Topo or Eraserhead, derive their cult status in their heterodoxi- with the genre, whilst exploring its eruptions into political and social commentary. In cal relationship to Hollywood template. Trash is a low budget or counter-aesthetic volume 2, we will move onto issues of the exhibition of such films, as well as journeying incompatible with this Hollywood template. into the carnivalesque capers of queer cinema. 4. “Trash”, however, is often more specifically applied to exploitation cinema. Exploi- tation films are often genre films that exploit popular trends and niche interests to Bradley Tuck make a quick buck. The term exploitation is broad and can cover anything from the B-movies of Ed Wood or Roger Corman to the gore films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Prevalent topics for exploitation films are sex, violence, horror, gore, drugs, martial arts and science fiction. Exploitation cinema spans countless subgenres such as sexploitation, nunsploitation, blaxploitation and nazisploitation and films such as Russ Meyer’s Up!, Jesus Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, Cesare Canevari’s The Gastapo’s Last Orgy, Roger Corman’s The Trip, Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown or Nori- bumi Suzuki’s School of the Holy Beast are diverse examples. 5. “Trash” is also a disparaging phrase used to describe the working and underclass. Phrases like “white trash” or “trailer trash” are especially pertinent. Trash cinema is 2 3 he One+One Filmmakers Journal

Contents True Blue Confessions of a British Trash Aesthete

I.Q. Hunter 05 39 True Blue Confessions of Once Apon A Time in Brazil a British Trash Aesthete Ben Noys I.Q. Hunter 45 13 One Black Cowboy and a Cracker Herschell Gordon Lewis Interview Garrett Chaffin-Quiray Mikel Koven 58 21 Who Framed Brer Rabbit? On Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Bradley Tuck Greg Scorzo

Still from Bloodsucking Freaks 1 Macabre, an S&M show which tortures Gorehounds among you may recall women in front of audiences who think it that bit in Bloodsucking Freaks (Joel M. is staged. Bloodsucking Freaks acquired Reed, 1976) when a ‘doctor’ drills into a notoriety as one of the most uncompro- Issue 12 Volume 1 girl’s head and sucks her brains out with mising exploitation films of the 1970s and, Published November 2013 Cover image by Melanie Mulholland a straw. One of those legendary moments now re-released on DVD by trash mavens Logo and template design: Benoit Schmit, www.buenito.com of intimate violence, like the ‘splinter in the Troma, has become a collectable cult item Website Design: Mikolaj Holowko Layout: James Marcus Tucker eye’ in Zombie Flesh Eaters (Lucio Fulci, for thrill-seeking trash cinephiles. Editors: James Marcus Tucker, Bradley Tuck, Nick Hudson 1979), it ranks high in cult cinema’s pan- I first saw Bloodsucking Freaks in the

Search Facebook for One+One: Filmmakers Journal or tweet us @OnePlusOneUk theon of misogynistic money-shots. An 1990s on a grainy umpteenth-generation Email: [email protected] American ‘grindhouse’ movie shown on dubbed video, whose grottiness comple-

One+One has been produced collaboratively by a group of Brighton-based filmmakers, with internationally based 42nd Street under the title The Incredible mented the film’s sleazy amateurism. In contributors and writers and is a not-for-profit project. Visit our website at www.oneplusonejournal.co.uk for back Torture Show, Bloodsucking Freaks was one of those moments of cognitive disso- issues and our regularly updated blog. the original ‘torture porn’ film, in which nance encountered when you’re an aca- an enterprising lunatic, Sardu (Seamus demic specialising in trash, I watched it again recently on pristine DVD, not, I has- 4 O’Brien), and his midget assistant, Ral- 5 phus (Luis De Jesus), run Theatre of the ten to add, to fantasise about trepanning One+One Filmmakers Journal

young women but to research a chapter DVD and online streaming, easily acces- but using one’s own tastes and his- on ‘Trash Horror and the Cult of the Bad sible. Yet, much as I love Solaris (1972) tory as a fan is a starting point – espe- Film’ in a scholarly book about the hor- and Stalker (1979), they lack whatever it is cially because there is something dif- ror genre.1 It wasn’t just for fun, in other that appeals in seeing brains get sucked ferent about being a British trash fan.iii words. My declared interest was in how out. While I am middle class and preten- the film, borrowing from Herschell Gordon tious enough to make a preening virtue of 2 Lewis’s Wizard of Gore (1970) and Roger my contrary taste choice, Bloodsucking Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Freaks is surely a bad object if ever there So what is trash? Bloodsucking plays with ide- was one, a Freaks combines most of the key ele- as about art Bloodsucking Freaks is a bad toxic event ments in exemplary fashion – an ex- as horror – “It “ from which ploitation film, low-budget, transgres- is not SM, it is object if ever there was one, a nothing good sive, overlooked and disregarded. It is art,” as Sardu toxic event from which nothing could come. without redeeming virtues beyond its insists. This good could come Picketed, un- extremity and shamelessness, which saving ele- ” derstandably, recommend it to cultists. Shabbily ment of self- in the 1970s made, it deliberately set out to of- reflexivity enables cultists and academics by the feminist group, Women Against fend, though its grindhouse audience Still from A Serbian Film like me to read it as an intense statement Violence, it’s the sort of film Patrick Bate- presumably lapped it up and cultists about exploitation, the voyeurism of audi- man might re-watch with the same avidity later embraced it precisely because it was (1971). Trash aesthetes habitually have ences, and the instability of art and trash. and for much the same reason as Body offensive. Not all trash is so gleefully un- a taste equally for the low and the high, Now leaving aside my convenient intel- Double (1984): ‘‘I rerent Body Double pleasant. Indeed you can include worth- both distant from the middlebrow; and a lectual excuse for watching it at all, what because I want to watch it again tonight less rubbish generally under the umbrella taste for trash exploitation and Tarkovsky, precisely was I getting from the experience even though I know I won’t have enough of trash – from big budget nonsense like neither of them multiplex fodder, actually of seeing that straw go in and the brains time to masturbate over the scene where the latest Hollywood blockbuster, or some makes perfect sense. get sucked out? I don’t mean watching the woman is getting drilled to death by trivial kids’ film, to reality TV such as Big The cult of trash has a surprisingly high- horror in general, but watching and (I ad- a power drill.’’ii Liking that kind of film Brother. Most of contemporary culture is brow history, reflecting just that intellectu- mit) enjoying such a comprehensively raises key issues about the pleasures of in this sense trash – unpretentious, dis- al preference for the esoteric and rebarba- disreputable piece of cinema. After all, I exploitation and trash (after all, ‘child por- posable and vapid – and I’m happy to tive over the mainstream. Sometimes it is could have been catching up with good nography’ has its cultists too). Yet, while admit I’d much rather watch Ben Dover’s in a spirit of democratic identification with cinema, for which, say, Tarkovsky might scarcely an American psycho, I not only Royal Reamers 2 (2002) than The X Fac- the working class Other from whom the be taken as exemplary – serious, intense, like such trash but prefer it in some ways; tor. What especially attracts cult interest audiences for exploitation were drawn; spiritually elevating and now, thanks to and loving trash and loving that I love it is in trash, however, is the aggressively low- sometimes it is more like outright cultural part of who I am. brow, which is so low-brow as to be ef- slumming. From the Surrealists’ enthusi- This piece is about be- fectively oppositional. asm for the lively semiotic chaos of bad ing what I’ll call a ‘trash Trash does sometimes overlap with films to the Cahiers critics who champi- aesthete’ – one who finds art house, as with A Serbian Film (Srdjan oned Sam Fuller and film noir to contem- pleasure, solace, and an Spasojevic, 2010), and in fact much trash porary academics applying Deleuzian the- identity in trash, who is a is less transgressive than arty trash with ory to horror films, films tagged as trash connoisseur of the low in pretentions. Low pleasures and erotic fris- have found a reception among middle preference to the ordinary. sons have long been associated with art class intellectuals, who were far from the Cultists’ relation to trash films, historically often marketed as sexy intended audience. Film culture has been includes not just watching foreign fare.iv The more extreme exploita- constructed through the ongoing reclama- and caring about the films tion films come across as a sort of alter- tion of trash and the elevation of the low but accumulating both re- native avant-garde, with a similar battery above the mainstream, and cultists have lated memorabilia (posters, of bourgeois-baiting effects to films de- been instrumental in this process. Not all press books, special edition signed for very different audiences, such cultists and not all cults have focused on DVDs) and facts about their as L’Age d’Or (Luis Buñuel, 1930), the trash, of course. There are cultists of spe- production and meanings. I films of the Vienna Actionists, or Stan Bra- cific films, such as Withnail and I (Bruce 6 can hardly claim to be a rep- khage’s alarming autopsy footage epic, Robinson, 1987) and The Big Lebowski 7 Still from Body Double resentative trash aesthete, The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Joel Coen, 1998), which are quirky but One+One Filmmakers Journal

with native traditions of irony, camp, the absurd, and its subcultures such as glam and punk, as, most obviously, in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975). Some films became cult in the UK for local reasons. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971), for instance, gathered cult momentum in Britain when its director withdrew it from circulation after death threats to his family. One moment stands out, though, in the creation of an energetic cult specifically for trash exploitation in Britain – the ‘video nasties’ panic of the early 1980s, which generated its own subculture and resistance and home-grown cults of Italian horror films on the list like Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, v Still from Come Play With Me 1982) and auteurs such as Lucio Fulci. Still from Faces of Death Bloodsucking Freaks didn’t actually make such as the SF film Devil Girl from Mars hardly trash, and even Star Wars (George it to the list of ‘video nasties’ in the 1980s, ent now. Trash films are of course more (David MacDonald, 1954), the zombie bik- Lucas, 1977) has been claimed for cult and seems never to have been submitted easily available even on premium priced er flick Psychomania (Don Sharp, 1973), because of its intense fan base. But ex- to the British Board of Film Classification. Blu-ray as well as from downloads. It is and softcore oddities such as Come Play ploitation, the hardcore of trash, is a field It is still unavailable in the UK, and I rather fairly straightforward to guess why see- with Me (1977) and Mary Millington’s True unthinkable now except in terms of its doubt the BBFC would look kindly upon it ing banned films might be a pleasure, as Blue Confessions (1980), which tend to cult following and the work of reclamation even now. But one of the reasons I, as a it involves the delights of the forbidden. seem quaint and compromised next to done by fans, critics and intellectuals with British trash fan, enjoyed watching it even To see A Clockwork Orange in the 1980s American or continental transgressions, an agenda of resisting the ‘mainstream’ on a degraded video copy – and here I I had to make do with a dubbed video acquired much of a cult following in the and rescuing films by claiming they’re think there is a difference from fans in the picked up in a market; to see Salò uncut country of their production. While British subversive, transgressive and other terms USA – is precisely that it had to be sought required a trip to Paris in the 1990s, where trash fans exult in seeing films banned in that to sceptical readers might seem like out and was exotic in conjuring a utopian the film was screened at midnight once the UK, the cult of British trash combines weasel words to legitimate otherwise irre- world of obscene entertainment impossi- a week in a cinema opposite the Pom- memory, nostalgia, and patriotic invest- deemable movies. ble under the BBFC’s all-seeing eye. Not pidou Centre. Now I have both films on ment in an alternative tradition of Brit- Being a trash being sup- Blu-ray. Such is the popularity of extreme ish cinema that encompasses more than aesthete in Brit- posed to see trash that deliberately outrageous films heritage films, geezer gangster films, and ain has a par- the demonization of working it enhanced are made to appeal to niche tastes, not Richard Curtis comedies. ticular meaning “ the pleasure, just Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) class male taste, for which so The trash aesthete, as a species of fan, and history de- rather childish (Tom Six, 2011) but such straight-to-video is as exclusive as any other class of cult- termined by Brit- much exploitation has been I suppose, of atrocities as ‘vomit porn’ such as Slaugh- ist, and it is the rarity of the experience ain’s history of circumvent- tered Vomit Dolls (Lucifer Valentine, 2006). tailored of trash, or banned films generally, that censorship, the ” ing the nanny Even more transgressive fare is available often gives value to the experience of it. not quite respect- state. Censor- at websites such as Heavy-R, which out- When trash films were widely banned or able position of film itself in the nation’s ship generates such cherishable frissons. shock nasties such as Faces of Death unavailable in the UK it was worth track- culture, and the demonization of working The cult of British trash films took longer (John Alan Schwartz, 1978). Hardcore ing down Blood Feast (Herschell Gordon class male taste, for which so much ex- to take hold in the UK. Most of the key Brit- pornography, the limit case of trash, has Lewis, 1963) or Café Flesh (Rinse Dream, ploitation has been tailored. My book Brit- ish cult films, with rare exceptions, were been legal in the UK since 2000 and while 1982) or an uncut Salò, or the 120 Days ish Trash Cinema traces the history of Brit- in fact not trash. They certainly included its cultists are not especially vocal they of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975) ish cult film fandom as it emerged as an horror films such as Witchfinder General doubtless exist. The BBFC itself has got (that art/trash crossover again) and all the underground taste in a repressive culture (Michael Reeves, 1968), The Wicker Man pretty lenient too; the uncut release of the facts you could about them to impress 8 from the 1960s onwards and intersected (Robin Hardy, 1973) and much of Hammer, vigorously misogynistic Maniac remake 9 one’s film-loving mates. It is rather differ- but only recently have exploitation films (Franck Khalfoun, 2012), for example, was One+One Filmmakers Journal

a surprise. All this makes being a cultist of ing, but this is more an idiosyncratic and screen experiences out- trash easier than ever, but there is perhaps self-conscious negation of mainstream side the usual comfort less pleasure and value in trash aestheti- tastes (and political correctness), even if zones. Exposing oneself cism, for one’s knowledge is less easily it is a negation quite widely shared (such to dangerous extremity translated into ‘subcultural capital’. is one of the recognised paradoxes of is itself both challenging postmodern culture, in which so many en- and sublime, allowing 3 deavour to be different, just like everyone for what cult critics Er- else and in exactly the same way). nest Mathijs and Jamie In J.K. Huysmans great Decadent novel The Other of trash cinema offers an es- Sexton call ‘self-reflexive A Rebours (1884), generally translated as cape from boredom into the sublimely in- modes of performative Against Nature, the sickly aristocratic hero, defensible. Every trash aesthete will have reception in the negotia- Des Esseintes, isolates himself against the his or her own demons and hence reasons tion of the phenomenal vulgar modern world in a private sanctum for loving trash and not all will like the experience of moments of exquisite tastes and erotic experiments. same generally dislikeable films. But we of abjection, impu- Although ultimately comic and a failure (he can make a few guesses as to what drives rity, and grotesquerie’. ends up reverting to Catholicism), Des Es- our passionate delight in very bad things ix Trash aesthetes’ ritual seintes is nevertheless the unlikely beget- such as Bloodsucking Freaks. The pleas- return to the scene of the ter of a certain kind of connoisseur – the ures of trash are what it does to you, the abject is a way, both mas- aesthete whose recoil from the everyday levels of experience, arousal, and intensity terful and masochistic, of is an elite rejection of everything in mod- that distance one from the ordinary tedium coping with threatening ern culture, a culture that these days, even of real life. Trash of an extreme sort – what images and experiences more so than in Huysmans’ time, is omni- the critic Mikita Brottman has called offen- and domesticating them present, commercialised and vulgar. Bet- sive films – may be a kind of ‘body genre’: through compulsive rep- ter to create a private world of rare, erotic, etition. This is the pur- pretentious pleasures, which the bizarre The ultimate aim of offensive films suit, from the comfort of field of trash offers, than to submit to the is the arousal of strong emotions in one’s armchair in front embrace and ennui of the ordinary (not the lower body – nausea, weakness, of the TV, of the ‘Diony- surprisingly A Rebours has become a sin- faintness, and a loosening of bowel sian’, which is a feature gular cult novel). and bladder control – normally by of much cult practice and Des Esseintes is a complete and com- way of graphic scenes featuring the embodied in the panic- Top: Still from The Rocky Horror Picture Show pulsive highbrow snob, but he provides by-products of bodily detritus: vom- inducing Frank N. Furter, Bottom: People react to 2 Girls 1 Cup Video, source YouTube.com a model too for the discerning trash aes- it, excrement, viscera, brain tissue, the Dionysus in drag of The thete. Instead of high culture – though he and so on.vii Rocky Horror Picture Show.x in their perceived address to the Patrick may feel at home among that as well – the Thus the trash aesthete, more self-con- Bateman repressed in all men. Though trash aesthete inhabits a rarefied realm of This implies a phenomenology of trash sciously than teenagers gagging at ‘Two much of the impetus of cult came from the debased, pornographic, extreme and that would relate the films to the abject as Girls One Cup’, carves out a little cultural gay fans queering texts, the contemporary unredeemable, from which he is protected the psychoanalyst and theorist Julia Kris- space for himself, a Psychogeographical cult of trash can be seen by its detractors by irony, knowingness and – in the case teva defined it.viii Films like Bloodsucking flâneur both immersed in and safely dis- as a straight male space of nostalgia, a of the academic trash aesthete – a forbid- Freaks enable us to rehearse in mediated tanced from contamination by the Other. I zone of fantasy for those in full-on Oedipal ding carapace of cultural capital, including safety our reactions, both fascinated and should emphasize that I am thinking most- revolt against the (feminised) mainstream. Theory of the most abstruse kind that ena- repulsed to the point of nausea, to the trau- ly of male fans of trash – this is a gendered Decadent and amoral, the trash aesthete’s bles us to intellectualise rubbish without matic experience of encountering some- taste (indeed ‘female trash’ is more likely sedentary hedonism at best allows for the apparent bad faith.vi At a time when even thing liminal and outside the social and to connote lowbrow romances and celeb- articulation of an alternative set of aesthet- the most difficult and transgressive culture cultural order. Although trash films may be rity magazines rather than horror, though ic criteria; at worst, like that arch-aesthete is commodified and tamed by the market grossly off-putting, they can also be seen, women are avid fans of the genre). But the Proust in his cork-lined bedroom enjoy- place, this is a perversely highbrow ges- paradoxically, as a kind of security (or male ‘paracinema’ fan is archetypal, and ing the spectacle of starving rats goaded ture of subjective revolt that finds in trash comfort) blanket – transitional objects that the films he loves are often problematic, to with pins to fight, it might suggest an anti- the resources for a curious education of enable rehearsal of emotional and physi- put it mildly, in terms of gender. Exploita- social, even psychotic suspension of morality – an unwitting symptom rather than 10 the self. Much cult assumes a social en- cal responses to the abject. They also tion films are typically ‘bad’ films not just 11 terprise or some kind of homosocial bond- demonstrate an ability to survive extreme in terms of style but often ethically too ironic embrace of postmodern relativism One+One Filmmakers Journal

and its ethical deliquescence.xi

But, while deliciously melodramatic, v. On the video nasties, see Kate Egan, this is actually nonsense, and not only be- Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing cause most trash aesthetes you’re likely Meanings of Video Nasties, Manchester and New Herschell Gordon Lewis to meet are as mild mannered as the neu- York: Manchester University Press, 2007. rasthenic Des Esseintes. Their sedentary Interview excursions into the perverse and extreme vi. There is now a good deal of writing in involve after all nothing more transgres- ‘Cult Studies’ on the politics of this taste for trash ‘paracinema’, but the foundational article is Jeffrey sive than watching and obsessing about Sconce, ‘Trashing the Academy: Taste, Excess and Abertoir Horror Festival (Aberystwyth, UK: 8 bad movies. No rats, let alone women, are an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style’, Screen 36.4 harmed by the trash aesthete’s modest (1995), pp. 371- 393. My conception of the trash aes- November 2009) refusals of propriety and good taste. Nor thete is more private, though, and more about the Mikel Koven cultivation of individual taste than identifying with a are his brains sucked out by the likes of subculture. Bloodsucking Freaks. Indeed the pleasures, while viscerally bracing, of contem- vii. Mikita Brottman, Offensive Films, plating the unwatchable and monitoring Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005, p 9. one’s quickened, pulsating awareness of the Abject in the midst of life can be sharply intellectual – a deliberate, though viii. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez, New York: left-handed attempt to grasp, as a differ- Columbia University Press, 1982. ent kind of aesthete put it in 1873, ‘‘at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to ix. Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, Cult knowledge that seems by a lifted hori- Cinema, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p. 106. zon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or x. Amittai F. Aviram, ‘Postmodern Gay Dio- nysus: Dr. Frank N. Furter’, Journal of Popular Culture work of the artist’s hands, or the face of 26.3 (Winter 1992), pp. 183–92. See also Mathijs and one’s friend’’.xii It just happens that, for Sexton, Cult Cinema, pp. 133 – 5 on the ‘overworked some of us, such rare sublime intensities metaphor’ of the Dionysian in explaining cult. of ecstasy and experience are to found in the presence of trash. xi. The anecdote about Proust and the rats is drawn from Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Proust, New York, Woodstock and London: Duckworth, 2003, p. 44. i. I.Q. Hunter, ‘Trash Horror and the Cult of the Bad Film’ in Harry Benshoff, ed., The Blackwell Companion to the Horror Film, Oxford: Wiley-Black- xii. Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies well, forthcoming 2014. in Art and Poetry, ed. Adam Phillips, Oxford: Oxford I started the interview dare he make made a movie that critics University Press, 1986, p. 152. asking Herschell Gordon a movie so schlocky, so liked. Which means what ii. Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho, Lewis about his reputation cheap, so lacking in talent, they’ve got to do is change London: Pan, 1991, p. 69. in books like The Golden that people go to see [it]? critics. Because we live on Turkey Awards, where he is MJK: That’s right. the periphery of this busi- iii. For an extended auto-ethnographic di- ranked by the Medved broth- HGL: And here are these ness. And I don’t expect agnosis of trash aestheticism, see I.Q. Hunter, ‘Beaver Las Vegas! A Fanboy’s Defence of Showgirls’, in Er- ers as a candidate for one multi-million dollar mov- this movie – like Harry Potter nest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, eds., The Cult Film of the worst directors ever. ies, that are loaded with which opened in seventeen Reader, Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press, 2007, pp. 472 – 81. talent and with resources. hundred theatres the same HGL: No, I know what And money behind them. day – I’d be very pleased if they’re talking about. And And people don’t go to see it opened in one theatre on iv. See Joan Hawkins, Cutting Edge: Art- I’ve had that throughout my them. So the trick is not the same day. But the idea 12 Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Minneapolis: Uni- 13 versity of Minnesota Press, 2000. career. The question is how to – I don’t think I’ve ever is, in my opinion, a com- One+One Filmmakers Journal

nally stops dead, because it companies for that, be- hits his brain or something. cause they started to make That’s not in there yet. And the same kind of movie, with yet, I saw some reactions resources I didn’t have, and here that really pleased they made it much more me. … I won’t call it semi- fashionable to view this kind finished, let’s call it three- of movie. So now you talk quarters finished movie. about a splatter film, are you I’ve also sat in screening talking about one like this rooms, where big produc- [The Uh-oh Show], or are you tions with big names were talking about a major com- on the screen, and I saw pany picture, like a Scream heads going this way [nod- or a Saw or something of ding off] and I saw people that sort. It could be any of were walking out. Con- the above, and therefore, it stantly. And I saw at the is no longer a ‘cult’. It’s not tail end sort of an apathy. certainly the same thing as As crappy as my stuff is, a big splashy thing. It does bination of entertainment it’s not viewed with apathy. draw a respectable and var- and being able to make a It may be viewed with ha- ied audience. And when you few – just a few – quid out tred, it may be viewed with draw a respectable and var- of it. And you cannot do that scorn, it may be viewed with ied audience, it’s not a cult. if you overspend, and you pleasure, but never with ap- So, what started as cannot do that if you over athy. So, that’s my answer. a cult, as Christianity did – I estimate, what somebody is MJK: Would you consider wouldn’t compare this really aren’t. theatres on the periphery you see, people don’t die. going to want to pay to ei- yourself as a ‘cult director’? … maybe with Al-Qaida … MJK: Could you elabo- might play (not mainstream Cut the girl’s arm off, ok, so ther rent a DVD or go to see. HGL: Yes … it would de- MJK: You’re known, rate … again), that major compa- what? She’s still there. In a And I sat here – and here pend on what the cult is. It particularly by this audi- HGL: See the whole idea, nies weren’t making, were of typical – as Hansel and Gre- we really have, as you saw, sounds very exotic, doesn’t ence, as a horror director. in the movie world, is – now that genre. Later on, when tel are getting torn to pieces, its not quite finished: there it? [When] …we started HGL: Wait, what’s that some of you folks were everybody began pouring they’re still Hansel and Gre- are dead spots in the sound this strange … strange se- word? here yesterday to hear my in – See that’s what hap- tel. And the audiences will – we’re going to fix that, quence, yes it was a cult. MJK: Horror. Horror. diatribe on how to make an pens: I’m a trend-creator. get it, I hope. And if they there are slight gaps in the We’ve expanded since then. HGL: Oh, horror. OK. independent – how I make If they start to pour in, then don’t get it, so much the bet- conversation – no big deal. The early audiences were MJK: Well, that’s ac- independent movies. And I go somewhere else. It’s ter. And if the critics hate this This is a first cut. You really not like this. They were all- tually a nice segue… the trick is one of taking a like a travelling crap game. picture, it’s all to the good. are in our cutting room look- male … I don’t think there HGL: What???! business-like position. It’s Now this movie I recall, for exam- ing at this. And of course, was anybody in that thea- MJK: Before you not a matter of ‘I like this’ [The Uh-oh Show], the inten- ple, I’ll tell you a story out there are no titles and there tre under 40. That was our made Blood Feast, you and ‘I’m projecting what I tion of it, as you can see, is of school. I made a movie is no music. And sometimes group. In fact, people over made some a few of like’. Or, ‘I’m some sort of a to wed two kinds of movies: called The Gore, Gore Girls. when Radial Saw Rex starts age 50, think I should have the ‘nudie cutie’ films. lecher, and oh boy, I get my one is the traditional splat- This is a long time ago. But his saw, the sound goes been strung up on a wire. HGL: Yes. jollies from making this kind ter film, because you have it was after the major com- dead – don’t worry about They still think that, I guess. MJK: And I’m not sure if of a movie.’ You either follow to have blood gushing. And panies had begun to get into it. When that thing goes But it was … it was a cult. people are familiar with this or develop a sequence. An the other is a conventional, this business. And I said it’s into Oscar’s head there will It’s become mainstream. … [in] the early days, the kind or unconventional, comedy. time to get out. Again, like a 14 15 be a big clang when it fi- I credit some of the major HGL: I’m delighted they of motion picture that some So the whole idea here, as crap game, you know when One+One Filmmakers Journal

to get out. … So I made a lives in California, which movie called The Gore, Gore as you know is a different Girls. It was, and again, I’m planet, he called me up one sort of anticipating this, it day and says “Guess what? was a kind of parody, really. These guys want to remake And in Australia, the movie 2000 Maniacs.” Now of all played very well for about the movies I’ve made that I 30 years. After 30 years of did not want remade, that’s showing in theatres, and one. Because that is my selling thousands and thou- personal favourite of all the sands of videocassettes movies. I said “Please, tell and DVDs, they banned it. them to remake The Wizard Which I thought was a big of Gore, but not that.” Which hoot. Because I began to somebody did, by the way. get phone calls and emails He says “No, they want to saying ‘come on down here make 2001 Maniacs”. Now and let’s have some kind of 2001 Maniacs, as it turns seminar’. On what? But af- out, was directed by a very ter 30 years, they banned bright kid by the name of it. It’s like someone look- Tim Sullivan. And he was ing at a corpse and say- occasionally in touch with ing ‘hey, you’ve got can- me. And I still own, after all cer’. It’s a little late for that. these years, I still own the So, if you en- music, from many of these joy what you do, and can movies – Why? Because I survive doing it, do it! But I had seen, and as you performance of the Grand wrote it. Why did I write it? don’t do just because know … or maybe you do, Guignol. The result of that Because I didn’t want to somebody says you’re I’m a Francophile. … If I was that I opened a little pay anybody. See, that’s an Ed Wood, or you are don’t get to Paris - well, it’s theatre in Chicago, which how easy the mathematics making the kind of movie not me, it’s my wife – if we we called the Blood Shed. are. Why am I on the screen that I don’t want to see. don’t get to Paris at least We would show old hor- in this picture [The Uh- MJK: Fair enough. Let’s twice a year, she goes into ror movies, such as the cause after they folded, lem: some people don’t oh Show]? Because they open this up and do people convulsions. The Grand original Dracula with Bela there was nothing. I didn’t make movies, they give wanted some sort of host have questions out there? Guignol, as you know, ex- Lugosi, and between reels, know they ran until 1962. birth. I always … if you at- and I didn’t want to pay any- HGL: They don’t dare. pired right around World we’d stop the movie, and Audience Question 1: tack the movie, “you’re at- body. I should have made Audience Question 1: I War Two. It’s an old show. two people would come It’s just a really nice coinci- tacking my child!” I’ve al- a better deal, shouldn’t I? remember seeing you quot- Audience Question 1: It out and one would slit the dence. ways taken a much more So out comes ed as saying, you’re partially was actually a year before throat of the other and drag HGL: It’s a lovely co- patrician position than that. 2001 Maniacs, and my inspired by the Grand Guig- Blood Feast was made. … It him off and the movie would incidence. I’m glad I’m As I think many of you know, question was why did they nol in Paris. … Is that true, was 1962. start again. The popularity still here and they aren’t. I don’t own these, I don’t bother licensing the rights? and if so, did you ever actu- HGL: ’62? Was it was of that is what really drove Audience Question 2: own my old movies any- It’s a totally different movie. ally go to Paris and see any of that late? All I ever saw of me. So yes, the Grand What did you think of the more. I own a piece of this Whether it’s good or bad is the original performances? it, of course it was famous Guignol was my master, remake of 2000 Maniacs? one [The Uh-oh Show] but not for me to judge, but it’s HGL: Are you suggest- in my little world. I saw an and considering the whole HGL: That’s a wrong I don’t own the old movies. a totally different movie. If 16 17 ing that I’m that old? What illegal movie shot during a concept to start with, be- question. Here is the prob- The person who does, who they’re going to make a dif- One+One Filmmakers Journal

ferent movie, let them call ... its lurking Was The Uh- ever squeamish around it something else. Now that in your blood Oh Show real blood or anything? doesn’t quite answer your stream. So your last film, HGL: Well, I try to get question, but you’re get- when they or do you in a bottle if I can. I’m not ting my drift. Instead of a offered me have more squeamish around real bunch of Yankees coming, that oppor- planned? blood... I’m not a gore- they got a bunch of kids. tunity to di- HGL: My hound. I’m in the film busi- I must admit to you, he rect Blood last film? You ness, and this kind of movie sent me a DVD, but I didn’t Feast 2, mean my is the kind of movie which watch it all the way through. even though next one will has given me, I won’t say Audience Question 3: it wasn’t my be posthu- fame ... notoriety. I’m not After The Gore, Gore Girls script, and mous? It is squeamish, but I don’t seek you stopped making films it wasn’t my the last film it out. People drive by an for quite a long time. Why did cast, and it as of now. accident.”Is there a body you start to get back into it? wasn’t my Someone there?” “Is he bleeding?” I HGL: Why did I start to crew, I said says to you, don’t take that point of view. get back into it? Because yes. And I “do you have Audience Question 6 they torture you, that’s had a won- a script?” [continuing]: are there any why. I decided to get back derful time. Everyone has new directors you are really into it and I’ll tell you why. Because I sat a script. Eve- interested in these days? Over a period of years, and in a director’s chair. I was the originally called “Grim Fairy lator would translate into ry cab driver in Los Angeles HGL: New directors? I mean years, I would get director. I had an assistant Tales” and is now called The English, and I would give an has a script on the chair next I don’t know the answer phone calls and then later director. And instead of fix- Uh-Oh Show. It was simply answer and he’d translate it to him. Yes I have a script to that question. Because on emails, as our whole ing the lights and picking up the malaria lurked up again. back into Italian. And what and it’s called “Mr. Bruce I’m not a gore-hound. I’ve society sophisticated itself, the cables at the end of the Audience Question 4: did they show that night, in and the Gore Machine”. never seen a Scream - Oh, saying let’s make Blood night, I had people who did In the movie we just saw that theatre? They showed But, I have been threatened wait, I’ve seen the first one. Feast 2. And it happened that. I had no idea what their [The Uh-Oh Show], there 2000 Maniacs in English. with death domestically if That’s right. We’re lucky. so often, I developed a de- titles were. To this day I see was a reference to The And on came this sing- I finance this movie my- We subscribe to a deal in fence mechanism: I said credits on the screen, I don’t Gore, Gore Girls. Are there song beginning, and about self. So if somebody here the US, that’s called Netflix. “put your deal together and know what they do. What any other references in the half the audience joined has a big wad of money, You have a similar thing, I call me.” And that got rid of is a unit manager? I don’t movie to other films that you in. They knew it by heart. I and wants to produce “Mr. know, in the UK. And they them. Until one day, a guy know. I give people credit for have done or other mov- said, “Great heavens, I’m Bruce and the Gore Ma- send you rotating movies by called me and said, “yeah, that title, what the heck, but ies that you appreciate ... more global than I thought.” chine”, I can start shooting mail. We’re on a five movie put your deal together and I don’t know what they do. HGL: No, the only one So when you look this ... it’s now 11:00 ... So basis. So at any given time call me”. He put his deal So, in the shooting other than that is Blood at our strange little industry, the answer is I don’t know. I can have five to one movie together and he called me. of that picture was a combi- Feast. And it’s in the same it’s really a source of pride Chances are, it may well be in the house, depending on Now Blood Feast 2, they nation of being exhilarating speech by Fred Finagler, that we have survived this my grand finale, but I don’t how many we’ve sent back. hired me as a director. It was and being frustrated. Be- the producer. It was sort long. And the result of that know. I’m still somewhat in I saw the first Scream, about not my cast, it was not my cause it was not my movie. of an in-joke. It astounds was, we threw those two advance of Alzheimer’s. And 20 minutes of it, and sent it crew, and more to the point, And the result of that was, me, really, the number of lines into the script of The so that means I’m available. back. I have never seen it was not my script. I did it, was that after we finished people who have seen this Uh-Oh Show figuring some Audience Question 6: I one of the Saw movies. I’ve because, making movies, that movie, I said “Hey, I junk. I was in Milan, Italy. We people will understand was wondering about two never seen the sequel to as I think some of you guys got to make one more of were sitting in something it, some people will just things really. One is, with any “House on Elm Street” know, is like having malaria. my own.” And that was like this. And the questions think it’s a line of dialogue. the amount of gore you (sic). Or any Amityville Hor- 18 19 You think you’re over it, and the genesis of what was were in Italian. The trans- Audience Question 5: put in your films, are you ror. So I don’t know who One+One Filmmakers Journal

is doing what. Really, I’m take a chance on an idea. rything else, at our kind of not mainstream enough to Because that’s just too ego- level, you can get so much draw that conclusion. All I istic. But to take a chance more film, so much more know is what I see and hear on a movie that somebody finished product, for the On Quentin Tarantino’s within the trade about some might go and see. But same amount of money. of these movies. And I as I that’s my kind of director. It’s a laughable situation. I Kill Bill: told you [me, in an earlier Or my kind of producer. had no dream going in that conversation], they are de- Or my kind of organizer. we’d be able to accomplish rivative. You feel you’re see- Audience Question 7: the amount of shooting we Or what happens when the Art House is Seduced ing the same thing over and Would you shoot on digital did in the period of time and by the Grind House over again. As I said the oth- again? budget we had. And had Greg Scorzo er night, some of you folks HGL: Oh you bet! I we been on film, there’s an- were here the other night would shoot no other way other problem: you ruin a [when HGL gave a seminar from this point forward. take, what do you do? With on independent cinema], Audience Question 7: Blood Feast, there was no don’t title your movie Such If money wasn’t an issue? question, use it anyway. As and Such 2. Such and Such MJK: Money is always I said, there were two words 3. Such and Such 4. Be- an issue! you never heard on my set: cause it give the audience HGL: If someone says “Take Two”. With this, so immediately the feeling that we’re going to shoot on what? You’re on tape, you’re they’ve seen it before. But 35mm film, I’ll say “God not on film. You’re not wast- I have no answer for you, bless, ya! I’ll be there”. But ing it. And on a budget level, because I don’t know. I’m that would not be my deci- that’s a big, big issue. But just too ignorant of what’s sion. My decision now, and even with major company going on in the business. I’m quite confident that even product, a lot of it, is coming MJK: So which film- four or five years from now, out now shot digitally. That makers do you like? it will be everybody’s deci- is the future. And then there HGL: Which filmmakers sion. If you shoot digitally are theatres getting their im- do I like? Who did The Great – and I don’t mean with this age off of satellite. You can’t Train Robbery in 1903? kind of a camera – we shot get film off satellite. You get MJK: Porter. this [The Uh-oh Show] with an electronic image. You HGL: Very good! Ed- two cameras called RED. might as well say the fu- Imagine a film that opens with a group with stern looks on their faces. The naked win Porter. That’s amazing. Which is the newest – and ture is here, let’s stick to it, of five skinny naked women with unusu- crucifix women look scared. With a ridicu- Which filmmakers do I like? I the cameras are gigantic. rather than saying “tradition ally large breasts tied in chains to a set lous transitioning effect that looks like the like Spielberg. I think he has They’re monstrous cam- tells me and I’m comfortable of crucifixes. The setting is a poorly lit product of a cheap editing program, the guts. He will make movies eras, but the quality on the with, the other medium”. I and fake looking medieval dungeon. The image dissolves to an overhead shot of like Schindler’s List, nobody screen, in my opinion, is not offer that as opinion, not as women look like they are in their early the nuns looking up at the camera with a else would have made that only comparable to 35[mm], fact. And I thank you all for 20’s. The cinematography looks like what malevolent sneer. All of the nuns look (im- movie. Now nobody else but at least – sometimes, it’s sitting through this. You’re you would expect on an American soap probably) like they are between 25 and 30. had the money to make better. All this CGI stuff is my kind of people: nutcases! opera from the late 1970’s. A poorly Each of the five nuns stands in front of the that movie. Which is also really computerized. Com- mixed synth composition plays on the five nude women. The nuns disrobe and a help. But I admire peo- puters don’t have film going sound track, sounding vaguely like a bad (surprise surprise!) reveal athletic, per- ple who will take a chance through them. So, it’s digital imitation of a John Carpenter score. The fectly sculpted bodies with slightly smaller on an idea that somebody with is then converted to image then cuts to a badly framed wide breasts than the women hanging in front 20 21 will go and to see. Not just film. But aside from eve- shot of five evil nuns entering the dungeon of them. The synth composition quickly One+One Filmmakers Journal

morphs into a rock instrumental that nuns kneel down and begin to perform to have a visceral good time. But unlike distract the audience from these ideas sounds like a demo track from a home re- oral sex on the crucifix women. There is the porn film, it is not merely bad taste and facilitate such evaluative reactions. With cording software package from the early no oral sex money shot. Instead we see explicit sex that the exploitation film uses such films, the clarity of the audience’s 90’s. The naked nuns kneel down in front screaming bloody faces. At the moment to pop its nervy reactions from an audi- thought is not hindered by an attempt to of the crucifix women and proceed to per- the crucifix women simultaneously reach ence. The exploitation film is primarily us- give the audience a visceral good time. form oral sex on them. We see tight close orgasm, one of the nuns pulls a lever on ing violence, sadism and cruelty to create The visceral good time comes from ap- ups of very real tongues entering very real the floor. A series of trap doors open. The its unique audience effect. preciating the skill with which the film hon- (albeit surgically chains release This effect depends on the exploitation estly and unsparingly shows us its content enhanced) vagi- If the bad taste tastes good, the women film enabling its audience to shield itself (with all of the implications of that content nas. The film then the“ porn film is happy to feed the from the cruci- from certain aspects of the world. It obvi- in full view). cuts to very fake fixes and their ously wants its audience to see the cruelty It’s important to note that at the mo- looking perfor- audience the cinematic screaming, and degradation that the exploitation film ment, talking about evaluative film viewing mances of feigned equivalent of sugarcoated lard bloody bodies puts on the screen. But it doesn’t want may make fans of edgy cinema feel un- sexual arousal on ” drop into a vat the audience to see the things about cru- easy. This is because evaluating involves the faces of the crucifix women. Here, of acid. The film cuts to a shot of the acid elty and degradation that would make the assessing the value of things. Assessing the acting and the filmmaking are both bubbling as a cheesy base sounds war- audience feel pangs of moral disapproval the value of things is an inherently ethical extremely poor. Yet this is still the mo- bles on the hissy soundtrack. Despite the and disgust. The disgust the film is aim- activity. If there is anything that makes ment where the film becomes effective extremity of the imagery, the filmmaking ing for in the audience should be fun. The fans of edgy cinema feel uncomfortable at achieving its aims. The poor taste of and production values are in this second “ewww” in the audience’s gut has to feel these days, it is any discussion of the role the film’s imagery and the extreme crap- film so bad that the film teeters between more like falling down the slope of a roller of ethics in film assessment. This discom- piness of the film’s production values are being shocking and unintentionally funny. coaster than the after math of contemplat- fort stems from social conservatives hav- what strangely drive the extremely visceral This is, after all, an exploitation movie. ing human pathos. The exploitation film is ing largely distorted the public conception reaction it wants in its audience. This is a Like the porn film before it, the aim of this thus willing to give up the prospect of il- of what the ethical demands on both films porn film after all. If the bad taste tastes film is to produce an intense psychologi- luminating its subject matter in exchange and film viewing must be. Such ethical good, the porn film is happy to feed the cal reaction in the audience. The reaction for giving us a good time. In this, the ex- demands are often presumed to include audience the cinematic equivalent of sug- aimed for is a particularly powerful “ewww” ploitation film and the porn film are cin- a commitment to being outraged by any arcoated lard. in the audience’s gut. This “ewww” can ematic twin sisters titillating different hu- film that showcases a representation of The exploitation film employs a similar be accompanied, like the porn film, with a man drives. During the successful porn unethical behavior. But this is a caricature strategy. To understand how, imagine a combination of laughter and arousal. One film, the audience must be titillated and of what demands ethics actually makes second film that opens just like the first. can laugh at the poor construction of the then aroused. on cinema. Eth- We have the same bad cinematography, film. One can be aroused by the cruelty. During the suc- ics only really the same cheesy music, and the same But what the viewer is not encouraged cessful exploita- “ The exploitation film is thus demands two embarrassingly bad acting. However, in to do is think something like the follow- tion film, the au- willing to give up the prospect of things from cin- this second film, the nuns are middle aged ing: “I am disturbed because I think it’s dience can have illuminating its subject matter in ema: (1) That no fat women. Instead of undressing in front horrendous that nuns would trap women a much wider one should be of the crucifix women, the nuns stand in a dungeon and commit acts of sexual array of visceral exchange for giving us a good hurt either dur- in front of them, slowly pulling out scary violence against them before killing them reactions. It can time” ing the making black blowtorches from the insides of their in a way that shows both extremely in- be entertained, or watching of black outfits. They proceed to sadistically humane cruelty and a lack of respect for titillated, aroused, revolted, or amused. a film and (2) The aesthetic quality ofa burn off the breasts of the hanging crucifix their human dignity. This film is disturb- Yet it cannot have evaluative reactions to film depends on it not shielding the audi- women. The screen image cuts to close ing because it is extremely tragic.” Such the subject matter on the screen. Evalua- ence from its subject matter. (1) is fairly ups of fake looking syrupy blood trickling thoughts would, in effect, ruin the cin- tive reactions to a film are those reactions obvious and requires no defense. In de- down nubile pink legs. The nuns begin ematic experience the exploitation film is where an audience can evaluate the qual- fense of (2), all we need note is that all the chanting, “Rivers of gore, sluts no more! aiming to create in its audience. Like the ity of the ideas the subject matter of a film best critically acclaimed films fromCitizen 22 23 The circle of sin starts from within!” The porn film, the exploitation film wants you presents to the audience. Films that don’t Kane (1941) to The Master (2012) have in One+One Filmmakers Journal

common a commitment to exposing their with representations of extreme sadism, for the audience. They don’t simply enter- emerged. In these ways, Tarantino’s early subject matter to their audiences. Such violence or sex. It can make the audience tain the audience. The kaleidoscopic tem- films were and are powerful precisely be- critically acclaimed cinema may make laugh, gasp, or feel aroused at such rep- poral chronology of Pulp Fiction induces cause of how clever they are in honestly us uncomfortable. But it never tries to resentations. But unlike the exploitation the audience to reflect on the doomed fu- illuminating what they show us. distance us from potential discomfort to film, the art film will allow for complex psy- ture of the life of criminality. If the chronol- After a six-year absence, Tarantino entertain us. Such films exhibit a tacit ac- chological reactions that happen when an ogy had been linear, the audience would returned to the silver screen in 2003 and knowledgement of all the features of any audience reflects on a film’s subject mat- have only been given the very literal mes- 2004 with Kill Bill Volume 1 and Volume situation they present their audiences with. ter and its psychological reactions to that sage that crime was dangerous for the 2. Both films are an elaborate homage to If they present an subject matter. characters in the film. More famously, the martial arts flicks, B-movies, and exploi- audience with a The art film non-plot furthering dialogue of Reservoir tation cinema. Unlike Tarantino’s previous gruesome mur- “ What the exploitation audience won’t, in virtue Dogs and Jackie Brown induces the audi- three films, the Kill Bill films do not try to der, they (at least) can’t do is start to reflect on the of what it is, try ence to reflect on the three-dimensionality re-invent their genre (the samurai-revenge tacitly acknowl- film’s content because it is and shield its of its criminal characters. In pre-Tarantino thriller) by infusing it with cinematic tech- edge that murder disturbed by its own revulsion audience from crime cinema, such criminals were nor- niques designed to induce the audience is both wrong ” features of its mally archetypical to the point of being to look at the genre’s subject matter in a and tragic. Such subject matter stereotypical. Tarantino turned this con- new way. Their only formal innovation is honesty is what enables quality cinema to so as to keep the audience entertained. vention on its head. By making his crimi- a TV commercial influenced visual aes- illuminate the world. For all their elabo- Nor will the art film try and shield the audi- nals hyper-articulate and slightly bohe- thetic combined with a constant stream rate and far-fetched fantasy, films must ence from reflecting on itself. mian, Tarantino made them feel as though of thematic and visual references to other ultimately be truthful. They can’t try and Perhaps the most enthusiastic pop their lives had a reality outside the films films. The one respect in which theKill Bill convince us that Jews are evil, sexism culture champion of exploitation cinema in which they appeared. The pop culture films differentiate themselves from some is good, or that hurting others is fun. Of is movie buff and film-director Quentin references in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fic- (although not all) samurai-revenge thrillers course, films can show us characters that Tarantino. Tarantino’s veneration of ex- tion, and Jackie Brown also induced the is in their complete indifference to the eth- believe such things. Such characters may ploitation cinema at first seems odd, since audience to think about the relationship ics of violence and revenge. When either even be sympathetic in certain respects. Tarantino first rose to prominence in the between the criminality portrayed on the violence or the subject matter of revenge But such characters can’t be right about 1990s on the crest of a (then) new wave of screen and the wider mainstream culture is used throughout either film, Tarantino these beliefs. A film that tries to convince American art house filmmakers. Taranti- from which Tarantino’s fictional criminals encourages the audience to respond with us they are right is telling just as much of no’s first three films (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp a lie as the worst Daily Mail columns and Fiction, Jackie Brown) were important Fox News media. turning points in the history of art house The exploitation film deliberately tries cinema. With these early works, Tarantino to lie to its audience. This is why for any demonstrated, perhaps more than any exploitation film to work, the viewer can filmmaker of his generation, that the genre only laugh or gasp or be titillated by rep- film in the hands of a talented filmmaker resentations of lurid and gruesome con- could be both the most commercial and tent. What the exploitation audience can’t the most edgy kind of cinema. The 90s do is start to reflect on the film’s content films of Tarantino have in common a sur- because it is disturbed by its own revul- prising lack of affinity with the aesthetics sion, laughter, or arousal. If the audience of exploitation cinema. Although Taran- starts to do this without this cognitive tino had always been a fan of exploitation process ruining the enjoyment of the film, cinema, his early films are very much art the audience knows it’s not watching an house (rather than exploitation) appropria- exploitation film. The audience is instead tions of the crime film. This is, in part, be- watching an art film. Like the exploitation cause they utilize a number of storytelling 24 25 film, the art film can present the audience devices that illuminate their subject matter One+One Filmmakers Journal

the simple psychological reactions aimed TV series Kung Fu. Carradine’s position in After the opening credits of Volume child does nothing to undermine the good at by exploitation cinema. Because Tar- pop culture is one of the many in-jokes of 1, we see Beatrix entering the Pasadena reasons Beatrix has for killing her. Vernita antino is a great filmmaker, the violence the Kill Bill movies. However, his delicate- home of Vernita Green, a woman who attempts to shoot Beatrix with a gun hid- in both films is often thought provoking. ly controlled and complex performance was part of the assassination squad re- den in a cereal box. She misses, giving Yet because Tarantino is trying so hard to stops his presence in the film from being sponsible for the wedding massacre. The Beatrix enough time to throw a kitchen achieve the aims of exploitation cinema, a tongue in cheek homage to martial arts sequence opens with what looks like a knife into Vernita’s chest. Seconds after he has to come up with devices to get the media from another era. Bill is fascinat- parody of 1970’s fight sequences. A fast Vernita’s violent death, Nikki walks into the audience to ignore the thoughts he may ing in a way that makes him more than moving zoom in on the eyes of both wom- room, staring at both Beatrix and her dead have accidentally provoked. a broad stroked villain. Uma Thurman’s en immediately precedes the fighting. mother’s corpse. Kill Bill Volume 1 tells the story of Be- Beatrix is fascinating because she seems 70’s style martial arts music blares on the In one of the most casually cringy mo- atrix Kiddo, a trained assassin (played like a contradiction. On the one hand she soundtrack. Beatrix and Vernita quickly ments in all of 00’s cinema, Beatrix says with steely intensity by Uma Thurman) appears like a cold-blooded assassin who engage in a mid-air post-matrix style kung to the child, “It was not my intention to who is taking revenge on a group of her could easily occupy the position of a so- fu fight that gets dramatically interrupted do this in front of you. For that, I’m sor- colleagues by using martial arts to sys- ciopathic antagonist in any thriller. But on by the presence of Vernita’s four year old ry. But you can take my word for it. Your tematically kill them. Her revenge is mo- the other hand, her actions are motivated daughter Nikki. In a comically absurd mo- mother had it coming. If when you grow tivated by a massacre in which her fellow by an anger that stems from an emotional ment, both women go from trying to kill up, you still feel raw about it, I’ll be wait- assassins attempted to murder Beatrix, wound. She was deprived by the massa- each other to pretending (for the sake ing.” What makes this scene particularly her husband, and all their friends and rela- cre of a chance to love a man and child of Nikki) that they are old friends having disturbing is just how casually Beatrix ad- tives at a wedding dress rehearsal. The within a stable nuclear family. Yet her be- a discussion. Once Vernita’s daughter dresses a small child whose mother she film begins with a brutal black and white havior throughout the film suggests that leaves the room, Vernita gives a half- has just murdered. Although the murder sequence in which Bill (the leader of the such love on her part would be impossi- hearted apology to Beatrix for the wed- was (unexpectedly) an act of self-defense, gang and the one responsible for ordering ble. The immediacy of each character’s ding massacre and insists that because of Beatrix shows a cold indifference to the the hit) tells Beatrix that the massacre is screen charisma at the beginning of Vol- Nikki she has become a different person. life-changing trauma she has just inflicted not an act of sadism on his part. Instead, ume 1 suggests that the saga will explore Beatrix responds that although she will on this child. The fact that Nikki will be he says, it is an act of masochism. As she the strange pathologies that make both of not murder Vernita in front of her child, spending her life dealing with the psy- is about to tell him that she is pregnant them such compelling viewing. What ac- she still intends to kill Vernita at a later chological after math of witnessing her with his baby, Bill coldly shoots her in the tually happens is that the saga uses vari- time of Vernita’s choosing. Beatrix insists mother’s murder isn’t something which head. The credits roll. Bill is played by Da- ous devices to try and induce its audience quite coldly that she has no sympathy for Beatrix takes much interest in. The only 26 27 vid Carradine, star of the 1970’s American NOT to explore these pathologies. Vernita and that Vernita’s choice to have a effort at consolation that Beatrix makes is One+One Filmmakers Journal

dience to take the subject matter of the quickly uses cinematic devices to enter- film (violence and revenge) very seriously. tain the audience so as to nullify the think- When an audience takes the subject mat- ing that would make the psychological ter of a film seriously, they are induced by reactions of the audience too complex. the film to have more than simple psy- This is especially true in an early sequence chological reactions to what they see on where we are shown Beatrix awakening the screen. The audience begins to think from a coma in a hospital. Upon realiz- about the ethical and philosophical ques- ing where she is, she looks down at her tions raised by the scenarios played out stomach and notices that she is no long- by the film. The audience also begins to er carrying her baby. Assuming that the think about its own reactions to this sub- baby has died and has been ripped from ject matter. This is especially true of a her womb, she lets out a heart-breaking film where the subject matter involves the shriek. Soon afterwards, a hospital at- brutal and sadistic behavior of human be- tendant named Buck enters the room and ings. But this is exactly what Tarantino Beatrix wisely decides to pretend she has doesn’t want, as it complicates the simple not yet awoken from her coma. Buck has entertainment that Volume 1 is aiming for. brought in a friend who he allows to night- Tarantino wants to use his incredible film- ly rape Beatrix while she is unconscious. to tell Nikki that if she desires, she can try of the film demonstrates, it is uninterested making skill to take the audience on a wild This juxtaposition is an incredibly dis- and murder Beatrix when she grows up. in exploring any of these issues. Beatrix’s ride. But he also has to do what he can to turbing depiction of human tragedy and Beatrix then walks out of Vernita’s home exit from Vernita Green’s home is meant stop the audience from having a psycho- cruelty. But before this bit of tragic cru- with the self-satisfied swagger of a Clint only to make Beatrix look like a power- logical reaction to his subject matter that elty is allowed to settle and change the Eastwood character in a Spaghetti West- ful and tough anti-hero. The scene itself is more complex than being entertained, audience’s perception of the subsequent ern. She leaves the child staring at her makes Beatrix appear objectively like a repulsed or titillated. scenes in the film, Tarantino tries hard to dead mother on the floor. villain. Yet the film does all it can to enter- The way Tarantino directs his way out push the pleasure buttons of the audience. What makes this scene particularly dis- tain the audience (through revulsion, titilla- of this dilemma is to first create cinematic Beatrix quickly gets her revenge by maim- turbing is not what happens in it. It is the tion, excitement, and humor) so intensely representations of disturbing and thought ing her rapist and finding ways to smash way the film tries to get the audience to that the audience can ignore how awful provoking scenes of brutality. He then Buck’s head in with a hospital door. Her experience and interpret this scene. The and pointless Beatrix’s quest for revenge film goes through great pains to thrill the is. The film desperately wants the audi- audience with the nearly gymnastic fight ence to just enjoy her. sequence. The film gets the audience to The more entertaining Beatrix and her laugh at the casualness with which both quest is, the more entertaining she is to female assassins deal with the issue of an watch. The more entertaining the film can impending murder in front of a small child. make her, the easier it is to get the audi- The film disturbs the audience with the ence watching Beatrix to stop thinking way Beatrix reacts to a child witnessing about the ethical dimensions of anything the bloody aftermath of the murder of her she does. In this regards, Volume 1 con- own mother. All of these elements juxta- ventionally embodies the aesthetic aims posed against one and other initially proof the exploitation film. However, unlike duces a thought provoking experience for the exploitation film, the filmmaking craft the audience. It initially looks as though and actor performances in Volume 1 are the film is exposing the connections be- impeccable. This creates a dilemma for tween the mindset of archetypical movie Tarantino. The impeccable filmmaking 28 29 assassins and child abuse. Yet as the rest and actor performances induce the au- One+One Filmmakers Journal

interrogation of Buck while she crushes remember who she is before pulling the his skull with a door is filmed with a light knife from his chest. A fountain of blood hearted and humorous style. The subse- bursts from his dying cartoon body as quent sequence shows Beatrix escaping symbols of death and male orgasm co- the hospital with Buck’s clothes on while mingle. This sequence, again, raises all quickly riding a wheel chair. 70’s action sorts of issues about the nature of abuse, movie music plays on the soundtrack. The sex, and death. But rather than explore ridiculousness of the scene initially seems any of these issues, the film merely cuts like the film is being ironic. But once we to grown-up O-Ren as a stylishly dressed see the rest of the film, it becomes clear assassin shooting a faraway target. All that this isn’t irony. This is just comedy. the abuse depicted in the earlier sequence The rest of Volume 1 follows the same was designed solely to make O-Ren look pattern. A brilliantly drawn animated se- like a fearsome opponent for Beatrix to quence sets up the back-story for one face in the battle that culminates the final of Beatrix’s targets, assassin O-Ren Ishi act of Volume 1. it is more than a cinematic roller coaster. the end of Volume 1 that Beatrix’s daugh- (played by Lucy Lui). Throughout the The battle itself is exciting and well- After all, the audience must have some ter BB is alive and living with Bill as her sequence, the audience is told a brutal choreographed, despite the fact that it emotional investment in the story in order parent. The second step is to showcase tale of child trauma where the young O- plays more like a funny television com- to wish to continue its journey with the prolonged scenes of Beatrix’s suffering Ren watches her mother and father be- mercial than the tense culmination of two characters after Volume 1 ends. The ex- at the hands of those she is trying to kill. ing murdered in front of her by a sadistic opposing life quests. By the end of Kill Bill tent to which Volume 1 got the audience This occupies most of the first half of Vol- Yakuza boss. In the following sequence, Volume 1, Beatrix’s quest feels deliberate- to have fun without reflecting on what they ume 2’s running time. The third step is to we see O-Ren as an adolescent getting ly more like an amusement park ride than saw kept them from being emotionally in- show Beatrix involved in a Kung-Fu train- her revenge by seducing that same Yaku- a mission the audience has any emotional vested in Beatrix’s quest. Yet the lack of ing flashback in which she suffers emo- za boss who it turns out is a pedophile. investment in. This is where the audience emotional investment in the story is an tional and physical abuse at the hands of While in bed, he allows the young girl to sit is at the beginning of Volume 2. Volume 2 obstacle towards the audience’s engage- her martial arts instructor (Pei Mei). The on top of his body while she surprises him is ostensibly a sequel that begins where ment with Volume 2. Once one begins to fourth step is to show Bill’s reaction to by stabbing him in the chest with a sword. Volume 1 leaves off. But unlike Volume watch Volume 2, it is immediately appar- his own murder at the end of Volume 2 as She forces him to look into her eyes and 1, Volume 2 is a film that can only work if ent that Tarantino still wants his sequel to something he feels is both necessary and give the audience the unreflective thrills of noble of him and Beatrix to partake in. The the exploitation film. But he also wants final step is a pro-longed crying sequence the engagement with audience emotions in which Beatrix rejoices in the murder of that we find in more serious cinema. her child’s father and her new (de facto) In order to satisfy these conflicting parental custody. demands, Tarantino does something in Whether or not these steps work on the Volume 2 that exploitation films generally audience depends on how much Taran- don’t do. He tries to get the audience to tino can play into its reactionary cultural cheer for actions that are both pointless assumptions. The first reactionary cultural and unethical. He does this by first at- assumption is the idea that revenge (via tempting to manipulate the audience into murder) is morally acceptable when the seeing Beatrix Kiddo as meriting the audi- persons being slaughtered are themselves ence’s wholehearted sympathy. Then, by vicious killers. In the first hour of Volume the end of the film, Tarantino tries to coax 2, Beatrix attempts to kill Budd (Michael the audience into rooting for Beatrix on Madsen), another assassin responsible for her quest to Kill Bill. The first step in at- the slaughter of her wedding party. Budd 30 31 taining Tarantino’s two goals is to reveal at is retired from his job working as a killer for One+One Filmmakers Journal

Bill and now works as a bouncer in a strip physical cruelty and psychological abuse. vicious killers. The film is also distancing features that make the morality of the be- club where his employers routinely humili- Pei Mei painfully bends back Beatrix’s the audience from the cruelty that Beatrix haviors depicted in Volume 1 and 2 differ- ate him. Beatrix tries to sneak in Budd’s arms, forces her to bang in the skin of her suffers at the hands of Pei Mei. The im- ent from the morality of our world. Volume trailer and Budd shoots her in the chest knuckles, and makes her eat like a dog portance of playing the training sequence 1 and Volume 2 depict a world of criminals before she can step through the door. In while he taunts and berates her. This se- as slapstick comedy is it allows the audi- and assassins. In such a world, Beatrix a terrifying sequence showcasing Budd’s quence then cuts back to Beatrix in her ence to interpret Pei Mei’s lessons as a and Pei Mei’s behavior is in line with the unbridled sadism, he gleefully forces coffin. She uses the knuckle bashing positive thing. The training may have in- moral code that this group endorses. But Beatrix to take part in her own live buri- techniques she learned from Pei Mei in volved cruelty and abuse, but it enabled this is no different than our own world in al. While she is suffocating in the coffin, order to slowly and painfully punch a hole Beatrix to both save her life and continue which humans throughout the ages have Tarantino’s camera lingers on what looks through the coffin Budd has buried her in. her murderous rampage. And it’s funny. been warriors and assassins who endorse like Beatrix’s emotional meltdown. Beat- The soundtrack engages in movie trium- Tarantino is here attempting to create a these kinds of moral codes. If such moral rix behaves like any normal human being phantalism as the film tries to get the audi- reaction in the audience that reflects the codes are dubious in our world, there is buried alive would. She shrieks, cries, and ence to root for Beatrix. The escape from audience belief that cruelty and abuse are nothing in the Kill Bill movies to suggest panics like a frightened child. Initially, it her coffin and the resuming of her quest morally justifiable as long as they produce they are not dubious in Tarantino’s fiction- may seem as though the film is comment- for revenge is portrayed in unambiguously practical benefits for the recipient. This is al world. The hyper-stylized character of ing on the futility of revenge and the emo- positive terms. Again, the film shows no the second reactionary cultural assump- the Kill Bill world does not suggest in any tional vulnerability of Beatrix. But the film interest in the ethics or psychological fu- tion that Tarantino relies on. way that in this world, cruelty, abuse, and then flashes back to a training sequence tility of revenge. Rather, the film wants At this point, one might suggest that revenge are morally acceptable. It only in which harsh Kung Fu Master Pei Mei us to root for Beatrix so as to get greater the film is so self-consciously dislocated shows that in the Kill Bill universe, people (Gordon Lui) teaches Beatrix techniques satisfaction in watching her murder the vi- from reality that its presuppositions are believe that those things are morally ac- that will allow her to break through the cious assassins who killed her friends and more meta-moral than they appear to be. ceptable. coffin with her hand and escape. family. As noted above, the film is presup- Perhaps the film is not saying that murder- The most disturbing reactionary cul- This sequence is played as comedy, posing that revenge (via murder) is morally ous revenge is justified in our world when tural assumption that Volume 2 relies on even though what is transpiring is mostly acceptable when the revenge is aimed at it is in response to the slaughter of a loved is the myth of the maximally transforma- one. And perhaps the film is only express- ing a positive attitude towards cruelty and abuse when it happens to assassins like Bea- trix who gain benefits from Pei Mei’s training. Perhaps the film is also suggesting that the reactionary cultural assumptions it is playing to are true only in the larger than life realm of samurai cinema that the film is depicting. The problem with this reading is that the larger than life world that is depicted in the Kill Bill 32 33 universe contains no One+One Filmmakers Journal

tive power of maternal instincts. Accord- dience to forget those other assumptions play along so as to prevent her child from decision to leave him without warning ing to this myth, maternal instincts have and beliefs. The film wants the audience being forced to witness violence. Bill in- and marry someone else. She informs a transformative power that uncondition- to believe, for the duration of their experi- troduces Beatrix to BB and demonstrates him about a pregnancy test that she took ally justifies a woman choosing to con- ence with Volume 2, that Beatrix’s eventu- to both Beatrix and the audience that de- briefly before an encounter with anas- ceive or raise a child. An implication of al custody of BB is a triumph the audience spite his day job as a murderous assas- sassin called Lisa Wong. When finding this assumption is that it doesn’t matter should rejoice in. The film tries to achieve sin, Bill has a loving relationship with his out about the pregnancy, we see both whether or not the woman possesses the this suspension of disbelief through the daughter. Bill, while tucking BB into bed, Beatrix and Lisa deciding to call a truce financial and material conditions neces- performance of moral sleights of hand. relays to her (in a surprisingly gentle way) once it becomes clear that Beatrix has sary to safely raise such a child. It doesn’t Such sleights of hand include the portray- that he “shot mommy” and is very sorry. the upper hand in a battle between the matter whether or not the woman dislikes al of Bill’s murder as something Bill himself Bill then allows Beatrix to spend time with two. Lisa goes as far as to congratulate children or the daily tasks of being a par- does not morally object to. The film shows her daughter watching the classic samurai Beatrix. Although this flash back is played ent. It doesn’t matter whether or not the Bill behaving as though his own murder revenge thriller Lady Snowblood (1973). for comedy, the comedy is affectionate woman is a sociopath who thoroughly en- is something that makes him nobler and At this point, the audience is confronted rather than sarcastic. If it were sarcastic, joys violently killing others for a living. It reinforces his love for Beatrix. After the with the possibility that the scenario being it would undermine the film’s commitment doesn’t even matter if the woman murders murder of Bill by Beatrix, we see a pro- played out before them might end in the to the maximally transformative power of the father of the child. As long as a wom- tracted scene in which Beatrix is crying on formation of a new family. But this would maternal instincts. The film then cuts back an feels sufficiently broody, she will be a the floor of a hotel bathroom. She looks require a capacity for forgiveness that to Beatrix and Bill sitting on Bill’s garden good enough parent for an audience to up at the ceiling and says to (presumably) Beatrix does not possess. For this family table. They both discuss why Beatrix’s root for her in her battle to either conceive God, “thank you, thank you, thank you.” unit to be a success, the parents would pregnancy made her choose to leave Bill or attain custody of her child. None of this is played for laughs. need a competency with moral judgment in order to create a better life for their Of course, Kill Bill Volume 2 doesn’t In the final act of Volume 2, Beatrix and psychological stability that neither daughter. Bill states that Beatrix should assume that this reactionary cultural as- finds Bill after receiving help from an as- Beatrix nor Bill possess. have told him about the pregnancy and sumption has an uncomplicated accept- sistant (Michael Parks) who suggests to After BB goes to sleep, Beatrix walks she protests that if she had done that, Bill ance in the audience of the film. It un- Beatrix that Bill doesn’t mind facing his into Bill’s living room. She immediately at- would have tried to claim BB as his own. derstands that this assumption competes death if it means being re-united with Bea- tempts to kill him and Bill restrains her by Bill then relays to Beatrix his reasons for with other audience assumptions and trix. Once Beatrix finds Bill, she catches pulling out a pistol. He then shoots her hiring assassins to help him slaughter beliefs that undermine it. This is why the Bill and their daughter play fighting with leg with a special truth serum that will al- everyone at her wedding party. For Bill, 34 35 film works especially hard to get the au- toy guns. Beatrix immediately begins to low him to interrogate Beatrix about her Beatrix’s decision to mysteriously disap- One+One Filmmakers Journal

daughter of her father because she can’t her mother just murdered her father. transcend the codes she chooses to live We may initially be tempted to interpret by. Bill believes his death to be in some this ending as an ironic fantasy sequence. way ennobling, like he is atoning for his According to this thinking, the ending sins. After Beatrix defeats him, he tells sequence is something like a dream se- her that she is his favorite person and then quence in which Beatrix’s fantasies come asks her how he looks as he prepares to true. On this reading, the comedic or ri- walk to his death. diculously sentimental aspects of the The pathology of these characters in ending are just Tarantino commenting on the final act ofVolume 2 is both disturbing the absurdity of Beatrix’s fantasies. The and tragic. What we are seeing is a con- problem with this interpretation is that it is frontation between two damaged individ- completely inconsistent with the tone and uals who are so trapped into the perverse aims of Volume 2. Volume 2, as we noted social conventions they have identified earlier, is designed to get its audience to themselves with, that they are unable to be emotionally invested in Beatrix’s quest follow the few impulses they have which to Kill Bill and regain custody of her child. make them yearn to love and nurture. But this emotional investment has to co- Such impulses can only be expressed exist alongside the film’s propensity to in acts of violence and murder. The film elicit simple psychological reactions from ends with a child’s psychopath father be- the audience that are the staple of exploi- pear left him in a state of intense mourning pens when you break the heart of a cold- ing murdered by her psychopath mother tation cinema. The only way the film can because he believed Beatrix to have been hearted killer. Beatrix then insists coldly who will then be her custodial guardian. get the audience emotionally invested in killed. When he found out that Beatrix had that the two of them have unfinished busi- But the film plays this ending in aman- Beatrix’s quest while simultaneously be- met someone else, gotten pregnant, and ness and she still intends to kill him. Bill ner that is so self-consciously sentimental ing a carefree romp is to get the audience planned a wedding under a false name, throws the first blow and the two engage that the audience is nearly bludgeoned to root for Beatrix. We are, in effect, be- Bill went a bit crazy. As Bill puts it, he in a quick fight at Bill’s garden table. The into interpreting these events as a happy ing encouraged to both excuse and root “overreacted.” fight quickly ends with Beatrix using an- ending for Beatrix and her daughter. The for abusive parenting. If Volume 2 were to What motivates Bill’s overreaction is a other one of Pei Mei’s Kung Fu moves to following sequence in which we stare at tacitly acknowledge this fact, it wouldn’t belief that Beatrix is a cold blooded killer explode Bill’s heart through his chest. Beatrix crying on the bathroom floor is de- achieve its entertainment aims. Hence, and such a killer can’t lead a successful What is fascinating about this scene is signed to inspire we can see that life raising a child in a stable family. Be- that everything that happens in it is con- the audience’s Volume 2 is not cause of the truth serum, Beatrix admits sistent with the truth of who the charac- trust in her ma- “ we are, in effect, being just a film with to Bill that she agrees with him about ters are. Although Bill has a loving rela- ternal instincts to encouraged to both excuse and an amoral atti- her essential nature being that of a cold tionship with his daughter, he can’t hope be the parent that root for abusive parenting tude; it’s a film blooded killer. She also agrees with him to be a good parent given that he is a Bill could not be. ” with an immoral that her impending marriage was destined cold-blooded killer who heads something In the final two attitude. to fail. But she states that despite these like a samurai mafia. Beatrix, because sequences, we see Beatrix hugging her This immorality is not plausibly attrib- failings, things would still be better for BB she is a cold-blooded killer, can’t realisti- daughter on a bed as the film cuts to an uted to some psychopathic bent on the as she would not be born into the world of cally work peacefully in a record store and intertitle that reads: “All is right with the part of Quentin Tarantino. He seems to Bill’s assassins. Beatrix reiterates that her be a consistently loving wife and mother. world as the lioness is with her cub.” The show (in his films and in interviews) no de- pregnancy ultimately made her care more Because of Beatrix’s distorted moral judg- film then ends with a black and white im- sire to corrupt youth. He doesn’t seem to about BB than Bill and Bill says that her ment, she feels that she must kill Bill, de- age of Beatrix and BB smiling together in be promoting some samurai code of eth- actions broke his heart. Bill, like Beatrix, spite the fact that he has a loving relation- Beatrix’s car. BB is apparently not dis- ics as a viable alternative to the morality admits to being a cold-blooded killer and ship with her daughter. Not only can she turbed in the slightest about the fact that of mainstream society. He is a tremen- 36 37 says his actions are the result of what hap- not forgive, she is willing to deprive her One+One Filmmakers Journal

dously talented filmmaker who is (a) trying actionary shit. But as with any pile of shit, to entertain his audience and (b) doing so we can learn valuable lessons by asking Once Upon a Time in in a manner where he is taking his aes- ourselves why it came out the way it did. thetic cues from exploitation cinema. As we noted earlier, the Kill Bill movies are Brazil: themselves continuously quoting such films. Tarantino is, if anything, just a film Glauber Rocha’s Antônio das Mortes (1969)i geek; a film geek like me and many people Ben Noys reading this film article. However, what separates us from Tarantino is not our filmmaking talent or insight into the nature of filmmaking. It is the fact that we can see the moral and aesthetic vacuousness of cinematic art that doesn’t illuminate the world. When cinema merely serves up the world as a spectacle for the audience to enjoy, the film is cutting the audience off from what the film should be plugging the audience into. When a film does that, it ceases to be distinct in any qualitative sense from the hypothetical nun-torture films discussed at the beginning of this article. Films can’t be progressive or edgy if they are not truthful. Exploitation cinema, as noted earlier, is a cinema of very deliberate lies. Because of Tarantino’s ap- propriation of exploitation cinema goals, the Kill Bill films say nothing more truthful about the human condition than Pretty Woman (1990) or Dirty Dancing (1987). It might be that a Quentin Tarantino re- ern pastiche but a site of (however prob- make, or remix, is the ultimate imprimatur lematic) political reflection. Exploitation cinema, if anything, is just of trash, cult and / or exploitation author- Tarantino’s political turn is no coinci- a highly visceral example of old-fashioned ity. Django Unchained (2012) confers this dence. Usually in the case of trash, cult, entertainment. Old-fashioned entertain- authority on the spaghetti Western, or or exploitation cinema it’s assumed that ment, even violent old-fashioned enter- Western all’italiana. The earlier canoniza- politics has to be found in or brought to tainment, is about as transgressive as tion of Sergio Leone, and the wider work disreputable or scandalous films from Mumford and Sons albums or episodes of of recovery on the genre by Alex Cox, the outside – both in terms of form and Loose Women. Such entertainment may suggests that the trash / cult status of the content. Politics is added in, including the shock and disturb, but only because it is spaghetti Western has always been some- politics of justifying trash cinema as trans- shocking and disturbing. When a talented what equivocal and fluid. What is striking gressive or disruptive of what we might about Tarantino’s own effort of recovery is call ‘normal cinema’ (after Thomas Kuhn’s art house filmmaker like Tarantino takes on its engagement with politics – in particular, ‘normal science’). The presumption un- the aims of exploitation cinema, his work the politics of ‘race’ and slavery. The issue derlying this manoeuvre is that these kinds degenerates from an edgy reinvigoration of ‘race’ has been contentious in Taran- of film have no significant politics of their of old movie genres into an embarrass- 38 tino’s previous work, and it seems that his own, or that the critic must speak their 39 ingly well-executed form of earnestly re- spaghetti Western is not simply postmod- politics for them. The spaghetti Western, One+One Filmmakers Journal

however, was politically explicit from the of dream’, that tried to rupture with the start. This was cinema usually made by rationalising demands of colonial First left-wing directors and writers, with strong World cinema and art. His work deliber- anti-colonial and third-world orientations. ately courted so-called ‘irrationalism’ to ii The material of the American Western contest the imposed rationality of Western already reflected on issues of primitive ac- imperial culture, and particularly imperial cumulation – the process by which capi- cinema. His choice to rework the Western, talism implants itself by violently separat- which had been the foundational US na- ing workers from the land is, according to tional epic, is not surprising. Nor is it sur- Marx, ‘written in the annals of mankind in prising that he should mimic the spaghetti letters of blood and fire.’iii While the US Western, as an existing site of political re- Western tended to treat this as a violent flection on the US genre. but necessary ‘civilizing process’, the The film itself is a rough sequel to the spaghetti Western, already influenced by previous Black God, White Devil (Deus e various revisionist US Westerns, films the o Diabo na Terra do Sol) (1964), involving ‘blood and fire’, critically probing the ex- the same character Antonio das Mortes, termination of the Native Americans, the played by Mauricio do Valle. Antonio is a racial politics of slavery and the civil war, killer of Cangaceiros, the social bandits and US intervention in Mexico. who operate in Brazil’s North-eastern Here I want to consider another much sertão – a semi-arid ‘backlands’ region. earlier re-use of the spaghetti Western, in This region plays a significant role in Bra- blind ‘Colonel’ or ‘baron’, to kill the last on chance, especially when filming the fact parallel to the spaghetti Western. It is zilian national mythology. It is the setting of Cangaceiro, the role of Antonio is to bring poor people of the area. He used their much more politically explicit than Taran- the ‘epic’ work that initiates Brazilian na- ‘order’ to the region and to make it safe spontaneous singing and, unlike in many tino’s ‘postmodern’ effort, and it also un- tional literature: Euclid Da Cunha’s Revolt for American dollars. Of course Glauber Westerns, includes the mass of the poor settles the categories of cult, trash, or ex- in the Backlands (Os Sertões) (1902). Da Rocha subverts this narrative from within. as an actual collective character. This in- ploitation. This is the Brazilian filmmaker Cunha’s book is an eye-witness account The film is set in 1940 and uses direct volves the dual disruption of political and Glauber Rocha’s 1969 film O Dragão da of several military expeditions which even- cinematic parallels to subvert official nar- cinematic ‘order’ – displacing the linear Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro, better tually succeeded in the extermination of ratives of Brazilian nationhood that are nature of marches and urban ‘organiza- known as Antônio das Mortes (the Brazil- the mystical sect led by Antonio Consel- founded on this hidden and obscene vio- tion’ with an ‘irrational’ eruption of the ian title can heiro (Antonio lence. After we witness Antonio killing a people into the space of cinema. Gilles be trans- ‘the Counsel- Cangaceiro in the opening sequence we Deleuze writes that Rocha offered ‘an act lated as ‘The an ‘aesthetics of dream’, that lor’). The im- switch to a school teacher telling children of story-telling which would not be a re- Dragon of “ the history of Brazil, from its ‘discovery’ turn to myth but a production of collec- tried to rupture with the plication is Evil against that this ex- in 1500 to the establishment of the re- tive utterances capable of raising misery the War- rationalising demands of termination public in 1889. We then cut to an official to a strange positivity, the invention of a iv rior Saint’). colonial First World cinema and art overcomes celebration, with an urban procession of people.’ Rocha doesn’t simply uncover This was ” ‘backward- girls in marching bands. Antonio appears a pristine myth hidden beneath colonial Rocha’s first ness’ and as a disoriented figure in the crowd. This reality, but reconstructs the people, cin- international co-production, his first film founds a newly rational and ‘progressive’ procession will later be paralleled and ematically and politically. in colour, and his first using direct sound. Brazil, free of superstition and atavistic contrasted by a flowing ‘march’ of the op- This reconstruction constantly puts Rocha would often refer to the film as ‘my remnants. For Rocha, of course, the aim pressed, which Rocha shoots in close-up pressure on order, drifting away from lin- Western’. is to rework and challenge this narrative in as if we are marching, moving the camera ear narrative and our expectation of ad- Rocha was a revolutionary filmmaker, the name of these ‘remnants’. around in deliberately non-linear fashion. vance and resolution. While we associate explicitly concerned with not only for- In Antônio das Mortes Antonio is called Whereas the national celebration is shot the spaghetti Western with extreme and mal or aesthetic concerns, but the need from retirement to eliminate the last of the from a distance with us as observers of violent action, something reinforced by to reorganize cinematic distribution and Cangaceiro, in a classic Western narra- the ‘linear’ march of progress, or progress Tarantino, we should note that these films production to counter the influence of tive of the closure of the frontier and the celebrated, Rocha’s deliberately rough often involve longeuers and delays. Rocha ‘North American Cinema’. He developed establishment of so-called ‘civilization’ style places us with the oppressed. stays true to this, with long set pieces and His aesthetic throughout the film delays between the moments of violence. 40 his cinema under the banner of what he and ‘law’ by violence. Hired by Dr Mat- 41 would retrospectively call an ‘aesthetics tos, on behalf of the local landowner, the is deliberately disorienting. Rocha relied These moments of violence at once obey One+One Filmmakers Journal

and subvert the usual forms of the West- the Colonel’s wife, and so the Colonel hires er, doctor, teacher, etc. – are present, if es- ema of the spaghetti Western, to include ern. In his first duel between Antonio and another killer, Mata-Vaca, to kill Dr Mattos tranged by this context, but also displaced a political actor that it usually side lines Coirana, the last of the Cangaceiros, they and Antonio. Mata-Vaca massacres the by the people. The resulting politics is not or leaves passive. Yet Rocha, in the fig- fight with knives (instead of the usual gun- followers of Coirana before turning to kill simply a personal tale of rightful venge- ure of Antonio, also inhabits a necessary fight) while holding a sheet or cloth in their Antonio. He and Antonio fight a duel with ance, or recognition by Antonio of which distance from the people. This paradox mouths. They are literally bound together, machetes, again departing from the usual side he should be on, but the emergence is figured in the departure of Antonio, a and while Antonio wins the duel, his strug- spaghetti Western script, before we finally of the collective within the personal. confused figure who can neither accept gle with the idealist Coirana begins the have the expected gunfight. Antonio and This displacement is demonstrated by modernity nor merge with the people. reversal of his position from ‘dragon’ to his sole remaining ally, the drunken teach- the final scene of the film, in which Anto- Rocha is again reflecting, I think, on the ‘warrior saint’. The Colonel is then forced er, engage in a classic gun battle with nio stands alone by a highway, presum- reconstructive elements of his filmmaking, to feed the people to placate them af- Mata-Vaca’s men in the town. They defeat ably waiting to leave. Here we have the which do not merely reflect or enter into ter this killing and Antonio takes up their them, but the Colonel is killed by one of final image of modernity, as trucks and reality. The sense of distance is not simply struggle, the black cars race by. The result is a temporal regretted in favour of the dream of a naïve demand- followers The resulting politics is not simply short-circuit, between the ‘mythic’ time of fusion, but instead placed and interrogat- ing they “ of Coira- the people and the linear time of moder- ed as an element of what makes the film be al- a personal tale of rightful vengeance... na, called nity. Rocha portrays the sense of aliena- an intellectual and critical act. lowed to but the emergence of the collective Antao, with tion and the strange space of exception I’ve already suggested that Antônio settle. a lance in which the film has taken place at little das Mortes hardly fits the classic image of within the personal Antonio ” – the im- distance from the traffic of modernity. a cult, trash, or exploitation film. It’s cult says ‘God age of the More speculatively, this final image status comes from it being little known, made the earth and the Devil barbed wire’ dragon killed by Saint George. This killing might also suggest the displacement a contribution to what we might call the (in fact, one history of barbed wire is called demonstrates the superfluity of Antonio, of the filmmaker from the ‘strange new ‘International Western’, or the ‘Interna- ‘the Devil’s Rope’).v After the duel we find with a representative of the people finally positivity’ of the people he has placed on tional revisionist Western’, and its discord- that Coirana is not killed immediately, but ridding them of their oppressor. Contrary screen. The people appear, but then An- ant style and execution. In fact, Glauber spends much of the film dying, taken by to the usual image of an internal struggle tonio leaves, so closing the film. Here the Rocha’s film is closer to Godard’s avant- the people to the mountains. between ‘experts’ – men of property able displacement lies between the modernity garde ‘Western’ Le vent d’est (1970), in Antonio’s transition to defender of the to hire killers, and the killers themselves – of the cinematic apparatus and the recon- which Rocha appears before a road sign people angers the local landowners, who once again the people enter the stage of struction of myth that Rocha undertakes. pointing to the cinema of the future. Often, are already in dispute amongst them- the Western. The usual stock characters 42 Rocha puts normal cinema under pres- as I’ve implicitly suggested, the appeal of 43 selves. Dr Mattos is having an affair with of the Western – the gunfighter, landown- sure, and also the revisionist or cult cin- the category of ‘cult, trash and/or exploita- One+One Filmmakers Journal One Black Cowboy and a Cracker

Seeing The Legend of Nigger Charley, The Soul of Nigger Charley, and Boss Nigger through blue eyes Garrett Chaffin-Quiray

tion’ is predicated on its dumbness, which ing his translations of various manifestoes and state- then requires intellectual justification. This ments by Glauber Rocha, which I have drawn on for this piece. ‘dumbness’ can be positively coded as the native vigour of the ‘real people’ in an ii. See my discussion in Benjamin Noys, ‘Spaghetti anti-intellectual populism that, as usual, is Communism?’, Mute: Culture and Politics After the Net 3.2 (2011-12): 62-73: http://www.metamute.org/ often articulated by intellectuals. Rocha’s editorial/articles/spaghetti-communism film, instead, tries to reach out and consti- tute what Deleuze called a ‘strange posi- iii. Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1 (1867), Chapter 26, tivity’ in dialogue with the people. It also Marxists Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/ archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm recognizes its necessary distance and the need to construct this category. Rocha’s iv. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2, London, 2005, p.214. attack on ‘conservative reason’ destabi- v. Alan Krell, The Devil’s Rope: A Cultural History lises the location of his film. His emphasis of Barbed Wire, London, 2002. Alan Krell, The Devil’s on ‘liberating unrealities’ emerges in the Rope: A Cultural History of Barbed Wire, London, 2002 new aesthetic of filmmaking that does not condone or endorse the ‘rationality’ of ac- All images are stills from Antônio das Mortes (1969) cumulation. The ordering of bourgeois life is to be treated by a new disorder, with the mystical and irrational as the resources of the people. These enter cinema through Rocha’s work, but have had relatively short half-life. They are lost moments, lib- I’m a White man and I love the charac- To proceed without acknowledging the of- erating unrealities that have themselves ter Mr. Nigger Charley. Call it xenophilia fense I may give in this essay is foolish but disappeared into unreality. or call it liberal guilt. I’m simply more in- it’s also the central problem of American terested in cultural markers that exist out- race relations. side Whiteness than in endlessly recycling My first inkling that such a problem mainstream standards. even existed was during childhood when I I’m also aware that when a White man noticed how my hometown was organized 44 i. I would like to thank Rodrigo Nunes for shar- 45 uses “nigger” it borders on hate speech. into two parallel, white and brown com- One+One Filmmakers Journal

munities along the US-Mexico border. copy of Roots and the text confounded ton in 1988. The group consisted of There were few Black people and what me. Eric “Eazy E” Wright, “Dr. Dre” (Andre I then knew about Black America was In the book are conversations Young), “DJ Yella” (Antoine Carraby), culled from movies, TV, and pop music. among 18th, 19th, and 20th century peo- “Arabian Prince” (Mik Lezan), “MC Ren” In adulthood I moved to Los Angeles ple, many speaking in dialect and using (Lorenzo Patterson), and “Ice Cube” and learned that the racial make-up of “nigger”, sometimes only to describe a (O’Shea Jackson). The album sold in the America is wider than a few shades of tan particular man or woman. One remarka- millions and the first three songs provide in either direction. I attended college, be- bly painful passage concerns the charac- the ground floor of what would become gan a career, and married a Filipina, with ter of Chicken George as he talks with his gangsta rap. ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ whom I have two mixed-race daughters. owner, Tom Lea. George says, “You wants ‘Fuck tha Police,’ and ‘Gangsta Gangs- Given these facts, race matters to me de straight up-an’-down truth, Massa, I ta’ describe criminal enterprise, misogy- because I regularly address issues on be- b’lieves mos’ niggers figger dey’s bein’ nistic sex, drug running, confrontation half of my children that I never faced on smart to act maybe dumber’n dey really with the police, and a constant screed my own. I’ve also spent years studying is, ’cause mos’ niggers is scairt o’ white of vulgar poetry that retains the power to movies and popular culture because I’m folks.” shock and thrill decades later. fascinated with what is unfamiliar. As my elders spoke of various ances- NWA’s joyful use of “fuck,” “bitch,” To get there from here, though, tors, I learned that there are times when and “shit” suggested a world apart from let’s move through five vantage points. a word with widely understood nega- what I’d known in semi-rural San Diego tive resonance can and should be used. County. The band’s anger equally haled what “NWA” meant. Despite key lyrics in 1 Sometimes doing so is the only way to de- my group of friends in our angst over the title track, I remember working hard scribe a peculiar truth, which was exactly growing older. Our key ritual was listening to unpack the acronym. When the plain Roots: The Saga of an American Family, the task Haley set for himself in trying to the album while driving with the win- truth was revealed we’d speak the band’s an autobiography-as-novel written by Alex to document the movement of Africans dows down, shouting lyrics. We learned name in hushed tones but the drift away Haley, was published in 1976. It centers through the crucible of American slavery about prostitution, how to buy and sell from “Niggers With Attitudes” couldn’t be Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African sold into citizenship. narcotics, and delivering insults. Despite more telling. into slavery in the United States, and the To this day Roots remains a cultural the fact that NWA seemed to be a group I eventually learned that nigga is part lives of his many landmark. It of young men our age, we also recognized of Black vernacular. It is as an eye dia- descendants, in- Parents wanted to shield us helped me the divide from what we knew and what lect that loses –er for a terminal –a, and cluding Haley. “ realize that was being described to us in this richly thereby jettisons White dominance and from profanity but the In January there may be expressive album we never played in front denigration. Speakers and writers of 1977 the novel underlying issue of race made for slave owners of our parents. nigga manipulate the insult into a point of was transformed comparatively little outrage in my fam- Straight Outta Compton was contra- rhetorical power. into one of the ” ily tree, or at band and employed the Parental Advi- NWA managed to do this quite a lot in most watched TV miniseries of all time, least folks that lived among such people sory label. Parents in my social network Straight Outta Compton. The album por- Roots. The show fomented curiosity without thinking it was a very bad thing. wanted to shield us from profanity but the trays stories from the lives of the band’s about Middle Passage and Diaspora, and That opening Haley’s book also taught underlying issue of race made for com- six members but the strategy of modifying caused many hyphenated Americans me how real people use nigger was im- paratively little outrage so long as we ac- an insult term into a marketable identity to unravel the thorny knot of their family portant, too, because I don’t recall having cepted the mainstream criticism that NWA worth promoting, indeed celebrating, was lineage as a story worth telling inside the previously experienced the word outside glorified the crime and sexism endemic to an important step towards seeing how American Experience. of admonitions never to speak it. urban decay. This meant, “where brown- language controls life. This genealogical adventure captured skinned people live,” and we understood As a White boy thrilling to the strug- the attention of elder members of my fam- 2 the point clearly while hoping to be freed gles of urban Black manhood, the proof ily, too. Once, while on a weekend visit, I from the sermon so we could listen to of NWA’s genius and will-to-stereotype got bored with family lore and turned to Niggaz Wit Attitudes, or NWA, released ‘Dope Man.’ stems from their second album, 1991’s 46 47 a nearby bookcase where I found a worn their debut album Straight Outta Comp- Importantly, it wasn’t instantly clear Efil4zaggin (anagram of Niggaz 4 Life). One+One Filmmakers Journal

The title track is affirmative, sexist, crude, the light and survives the ’hood, moving specific subculture that nonetheless com- Faggots, but I digress. phallocentric, and humorous, as in this away to attend Morehouse College and municated to all was entirely worthwhile Kennedy’s book is packed with stun- stanza, which I clearly recall singing loud- Brandi moves with him to attend Spelman. and authentic. ning details, as in his two-page set of ex- ly: Boyz was Oscar-nominated for Best cerpted on-line nigger jokes (pages 6-7). Director and Original Screenplay, and it 4 Still, the book’s importance boils down to Nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga, nigga, nig- was a hugely profitable movie that helped Randall L. Kennedy, law profes- three points: 1- the usage of nigger is use- ga, please usher in a’90s craze of urban-set, Black- sor and author, published nigger: The ful; 2- social stigmatization does the job I’m treated like a fuckin’ disease centered movies. Importantly, Boyz suc- Strange Career of a Troublesome Word in of restricting nigger’s use; 3- appropria- You say why do I call myself a nigga cessfully capitalized on a problem acutely 2002. Towards tion of nigger so quick? felt in parts of Black America: the difficulty the end of the through the every controversial word, but ’Cause I can reach in my draws and pull of achieving success in environments lim- book Kennedy “ likes of NWA out a bigger dick ited by crime and poverty. As Doughboy writes: notably this most controversial is real so- memorably explains the matter for outsid- of controversial words, has its cial power for 3 ers: “Don’t know. Don’t show. Or don’t The black place and purpose those quick- care about what’s going on in the ’Hood.” comedians and ” witted enough Black American filmmaker John Single- Singleton graduated the USC film rappers who use to give old ton’s feature debut Boyz n the Hood was school in 1990 and spent the subsequent and enjoy nigger care principally, perhaps words to new meanings. released on July 12, 1991. It glosses Sin- year making Boyz as I was preparing to exclusively, about what they themselves gleton’s autobiography through the story enroll in the USC film school in 1991. See- think, desire, and enjoy—which is part of 5 of Tre Styles (Desi Arnez Hines II as a boy, ing his debut was a godsend that made their allure. Many people (including me) and Cuba Good, Jr. as a teen), a South many would-be filmmakers believe that are drawn to these performers despite In 2007, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino Central Los Angeles boy sent by his moth- their dreams of Tinsel Town success really their many faults because, among other gave an interview to The Telegraph in er to live with his father and mature into might come true. To inspire our efforts we things, they exhibit a bracing independ- which he talked about future projects. He manhood. Mom is Reva (Angela Bassett) pinned newspaper articles to our doors ence. They eschew boring conventions, said: and Dad is Furious (Laurence Fishburne). and celebrated Boyz as it was called one including the one that maintains, despite Tre becomes a teen and falls in step of the best films of the year. massive evidence to the contrary, that nig- I want to do movies that deal with with ne’er do well, Doughboy (Ice Cube), The thing is, Boyz didn’t focus on the ger can mean only one thing. America’s horrible past with slavery and Doughboy’s half-brother and athlete ex- relationship between White people and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, traordinaire Ricky (Morris Chestnut), and Black people. It’s entirely situated in- Kennedy believes that every contro- not like big issue movies. I want to do sundry other neighborhood types until he side the universe NWA detailed in their versial word, but notably this most con- them like they’re genre films, but they deal finds himself at a crossroads. Poised to records, a world apart from mainstream troversial of controversial words, has its with everything that America has never attend college with his chaste girlfriend America. The movie’s locales feature R&B place and purpose. His book explores dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and Brandi (Nia Long), he sees Ricky’s chanc- and rap music, brown faces, and Afro- this theme while satisfying a basic curios- other countries don’t really deal with bees of escaping the ’hood on a football centrism, and the fact of peeking in on a ity about where the word originates (Latin cause they don’t feel they have the right scholarship jeopardized by for black = niger, page 4). His book also to. But I can deal with it all right, and I’m Doughboy’s gangbanging, gives someone like me, a blue-eyed White the guy to do it. So maybe that’s the next all of which is supervised man, someone like him, a thoughtful Black mountain waiting for me. by Furious who asks that public intellectual. his son walk the straight To visit Barnes and Noble and ask for The resulting film, Django Unchained and narrow. nigger is really quite something. To then (2012), is a collection of movie referenc- In the end, Ricky be guided through the store and sold a es, including Sergio Corbucci’s spaghetti dies, wrong place, wrong copy by a cheerful clerk, and to then read western Django (1966), Richard Fleis- time. Doughboy retali- the book in public, is even more discomfit- cher’s Mandingo (1975), virtually every ates and he, too, is killed ing. The closest I’ve ever come to feeling Blaxploitation movie Tarantino has ever 48 49 in street violence. Tre sees Boyz n the Hood its equal was when reading Larry Kramer’s seen, and the deep codes of the Western One+One Filmmakers Journal

the high point of the cycle was reached ed to recognizable actors in movies with in 1973-1974, mass appeal movies like striking titles, as in Jim Brown’s Slaughter Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) and Star (Jack Starrett, 1972). Wars (George Lucas, 1977) demonstrated As I read up on the period, several another way to stabilize the movie indus- movies made it into the marginal notes try so the era came to close, although the but never onto rental store shelves. The films remain a rich cultural archive of re- lesson I drew was that even inside a pur- gionally specific subcultures. posefully narrow forum like Blaxploitation One recurrent trope in the cycle, rooted there is still a hierarchy of taste, prestige, to Melvin Van Peebles’s seminal Sweet production value, and narrative invention. Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), is Enter Hot Summer in the City (Gail the law-breaking Black man on the run Palmer, 1976), Welcome Home Brother from Whitey, eager for action, ready for Charles (Jamaa Fanaka, 1972), and The sex, and able to defeat his foe, often over Legend of Nigger Charley (Martin Gold- Still from Django Unchained and through the bodies of subordinate man, 1972). Each of these titles is little Black women. Misogyny is not new to seen. Yet all three have a special place in tradition in movies. so much? Can I now say nigger when Blaxploitation; nor are violent stories and my memory as being too toxic to be seen Set in 1858 in the Deep South, Django quoting the movie? Whose fantasy is the irregular quality, ranging from big studio because, until recently, they were virtually Unchained is about freed slave Django movie revealing? polish to backroom smear. unavailable. (Jamie Foxx) who works with bounty My attraction to Blaxploitation isn’t The first time I tried to find The Leg- hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) Mr. Boss Nigger Charley therefore an ironic nod to uneven execu- end of Nigger Charley was 1995. When I to rescue his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry tion but a twofold fascination. First, I am moved to New York City in 1996 I looked Washington). Calvin Candie (Leonardo Blaxploitation is best understood as a attracted to historical moments of im- again. When DVDs supplanted VHS tapes DiCaprio) owns Broomhilda and Candie’s culturally specific movie cycle marketed mense change and Blaxploitation began I looked again; I looked again when Ama- household is firmly controlled by head to maximize profits through minimal risk. when Black people entered the image- zon made a supermarket of the web, and slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). The Black people take center stage, though making culture, en masse, for the first again when Netflix went on-line. I’ve peri- movie includes KKK-like terrorism, much not typically in principal roles behind the time in history. Second, I am a self-hating odically looked for a copy ever since, sift- mayhem and murder, threatened rape and camera. Black America is the milieu of fa- White man and because the cycle showing boxes at garage sales and hitting up castration, forced prize fighting-to-the- miliar stories, albeit in stereotypic settings cases a non-White world I get to experi- friends for bootleg copies. Then, earlier death among slaves, lengthy conversa- like criminal underworlds and music clubs. ence a society that isn’t organized to ben- this year, I found a version on Youtube. tion about eugenics, opera, and bounty Blaxploitation also recognizes race as an efit someone like me through a style of When I set aside time to watch, the title hunting, and lots of weirdly anachronistic influence on daily life and is often quite di- moviemaking intended for someone else’s was pulled, and that’s when I found a poor music that feels very much at home in this rect in the presentation of sex, ribald hu- entertainment. quality dub on Amazon. While removing hodge-podge that presses together his- mor, and the post-Civil Rights condition of To feed my curiosity I regularly visited the disk from the diamond case, however, torical signs to produce a distinctly 21st upwardly mobile Black people, whether in neighborhood video rental stores through- it broke. By luck Amazon’s streaming vid- century entertainment. legal or illegal pursuits, that are pinned be- out the 1990s in search of Blaxploitation eo service now stocks a copy so I finally Django Unchained is violent and funny. neath a glass ceiling of anti-Black public titles I’d never seen. I used a pecking or- made good on my endeavor after 18 years Most of all it’s incredibly blunt about race policy, law, and established habit. der of quality with Shaft (Gordon Parks, of steady failure. relations in the fictionalized antebellum The cycle overlaps with the Vietnam 1971) and Super Fly (Gordon Parks, Jr., The Legend of Nigger Charley, released world. In particular, the movie sustains War, as in Gordon’s War (Ossie Davis, 1972) at the top, and Scream Blacula March 17, 1972, is a western adapted by nearly two hundred utterances of nigger in 1973), the mainstreaming of cinematic Scream (Bob Kelljan, 1973) and The Hu- director Martin Goldman and his producer 165 minutes running time. pornography, as in Tongue (K.B., 1976), man Tornado (Cliff Roquemore, 1976) at Larry Spangler from a story by genre writ- For White viewers the film provokes and the influx of Asian cinema, especially the bottom. Like many young men, I was er James Warner Bellah. Ex-professional questions. Is Django Unchained any Hong Kongese entertainments like Enter drawn to the most lurid cover art, as in football player-turned actor Fred William- 50 51 good? Why does Tarantino use nigger the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973). After Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973), or else I gravitat- son plays Charley, a slave freed by his dy- One+One Filmmakers Journal

ing master only to be re-enslaved by the knows he’s been freed but it doesn’t mat- White-Indian crossbreed, and therefore plantation ramrod, Houston (John Ryan). ter much because another White man, an acceptable love interest should he be- When Charley kills Houston he runs away Houston, still controls him; that is, until come bored with killing White men. with two slave friends, Toby (D’Urville Charley gets the upper hand when Hou- As Roger Ebert wrote in his review of Martin) and Joshua (Don Pedro Colley), ston drunkenly seeks him out to pick a the movie in 1972, “This will do as easy and the trio is trailed by a posse of White fight. entertainment, I guess, but the novelty slave catchers, whom Charley’s crew de- The house slave Toby finds Char- of a black cowboy shooting a white bad feats in a frontier town with the help of a ley standing over Houston’s corpse and guy is sure to wear off sooner or later, and Black-Indian crossbreed named Shadow pushes Charley to ride away on a horse then maybe black Westerns will be made (Thomas Anderson) and a Black stable that field slave Joshua has taken from the with the same care as the traditional item.” boy named Willie (Tom Pemberton). No plantation stables. Flight is a given for Ebert goes on to note the movie’s race longer pursued as fugitives but renowned these three men and flight allows the mov- bating, whereby each White man that calls as gunfighters, they help Dewey and Sarah ie to sustain a plot. Still, no time is spent Charley nigger is inevitably killed, and he Lyons (Douglas Rowe and Tricia O’Neil), a wondering about the retaliatory violence considers it tiresome. That may be true farmer and his wife, from a local gang led that will surely be visited on Leda, or Char- from the perspective of blunt characteri- by the psychotic Reverend (Joe Santos). Still from The Legend of Nigger Charley ley’s mother Theo (Gertrude Jeannette), or zation but it’s a thrill to watch an ex-slave In the ultimate showdown, Charley’s gang any of the remaining slaves that will bear seek violent redress for years of mistreat- kills the Reverend and most of his gang, stead, it’s clear that brown-skinned peo- the wrath of frightened White people since ment and cruelty, even if only through although Joshua, Shadow, and Willie are ple form livestock lorded over by grades the key psychological horror of Antebel- symbolic means in fictional entertainment. also killed. Charley and Toby leave the of more empowered brown-skinned peo- lum America, a period where Black slaves One killing stands out. As Charley’s Lyons in peace and head into an unknown ple until there is a controlling White man. outnumbered White people in parts of the group is attacked by slave catchers, Char- and dangerous future. Around the edges of this system is the fact American South, is the prospect of an ley shotguns an assailant, literally shoot- The movie’s score is vintage early ’70s of Black life lived in defensive posture, armed Black uprising. ing him out a window and into the street. funk. Stunt work is lovingly viewed in meaning romance and kinship occur out- After a long journey away from the It’s not unlike the penultimate shoot-out of overlong shots that fail to cut on fast-mov- side Master’s prying eyes, thusly deepen- Virginia plantation, doggedly pursued Django Unchained when Django shoots ing action and there are very few close- ing anger that’s rarely allowed to bubble by slave catchers in scenes reminiscent Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly (Laura Cayou- ups. Instead the movie trades on spend- up to the surface in White-Black relations. of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ette) and blows her out of the room. The ing most of its time in the company of One key sequence that puts these in- (George Roy Hill, 1968), Charley’s crew cathartic value of this kind of explicit, Charlie and his friends, and in this way we fluences together begins when Houston enters a frontier town and stop at the over-the-top violence that flips the normal are allowed to fully invest in a simple man, catches Charley making love to Leda saloon. Charley is tired and knows that pattern of victim-killer cannot be over- trained as a blacksmith, who wants space (Marcia McBroom), a pretty house slave. the cat and mouse game he’s playing as stated; it’s the very premise of Blaxploi- to control his life. Charlie wears home- It’s somewhere in the 1840s or 1850s and quarry will soon come to an end. Hoping tation’s politics and charm, and the rea- spun pants and a sleeveless buckskin Houston’s underlings sexually menace to face death with dignity, Charley orders son The Legend of Nigger Charley moves shirt. Williamson’s body is muscled and Leda, beat up Charley, and put Charley a beer and is called nigger. He retali- through its plodding turns as a western to coordinated, and he speaks in a standard in solitary confinement. The shift from ates by beating the White man who said sketch then-present values of Black self- American dialect with very little slang, pro- romantic idyll to assault and near-rape is it and tells Joshua and Toby, “I ain’t tak- determination. If only the Legendary Nig- fanity, or hint of a challenging dialect. imperfectly framed but nonetheless ugly. ing no shit from no white man again. I’m ger Charley can get fair shake, Goldman’s Importantly, the movie opens in 1820 It’s not within the rights of chattel people a free man, and that’s the way I’m gonna movie seems to say, he’ll find his place in when African slave traders raid a village, to control their emotional and sexual lives, die.” From that point Charley becomes the world. If not, he’ll kill as well as John murdering unsuspecting men and enslav- and it certainly isn’t Charley and Leda’s superheroic, the archetypal Super Negro Wayne does until he’s home. ing the surviving women and children for privilege to act the couple. of Blaxploitation’s height; he’s a capable The Legend of Nigger Charley was a hit sale to White Europeans, among them the Despite landing a few punches while gunslinger, boxer, and knife fighter; a nat- for Paramount Pictures in 1972 just as the infant Charley and his mother. This intro- showing Williamson’s physique in action, ural leader; a man with a conscience; and studio won Best Picture for The Godfather duction is significant because the era of Charley is overcome, emasculated, and he eventually develops a keen eye for Mrs. (Francis Ford Coppola) while preparing 52 53 slavery is not represented as bucolic. In- left confused about what to do next. He Lyons who has been carefully rendered a to release the comedy Play It Again, Sam One+One Filmmakers Journal

that admits many races, ages, ethnicities, gler’s theme seems to say that mutual love and professions. To that end Soul is a is the basis for satisfaction, or else how strange movie. It waffles back and forth to explain these two good-looking people from having Charley and Toby perform the playing in a verdant pool and interrupting Black clown of yore to acting like heroes the gunfights and spilled blood the audi- that motivate the downtrodden they meet ence craves? with words about how freedom is real only Re-enter Blanchard. Not only is he the if everyone, everywhere, is free. chief nemesis, he’s the key to maintain- Interestingly, Blanchard is an all- ing the franchise of Nigger Charley mov- services bad guy. On one hand he’s a rac- ies that requires the lead bond with his ist willing to kill for his employer. He’s also best friend but never with a woman. After willing to kill members of his own race, Charley’s group wins the finale gunfight, indeed his own militia, when reminded of Blanchard, thought dead, draws on Char- how effective Charley has become at out- ley. Elena jumps in front of the bullet and Still from The Soul of Nigger Charley maneuvering him. Bigotry may be ugly dies, and Toby enfilades Blanchard, leav- but sadism coupled with savagery is even ing Charley to helplessly cry out, “Why?” (Woody Allen), the literary adaptation A into town. They haven’t aged much from worse. Soul ends as Charley and Toby inte- Separate Peace (Larry Peerce), the west- Legend; Charley still wears homespun Soul references the post-Civil War pe- grate into a mongrel community of Ameri- ern Bad Company (Robert Benton), and pants and a sleeveless buckskin shirt, riod through the way Charley first meets cans and Mexicans. Over Elena’s grave the biopic Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney and Toby still wears a black suit. They Elena on the arm of an ex-Union soldier Marcellus indicates his wish to start a new J. Furie), among others. Legend was in- console Marcellus, strap an unconscious and Black man named Lee (Joe Hender- life and Charley acquiesces with laughter. expensively produced and earned strong Ode to a horse, and ride for a friendly en- son). The attraction between Charley and The Soul of Nigger Charley was profit- box office, largely from urban markets campment of Quakers for help. Among Elena is immediate, although she plays able for Paramount Pictures in 1973 just teeming with Black audiences interested the Quakers they find a mixed race assort- him off as just one more frontier bachelor as the studio was preparing to release in seeing themselves on-screen, a key as- ment of peaceful folk devoted to working until Lee is killed following one of Char- the middle age crisis story Save the Tiger pect of Blaxploitaiton. the earth in isolation. From them Charley ley’s plots to foil Blanchard. Charley feels (John G. Avildsen), an animated adapta- Legend’s sequel, The Soul of Nig- and Toby learn that an ex-Confederate guilt over Lee’s death but Elena is impas- tion, Charlotte’s Web (Charles A. Nichols ger Charley, was released May 16, 1973. general is quietly building a new plantation sive. She explains that as a mixed race and Iwao Takamoto), Blaxpoitation sequel Legend’s producer, Larry Spangler, served system just across the border in Mexico, slave her owner regularly used her sexu- Super Fly T.N.T. (Ron O’Neal), the literary as director and reprised his producer role, and that he’s harvesting freed Black peo- ally. With freedom she was forced to be- adaptation Jonathan Livingston Seagull and he co-wrote the script with Harold ple to re-enslave in order to do it. Out- come a prostitute and that’s when she met (Hall Bartlett), and biopic Serpico (Sidney Stone. raged, Charley leads a ragtag group of fol- Lee, whom she never loved, although he Lumet), among others. Soul earned a fair Soul jumps in time to the post-Civil War lowers on an escalating set of adventures accepted her as she is. Charley flinches return on investment, again by largely ap- moment and opens with a group of White and gunfights to shut down the operation. over the details of her back-story but pealing to Black audiences now firmly at- men on horseback. Led by ex-Confeder- Along the way he falls in love with mulat- quickly overcomes his discomfort to ad- tached to Fred Williamson’s star power. ate Colonel Blanchard (Kevin Hagen), they to Elena (Denise Nicholas), enters into a mit affection. Paramount Pictures moved away from attack a town of peaceful Black people partnership with bandito Sandoval (Pedro A few minutes later the imminent con- a third picture, however, which was when and kill everyone they can find, save a re- Armendariz, Jr.), and eventually foils the frontation that is Soul’s whole story and Williamson wrote a script and caught the enslaved, bow and arrow-wielding Black plot, killing Confederate baddies, but also pint is put on hold as Charley and Elena attention of exploitation studio and dis- man called Ode (George), whom they learning the price of leading men to their literally stalk each other across a moun- tributor Dimension Pictures, the eventual stake to the ground to kill by exposure, deaths, including Elena who dies saving tain waterfall and into a lake. Williamson studio of two other Blaxploitation mov- and a Black boy named Marcellus (Kirk his life. shows off his athlete’s body and the actors ies of 1975, Dolemite (D’Urville Martin) Calloway) that they failed to notice while The signature dilemma of Soul is how to cavort in shallow water, preparing to make and Lady Cocoa (Matt Cimber). Working killing Marcellus’s parents. move from the sheer violence of liberation love, all scored to the Don Costra Orches- with studio head Lawrence Woolner, and 54 55 A few hours later Charley and Toby ride that forms Legend and into a new society tra’s song ‘A Lonely Summer Love.’ Span- his husband and wife production team of One+One Filmmakers Journal

Charles S. Swartz and Stephanie Roth- lector will become sheriff. ently leaving him mortally wounded, but the dilemmas his world presents him. man, Williamson’s project was attached to Boss and Amos drop Clara Mae at a he still manages to kill Clayton and Griffin, Importantly, Boss Nigger is a-historic veteran director Jack Arnold and released Mexican encampment outside San Miguel and a host of other nameless White bad to the franchise or the 19th century. The February 26, 1975 with Williamson as sole and proceed into town, knowing no Black guys. The movie ends with Boss rolling lead characters refer to slavery and their writer, co-producer and star. man will be given the sheriff’s job or a out of town in a wagon driven by Amos, choice to become bounty hunters, but Boss Nigger opens at night. Two horse chance at Clayton’s bounty, unless they past the Mexican camp’s church where the fact of real American history isn’t riders, their faces never seen and their take both prizes by force. Lots of White Clara Mae is being given burial services, crucial; it’s an excuse to persecute on- bodies covered in black clothes, follow a folk call them nigger and the pair quickly and into a bright sunny desert. going racism among White Americans group of four White thieves. At the mo- corrects local discourtesies, kill a few Boss Nigger was generally well re- against non-White Americans circa the ment of confrontation, the two horsemen baddies, and become the peacekeepers ceived. Vincent Canby of The New York mid-1970s. kill their foe, to then be revealed as Boss of San Miguel. In so doing they enforce Times typifies the moment: Boss Nigger has a better home video (Williamson) and Amos (D’Urville Martin), several “Black Laws” that forbid calling presentation than the prequels, courtesy a new iteration of Charley and Toby in this Boss or Amos nigger. The wit of the film is in Mr. Wil- of VCI Entertainment and Jack Arnold’s now only-loosely connected franchise. Locals get riled up. Clayton loses liamson’s performance, which is an production crew, but especially com- Gone is Charley’s buckskin shirt and more men. Griffin demonstrates he’s a immensely self-assured parody of the poser Leon Moore and Terrible Tom who standard English; Charley wears a mus- first class fraud and bigot, and local White Man With No Name played by Clint recorded the movie’s theme song, ‘Boss tache, and he and Amos speak jive. schoolteacher Miss Pruit (Barbara Leigh) Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s films. Nigger.’ This third and final part of the As in the prequels, Boss and Amos takes a liking to Boss. Still, Clara Mae Though the screenplay gives the sup- Nigger trilogy is distinctly entertaining right the wrongs of evil White folk, al- keeps her claim on Boss’s heart so when posedly comic lines to Mr. Martin, it’s because it embraces Blaxploitation pre- though they bring along a new interest Clayton kidnaps her, Boss attempts to Mr. Williamson who is responsible requisites like a sexually curious White in capitalism because they now work make her rescue but is captured and tor- for most of the good humor, ambling woman that finds the lead attractive as entrepreneurial bounty hunters very tured in Clayton’s camp while Clara Mae is through the movie, doing the old East- and because it moves quickly towards a clearly focused on money. They save a turned into a house girl. wood act of squinting, shooting and bloody climax that makes a proper fet- lovely young Black woman named Clara Amos eventually frees them both and being irresistible to women with less ish of murdering heinous, racist jerks. Mae (Carmen Hayworth) from marauding the three agree to separate before Clay- effort than it takes most other men to From where I sit as a White man, I’m White bandits and discover that there is a ton’s final assault. Boss and Amos lay select a tie. made newly aware that Blaxploitation big bounty on a White outlaw named Jed booby traps in town but Clayton acciden- was chewing on extraordinarily dense Clayton (William Smith). The corrupt may- tally finds Clara Mae and kills her on his Different from its prequels, Boss is iron- cultural material that is often overlooked or of San Miguel, Griffin (R.G. Armstrong), way to San Miguel. In the ensuing gun- ic about Blaxploitation’s riff on established because the cycle has so many deplor- offers the bounty, hoping the bounty col- fight Boss is shot multiple times,- appar genres and it’s self-consciously funny with able low points mucking up considera- dialogue that regularly uses nigger. At tion of the highlights. My main point in first the blunt language is noxious, much this essay is that when the Nigger tril- like in Django Unchained some 27 years ogy finally became available on DVD later, but then the insults fade into the this curious father of mixed race babies backdrop, save for how Boss and Amos found the nerve enough to explore one occasionally parley with White performers of the most overdetermined and power- who are almost always two-dimensional ful words in the English language as the bigots. The pattern reaches a high point necessary detail for describing a movie when Boss and Amos sit for a restaurant trilogy. meal and Boss tells their waiter, “I’s a nig- In Boss Nigger Amos confronts a plot ger and he’s a nigger,” and then orders complication and says, “Oh lord, an- something to eat. The scene foregrounds other nigger.” To which I add, another what many viewers no doubt realized, that nigger indeed, Mr. Boss Nigger Charley. Boss Nigger is, indeed, a Black man and 56 57 Still from Boss Nigger more capable than anyone else of solving One+One Filmmakers Journal

he seems to sadistically relish the power it gives him over other slaves. In contrast, Who Framed Brer Django is a trickster, who uses his brains Rabbit? and cunning to escape traps and enact vengeance. Django is Racial Politics in Walt Disney’s Song of the like heroes from the South and Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin 1970s Blaxploitation Bradley Tuck genre; Coffy, Priest or Sweetback, who killed racist cops, avenged the Mafia, took out Still from Django Unchained corrupt politicians or struggled in a criminal underworld only to rise triumphant. and Negroes cavort with cosmic forces If Django is a trickster in the spirit and the supernatural, zipping their skins of Blaxploitation cinema, it is tempting off at will to prowl around the countryside to interpret Stephen as a perverse and terrorizing whites, often in the guise of dark hearted Uncle Remus; the famous rabbits...”v storyteller from Joel Chandler Harris’ Harris appeared not to notice these books. Harris was a folklorist and jour- aggressive tones. Or maybe he did and nalist who documented African-American wished to banish them from his sight. folk tales. These tales had been passed With the aid of his own character, the down through the oral tradition between lovable chuckling Negro servant, Uncle African-Americans working on the plan- Remus, Harris dampened the blow. Un- tations and if not explicitly, then implicitly, cle Remus was a kind-natured ex-slave the stories appeared to reflect centuries and storyteller, who told these stories to of slavery. Maurice Rapfiiii tells us that, “If the little white child, son of the planta-

Song of the South promotional image you read the fables carefully, you will find tion owner. With the aid of Remus, Harris they are stories of slave resistance. Brer appeared able to soften the tales’ sub- Dat de reason I don’t like ter tell Quentin Tarentino’s Django Unchained Rabbit symbolised the samller, less pow- versive connotations. As Frantz Fanon no tale ter grown folks, speshually ef takes us on a journey through the last erful black man.” Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and writes “In order to protect themselves dey er white folks. Dey ‘ll take it an’ few years of legalised slavery in America. Brer Coon were the oppressive whites, against their own unconscious maso- put it by de side er some yuther tale On this journey we encounter Stephen and the stories were all about how to chism, which impels them to rapturous what dey got in der min’ an’ dey’ll (Samuel L. Jackson). Stephen is a slave, outwit the masters.”iii Ralph Bakshi also admiration of the (black) rabbit’s prow- take on dat slonchidickler grin what an “inferior”, but one who has acquired notes that these stories were “hysteri- ess, the whites have tried to drain these allers say, ‘Go way, nigger man! You some status and other relative “privileg- cal in as much as they were black slaves stories of their aggressive potential.”vi dunner what a tale is!’ An’ I don’t - - es”. Given these relative “privileges” he dictating stories about how to get around Uncle Remus is Harris’ vehicle to pro- I’ll say dat much fer ter keep some un binds himself with loving allegiance to white masters.”iv Bernard Wolf notes how vide, what he calls, a “curious sympa- else funi sayin’ it.i his master, the slave owner. Behind his within these stories lay a white man’s thetic supplement to Mrs. Stowe’s won- Uncle Remus in Joel Chandler Harris’ loving grin and mischievous chuckle lies nightmare, where “whites are Negroes, derful defence of slavery as it existed in New Stories of the Old Plantation his own complicity in slavery. In fact, not the weak torture and drown the strong, the South.”vii He takes the servile figure 58 59 only is he aligned with the slave owner, mere blackness becomes black magic – of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, re- One+One Filmmakers Journal

names him Uncle Remus and weds him and situations of the original stories is continually re-imagined in everything or as Remus puts it, they were “mixed to the cunning trickster from the planta- and gave them a human setting: the from Uncle Tom and the Black maid (The up in their own troubles.” You may have tion folk-tales. Through Harris a marriage loving and lovable Negro narrator, staple of many early Hollywood films) to assumed that these troubles would have is made. The malevolent trickster and the adoring white auditor. Within Tarentino’s Stephen. It is with irony then been political in nature. As Southern subservient storyteller are united as one. this framework of love, the blow was that Harris’ Remus worries about his sto- slave-owner they had just lost the civil Harris tells us that Remus “has nothing heavily padded with caresses and ries being appropriated and mixed with war and had to adjust to the emanci- but pleasant mem- the genuine other tales. From Harris’ literary output pation act which made it illegal to own x ories of the dis- Uncle Remus is the folk was almost to Disney’s musical Song of the South slaves, but they seem to be doing fine. cipline of slavery, “ emasculated (1946) and from Bakshi’s Blaxploitation Their problems weren’t so much eco- and […] has all the absolute opposite to the into cute folksy. cartoon Coonskin (1975) to The Adven- nomic or political, but personal. The trou- prejudices of caste trickster rabbit; he is the ix tures of Brer Rabbit (2006) the tales of bles come to light as Johnny, his parents and pride of fam- obedient servant, who Uncle Remus (Sometimes cleansed of and their black maid, Aunt Tempy, travel ily that were natu- Uncle Remus Uncle Remus) have been re-shaped and to see Johnny’s Grandma at the planta- ral results of the can alleviate white man’s was the perfect reinvented throughout cinema history. tion in the heart of the Southern country- system.”viii Uncle ‘guilt’ framing device, I will focus on how two of these films side. Johnny knows that something is up. Remus is the ab- ” deflecting atten- (Song of the South and Coonskin) have “Mamma,” he asks “why are we going to solute opposite to the trickster rabbit; he tion from the white man’s guilt and the used cinematic devises to frame the lit- Grandma’s?” “Why I told you dear, for a is the obedient servant, who can allevi- black man’s hate and, instead offering an tle rabbit, sometimes to ensnare him and visit!” replies Miss Sally, his mother. She ate white man’s “guilt” with his charming image of interracial love. “Uncle Remus” other times to set him free. isn’t telling him something. Johnny per- grin. Through Remus’ grin, the stories are is the device that makes the bunny pal- sists, “Why didn’t she come to ours like recast and gift-wrapped. atable to the newly acquired white audi- The Disneyfication of Uncle Remus last spring?” An awkward expression ap- ence, who consume it cleansed of hate pears on Miss Sally’s face and in an at- Harris, then fitted the hate-im- and injected with love. The character of Disney wanted to remain true to tempt to divert the conversation she re- bued folk material into a framework, Uncle Remus allows us to turn away from Harris’ stories, whilst adding a little mag- plies, “I thought you would enjoy seeing a white man’s framework, of “love”. the historical context of racism and op- ic of their own. Uncle Remus undergoes the plantation”. Johnny is not convinced He took over the animal characters pression and reinvent the stories where a Disney makeover, including a beaming and continues to pry. “Is Grandma mad the days of slavery grin, uplifting songs and a battalion of cu- at us?” he asks. and caste can be ro- tesy animated animals Johnny suspects manticized, ignored follow him around in a transformed from a that Grandma might or forgotten. manner similar to Snow “ be angry at what his Remus and the White (Snow White humble storyteller to a father, Mr John, writes rabbit, or, to put it and the Seven Dwarfs, Hollywood hero and in his newspaper. more generally, the 1937). Through Dis- moral guide Everyone else is! But servant and the trick- ney, Uncle Remus was ” that isn’t it. His father ster appear as ar- transformed from a humble storyteller reassures Johnny that Grandma “likes chetypes who loiter to a Hollywood hero and moral guide, in what she reads.” in the American cin- some respects more like Mary Poppins Underneath the façade, however, ematic unconscious (Mary Poppins, 1964) than the servile Un- two problems present themselves; One ready to re-emerge cle Tom. Like Mary Poppins, Uncle Re- is personal (John and Sally’s marriage), at any moment. If the mus becomes the portal to magical en- the other points to the political (contro- trickster manifests chantment and wonderment. versy with the newspaper). But we, like in everything from As with Mary Poppins, the foil of Song Johnny, are denied access to the finer Bugs Bunny to Blax- of the South is the middle-class (white) details. Instead, Johnny (and the audi- ploitation, the cheery family who seem unable to perceive ence) is distracted from the awkward 60 61 Still from Song of the South self-contented slave problems beyond the end of their nose, topic by talk of Uncle Remus. Johnny’s One+One Filmmakers Journal

eyes are aglow. “Is Uncle Jim Korkis draws out the critique of this Poppins […] in coating the pill of Remus real?” Johnny asks caricature by quoting Frederick Douglas: moral education in an entertaining in amazement. “Real!” Aunt manner. He, according to the dic- Tempy replies “Of course I have often been utterly aston- tates of Romantic philosophy, has he is real. Wait until he tells ished, since I came to the North, to learned what is truly important by you the tale of Brer Rabbit, find persons who speak of singing, living close to the earth. Distraught then you’ll know he’s real.” among slaves, as evidence of their Johnny, running away from home The carriage rides into contentment and happiness. It is after his father leaves, is drawn to the plantation and trav- impossible to conceive of a greater the warmth and beauty of the black els up to the house where mistake. Slave’s sing most when community, enjoying gospel songs in they are met by Johnny’s they are most unhappy.xi the woods. Whenever Johnny peers Grandma. She asks Toby, a back over his shoulder at the planta- black child of similar age to Disney’s message is somewhat differ- tion house, it appears cold, aloof, and Johnny, to take care of him ent. In Song of the South, Remus sings off-putting. Remus’s cabin is where and make sure he doesn’t with full hearted glee. Johnny feels completely at home— get into trouble. Johnny loved, wanted, respected. “Mr. Blue- and Toby appear to make Zip-a-dee-doo-dah zip-a-dee-ay bird’s on my shoulder,” Remus at one friends instantly. On the My oh my what a wonderful day point sings, as an animated bluebird one hand, Toby is a servant Plenty of sunshine heading my way descends. He, like Davy Crockett, to Johnny. He has certain Zip-a-dee-doo-dah zip-a-dee-ay Snow White, and other Disney he- duties to perform and is, in roes, is Rousseau’s natural man, that a respect, an inferior. But Disney, true to form, shares none of philosopher’s best man. The essen- Johnny doesn’t see that. Douglas’ sobering sentiments. This is not tial irony of Song is, in the Romantic- They are almost instanta- particular to Song of the South. Disney philosophic vein, how oblivious adult neously friends and equals. films are rife with the glamorisation of whites (particularly Ruth Warrick as Despite being a plantation hard work with the addition of a whistle, Miss Sally, the most civilized and where slaves have only very from Snow Whites’ domestic work ethic corrupt among them) are to the true recently gained emancipa- of “whistle while you work” to Mary Pop- meaning of life, as compared to how tion, there appears, at least pins’ spoonful of sugar that keeps chim- open and aware the earthy and un- superficially, no racial ten- ney sweeps counting their lucky stars, pretentious blacks are.xiii sion at all. The real trouble Stills from Song of the South whilst leaping, dancing and singing from centres on the marital unit. the roof tops. In Disney films the op- It is worth unpacking what this “ro- The couple seems weighed pressed, poor and exploited aren’t re- manticism” amounts to. Rousseau tells down by city life and the political contro- That night he decides to run away. He ally oppressed, poor or exploited at all. us “that most of our ills are our own mak- versies at the newspaper. This Southern packs a hamper and leaves the plantation Uncle Remus is a perfect example. Of all ing, and we might have simply avoided plantation seems unscathed after defeat house. But it isn’t long before he runs into the characters in Song of the South it is them all by adhering to the simple, uni- during the civil war and the emancipation Uncle Remus and the ever-cheerful black the black plantation workers that seem form and solitary way of life prescribed act, and appears instead as the epitome plantation workers. The plantation and the most happy.xii According to Douglas by nature.”xiv The savage is a “stranger to of social harmony. The troubles, it would the woods that surround it are filled with Brode, this demonstrates that the film, almost every disease, except those occa- seem, are emanating from city life. It is to joyous singing. They are in direct contrast contrary to popular belief, is not racist. sioned by wounds and old age.” In con- these troubles, that Mr. John, as soon as with the feel of the cold and stern plan- trast, Rousseau tells us that “the history he arrives, must return, whilst simultane- tation house. Whereas the wealthy white Remus signifies the film’s moral of human disease might easily be com- ously leaving his marriage in the balance. family seem cold, stern and self-ab- centre, positively influencing the posed by pursuing that of civil societies”. Johnny is distraught at his father’s sorbed, the ex-slave plantation workers Anglo child-hero, Johnny (Bobby xv If the state of nature, for Rousseau, re- 62 63 leaving and knows something is wrong. appear not to have a trouble in the world. Driscoll). Remus resembles Mary mained preferable to our own civil socie- One+One Filmmakers Journal

ties, it was not because nature was free ing in disguise for its so-call victims, who, of pain, suffering, wounds and old age, it turns out, are freed from the weight of but because knowledge and social kin- sociality. ship brought problems of its own. Rous- For Brode, however, Song of the South seau, however, was also deeply egalitar- is not about the master-slave relation- ian and deeply despised the master-slave ship. relationship. Rousseau tells us to Following Song’s release, the …tolerate neither rich people nor NAACP issued a statement prais- beggars. These two conditions, nat- ing Song for its “remarkable artistic urally inseparable, are equally fatal merit” but decrying “the impression to the general welfare; from the one it gives of an idyllic master-slave re- class spring tyrants, from the other, lationship which is a distortion of the the supporters of tyranny; it is always facts.” This evaluation derives from between these that the traffic in pub- the mistaken (if universal) notion that lic liberty is carried on; the one buys Song is set during the pre–Civil War and the other sells.xvi era. In fact, the film takes place in 1867. The film’s blacks are freedmen In light of this, Rousseau concludes who chose to work for wages on that “as to wealth, no citizen should be rich plantation where they once served as enough to be able to buy another, and slaves.xviii

none poor enough to be forced to sell Song of the South promotional image himself.”xvii For Rousseau it is the modern It is hard to see this as much of a rebut- civil society itself that has brought with tal. If 1867 is accurate then that is only 2 it rabid inequality. Disney romanticism, years after the end of the civil war and the inequality of the plantation is made evi- ny) outwits a cat or hunter (Tom or Elma however, shares none of Rousseau’s emancipation act, which made it illegal to dent. Equal opportunities and access to Fudd). These animations, like the folk egalitarian concerns. If figures such as own slaves. These so-called “freemen” education is what distinguishes Johnny tales, are essentially tales of power strug- Snow White and Uncle Remus find them- still live under the residue of centuries of and Toby, and even if the ex-slaves are gles, which become sadistic, as cats and selves at home in nature it is because slavery. Their culture, consciousness and free to leave, they are bound to the plan- hunters get their competence. However, they have learned to whistle while they material condition remains conditioned tation, which serves to sustain their liveli- if these cartoons introduced an element work: to escape nature’s grievances with by the pre-existing fabric of slavery. In hood. of the macabre, they simultaneously save a smile. Disney romanticism, finds eman- the film, despite the emancipation act, But Remus doesn’t just sing songs, us from it. No-one dies for too long and cipation in the beggars and the poor, in the black servants still hold an inferior he tells tales. In the company of Remus, are soon resurrected with no apparent plantation workers, chimney sweeps, and position (they are there to serve the rich Johnny is quickly introduced to Brer Rab- wounds or injuries. The slapstick nature socially outcast dwarfs. In Disney films it white family), they are poor and their chil- bit. As Remus start telling a story we are of the violence prevents us having to is those who are excluded from society dren have no access to education. At one transported from the live-action world confront real violence. that are free from its diseases, delusions point Toby says to Remus, “Uncle Remus to a cartoon wonderland. Here the Brer However, slapstick itself doesn’t nec- and social pressures. Plantation workers, you tell the best tales in the whole united Rabbit fables are re-imagined in the spirit essarily depoliticise. Disney depoliticises dwarfs in the mines and chimney sweeps states of Georgia”. He seems ignorant of the slapstick cartoons of the 1940s these tales by framing them with the may sing and dance with delight and of the social-political landscape of the such as MGM’s Tom and Jerry or Warner live-action that makes it clear that these abandonment, but the middle-class fami- time. This has been criticised for its ap- Brother’s Bugs Bunny. The parallels be- stories are not about the master-slave relies, bound by social expectations, shoul- parent mockery of the black character,xix tween such cartoons and the African- lationship at all. As Maurice Rapf notes, der the weight of civil society. From a however, in contrast, it is one of the very American folk tales are evident. In both in Songs of the South Brer Rabbit is not Disney perspective, poverty, exploitation few honest moments in the entire film. It an animal from the lower end of the peck- meant to be the slave outwitting his mas- 64 65 and slavery may turn out to be a bless- is one of the very few moments where the ing order (Jerry the mouse or Bugs Bun- ter, but the “alter ego of the little white One+One Filmmakers Journal

boy”.xx Throughout the film Remus’ sto- for messing around in other people’s and needs. ries teach him seeds of wisdom. In the business; something the Favers broth- She is un- first, Brer Rabbit decides to run away ers themselves need to learn. Brer Rabbit like her moth- and leave his troubles behind. However, now in the clutches of Brer Bear and Brer er, who, whilst he runs straight into Brer Fox’s trap. As Fox manages to escape by his master- a plantation he has very little strength he can only es- ful use of reverse psychology: “Knock owner, seems cape by using his my head clean off, far more tol- head. He does this hang me, skin me” erant, em- by tricking Brer “ It is hard not to notice the Brer Rabbit says pathetic and Bear to take his sadism that underpins the “but whatever you understand- place. The mes- tale, but the children only do, please don’t ing of others. sage, for Johnny, throw me in that Grandma’s is that he can’t run see love ” briar patch.”(My experiences away from his trou- abbreviation) Brer as a slave- bles. Johnny decides not to run away. Fox falls into his trap and flings the bun- owner seem Remus tells him another story for deal- ny into the thistles and thorns, and Brer Miss Sally in Song of the South to have helped ing with bullies. Johnny is being bullied Rabbit, born and bred in a briar patch, her acquire tolerance, empathy and un- by the Favers brothers, Jack and Joe. makes his escape. The story serves to says Johnny. “Me too” says Ginny and so derstanding. In contrast, Miss Sally, the The Favers are a poor white family that teach Johnny a technique to conquer they set out on finding their own laughing city dweller, is cold, lacking in empathy work on the plantation. It becomes clear bullies. As Johnny and Toby are walk- place. If Harris transformed these stories and disapproving. She is immediately that Jack and Joe, and not the white ing home they meet the Favers Broth- from tales of hate to tales of love, Disney opposed to letting her son have a dog slave masters, are the human equivalent ers, who tell Johnny that they will tell his follows suit transforming the tales, add- and when the Favers Brothers finally tell of Brer Fox and Brer Bear. Johnny be- mother about the dog that he is secretly ing cutesy moralism in excess. her that Uncle Remus is keeping it in his friends the brothers’ younger sister, Gin- keeping in Remus’ cabin. He replies “go The moral lesson of the film, however, cabin, she tells the children that “Uncle ny, who gives Johnny the runt from their ahead, tell Aunt Tempy, tell Grandma, you is not aimed at Johnny, but his mother. Remus will get you your dog back to new litter of puppies. As Johnny isn’t can even tell my mum, but whatever you Absorbed in her own marital worries and you.” If Remus was a freeman he would allowed a puppy of his own he secretly do don’t tell your mum.” concerned for her son, she seems unable be within his rights to keep the dog, but leaves it with Uncle Remus in his cabin, On another occasion, after being at- to genuinely see his own needs. She tells Miss Sally doesn’t see him that way and but the Favers brothers are furious. They tacked by the Favers Brothers, Uncle her son that he must neither does Remus want it back. Remus’ tale of the Tar Baby Remus tells Johnny and Ginny a tale to prepare for a visit himself. He pas- serves to teach Johnny methods to deal cheer them up. In this story, Brer Rabbit from his grandmoth- “ Uncle Remus, as sively complies with with such bullies. In this version of the avoids being eaten by telling Brer Fox and er (his father’s moth- complaint and subservient Sally’s orders. She tar baby, Brer Fox and Brer Bear create Brer Bear about his laughing place. Brer er). He responds: as he tries to be, can’t stop is also disapprov- a trap for Brer Rabbit in the form of a doll Bear is intrigued and refuses to let Brer “But Toby and I were telling stories ing of Remus’ sto- made of tar. The trap is left out for Brer Fox cook the rabbit until he has seen this going frog hunt- ” ries and says that Rabbit, and Brer Fox and Brer Bear lie laughing place. Brer Rabbit leads them to ing.” She reassures “it would be better low. Brer Rabbit comes skipping down a bees hive and watches the two of them him, “That is alright Darling, you can go for [Johnny] not to hear that story for a the road and when the Tar Baby fails to being stung. When Brer Bear says “You another day.” One the one hand she is while.” With Remus no longer able to tell respond to his “how do you do?” Brer said this was a laughing place and I ain’t dismissive, failing to attend to her son’s stories and having lost his dog, Johnny Rabbit picks a fight and soon finds him- laughing,” Brer Rabbit replies, “I didn’t concern. On the other hand, she wraps begins to feel the joy and support that self covered in tar. Bernard Wolf provides said it was your laughing place. I said it her disregard in reassuring tones and lov- was helping him through a family crisis an interesting racial reading of this story. was my laughing place, Brer Bear.” ing motherly charms. She enacts the role slip away. Tar for him is blackness and “tar, black- It is hard not to notice the sadism that of what she believes a “proper mother” Johnny’s empathetic grandmother ness, by its very yielding, traps.”xxi But in underpins the tale, but the children only should be, but in doing so she often fails sees what Miss Sally misses. Without 66 67 the Disney film, tar is simply a metaphor see love. “I wish I had a laughing place,” to attend to what her son really wants Remus and his stories, the child would One+One Filmmakers Journal

if slavish and complaint in response, Re- was dressed in cloth- mus does what only a freeman can do: ing that expressed their leave. When Johnny finds out, he chases cultural and regional dif- after Remus. His mother’s attempt to ferences and sang their protect him leads to the complete oppo- song in their own lan- site and Johnny, distraught and upset, guage. At the end of the takes a short cut through a dangerous ride the children of the field only to be mauled by a bull. world came together to That night the plantation is filled with sing the song in unison. sadness and mourning. The black serv- Walt Disney has of- ants sing and pray outside the planta- ten been described as tion house. Mr. John has returned, but both a racist and a mul- the child is not responding. Mr John ticulturalist.xxiii The two and Miss Sally wait and worry. Johnny elements would appear calls out for Uncle Remus in his sleep. to contradict. However, His Grandmother calls Remus in and he what if Disney’s rac- Walt Disney begins telling stories. Hearing the story, ism were not a product Johnny wakes, to find his father there of racial hatred or ma- be absolutely desolate.” She says, “He too: “Daddy!” The family appear unit- liciousness, but inher- needs something.” Heeding her mother’s ed again and Miss Sally seems to have ent in the company’s advice, Miss Sally decides to arrange a changed her heart. Drawing from Uncle multiculturalism itself? party. The party, however, will be a segre- Remus, she tells her son “we will have Disney films seem to gated party with no black (Toby) or poor the laughinous place in the whole world.” be swamped in a mul- (Ginny) children present. When Johnny Miss Sally learns to lighten up and give ticulturalist denial. The asks if he can invite Ginny, Miss Sally her son fun on his own terms. With the multiculturalism of It’s a seems to launch into another of her re- family unit restored, Remus leaves telling Small World is blind to assuring dismissals: “Well there will be us that “things are looking mighty satis- economic inequality, so- plenty of other girls and boys...” But her factional.” cial injustice and ideo- mother finishes her sentence “...that one In the final scene, Johnny has recov- logical differences. The more won’t make any difference.” Unlike ered and is running and singing hand in Stills from Coonskin theme park ride offers her daughter, Grandma seems to under- hand with Toby and Ginny. “Zip-a-dee- black) to dance together, drifting a utopia, positing a world full of diversity stand that Johnny needs his friends, even doo-dah” they sing as Uncle Remus away from civilization (the plantation) and harmony, whilst ignoring tensions if they are from a different economic and watches on. Suddenly Brer Rabbit ap- into the natural world (beyond Re- and struggles in the real world. Utopian social class. pears and greets them. Before long, a mus’s cabin).xxii dreams and ideals can be valuable and Uncle Remus, as complaint and sub- whole host of cartoon animals and even inspiring, but are easily corrupted when servient as he tries to be, can’t stop tell- Johnny’s dog is running with them as Douglas Brode sees in Song of the they are celebrated at the expense of facing stories. When Miss Sally finds out she they dance up the hill. South a multiculturalist dream grounded ing social and economic injustice. When is very upset. Failing to see that the son’s Douglas Brode draws our attention to in a romantic admiration of nature. In this used at the expense of fighting injustice, erratic behaviour may be a consequence the multiculturalist connotations of the respect, the ending of Song of the South such utopian ideas often place a halo of the fragile family life, she blames Re- scene. parallels Disney’s 1964 theme-park ride over existing inequalities. This is why mus and tells him “From now on I want to It’s a Small World, which presented na- Brode’s defence of Song of the South is you to stay away from Johnny, you under- In Song’s final shot, total integra- tionalities from around the world living in itself problematic. stand? Completely away.” Good subser- tion is achieved. A recovered Johnny harmony. The ride celebrated diversity by vient Remus understands and he com- (privileged white) takes the hands of showing children of every nation, as pup- Never during the film does Toby’s 68 69 plies without answering back. But even Ginny (poor white) and Toby (poor pets, singing the same song. Each child blackness become an issue, and at no One+One Filmmakers Journal

point is the issue of away. The scene race raised among is directly followed adults. Johnny’s by a profile view of grandmother (Lu- Scatman Crothers cille Watson), liv- from the left side of ing closer to nature the screen against a than her Atlanta- yellow background. bound daughter, Crothers is singing: treats Remus as “I’m the Minstrel an old friend rather Man/I’m the Clean- than a former slave. ing Man/I’m the Po’ xxiv man/I’m the shoe shine man/I’m the It is hard not to Nigger Man, Watch think of Oscar Wil- me dance.” This de’s remark that “the blues song functions worst slave-owners as a parody of the were those who were Remus character: the Stills from Coonskin kind to their slaves, Negro who is there to and so prevented the serve, perform and horror of the system being realised by a counter-Disneyan. If the point of Disney instead on the fables. Coonskin, in con- is too poor to refuse. The song could be those who suffered from it, and under- is to deny racial and political wounds, trast, attempts to draw out the subversive seen to re-vision “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” stood by those who contemplated it.”xxv the point of Bakshi is to lay them bare. potential of the original stories, whilst si- by presenting the things the song implic- Far from presenting multicultural equality, Bakshi is not asking us to deny equality multaneously forcing us to address the itly denies. This Remus-like character is Song of the South uses multicultural mo- in the name of a good ol’ multiculturalist racism that has circulated them. By fo- undeniably struggling (“I’ve been waiting tifs to glorify the inequalities of plantation sing along; instead Bakshi asks deep and cusing on the power dynamic implicit in on the welfare line, the employment line, life. The final sequence, where the chil- soul-searching questions. In this respect, the early tales Coonskin is not attempt- the gas line, since 9, now I’m waiting on dren skip away from the plantation, does Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin should be read ing to tone down the racial controversies the pawn shop line”) and yet also deter- not signal an emancipated future, but, as as a response to Disney’s Song of the of Song of the South, but amp them up. mined, angry and perseverant (“walk on Brode points out, the embrace of nature. South. Like Song of the South, Coonskin Coonskin doesn’t attempt to cleanse Dis- Niggers, walk on”). Just as Grandma, the former slave-owner tells the stories of Brother Rabbit through ney of its bigotry, but instead to address The song and the animated sequence demonstrates that tolerance and racial slapstick animation, framing it with live- what Disney denial helps us ignore. that precedes it display a darker side of unity emanate from the plantation and action. Coonskin is a film that integrates The film opens with footage of a real reality with an abrasive attitude that is not the city, the children find magic, not in Blaxploitation cinema, the Brer Rabbit life street, possibly somewhere in Har- controversial and blunt. In this respect it social justice, but the natural world. The tales and Bakshi’s own animated politi- lem. On this street stand two black Amer- follows in the footsteps of 70s Blaxploita- horizon to which the children and animals cally satirical slapstick that he developed ican male cartoon characters dressed in tion films. If Remus is (partially) retained, skip towards is not, therefore, the horizon in Fritz the Cat (1972) and Human Traf- contemporary (1970s) clothes. One of he is no longer the overall framing de- of a full and genuine racial emancipa- fic (1973). We could argue that Coonskin the characters tells us, “Now I am going vice. In the film, the Brer Rabbit stories tion, but mere diversity; a diversity that “politically corrects” Song of the South to give you a little example. I heard that are framed by a live-action Blaxploitation ignores questions of equality and well- by removing Uncle Remus and by call- 150 of you white folks committed suicide film. Where Song of the South focused being; a diversity grounded in denial. ing Brer Rabbit by his full name: Brother by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, on a young white boy visiting his Grand- Rabbit. But Coonskin is far removed from and out of those 150 there was only two mother’s plantation and listening to Un- Brother Rabbit Strikes Back politically safe retellings, which, like The that were Niggers and one of them was cle Remus’ stories, in Coonskin the Brer Adventures of Brer Rabbit, removes Re- pushed.” Rabbit tales are told against the backdrop 70 71 I would like to think of Ralph Bakshi as mus and his young auditor and focuses They laugh as they turn and walk of a prison-break. Preacherman (Charles One+One Filmmakers Journal

Still from Coonskin Still from Coonskin

Gordone) and Sampson (Barry White) at- In this respect the film, like other Blax- the ultimate trickster, Brother Rabbit. ism. It is almost as if, in order to confront tempt to break their partner, Randy (Phil- ploitation films, is presented from the The animated sections of the film tell us with the reality Disney films deny, Bak- ip Michael Thomas), out of prison. Randy trickster’s point of view. Blaxploitation the story of Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear shi has to go further. Unlike the Disney hides by the prison wall ready to make persistently addressed issues of ghet- and Preacher Fox in Bakshi’s own unique film,Coonskin is intent on making us face his escape. He is accompanied by Pappy toised black communities and the crime, animated style. If Disney’s Brer Rabbit racist prejudices and assumptions. If in (Scatman Crothers), an older prisoner, gangs and drugs that exist in them; Sweet had appeared cute and loveable, Bak- Disney films racial caricatures can easily who has come along for the ride. “This Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), shi’s characters are exaggerative, crude pass us by, Bakshi’s films make us all too nigger hasn’t been this side of the wall for Superfly (1972), Coffy (1973). These films and sometimes grotesque. Likewise, the aware. 100 years” he says, “and what the fuck tended to focus on the underdogs, who slapstick is bloody, violence and graphic. The animation follows Brother Rab- makes you think I ain’t enjoying myself were tricksters, setting traps in order to Disney films have often been criticised for bit and his associates Brother Bear and being here.” take vengeance, escape trouble or get their use of racial caricature. Maybe one Brother Fox. In financial desperation they The two of them wait by the wall, but what they want. In these films we meet of the most famous is the black crows in have had to sale their house to a city it isn’t long until Paps is telling a story. characters like Sweetback, who, kills two Dumbo (1941), who appear with African- slicker, who has turned it into a pleasure “Hey Man, I just remember, I used to corrupt cops and goes on the run, lay- American accents and mannerisms. If house. Rabbit, Fox and Bear return to the know three guys, just like you and your ing traps for those following him; Priest this causes some offence, it seems not house to pick up their money from the friends...” (Superfly), a cocaine dealer who tricks to be the overriding concern for Ralph city slicker. The white sheriff that runs the Unlike the Disney and Harris versions, police and criminals to make and keep Bakshi, who replicates the motif in Fritz town is also heading in the same direc- where the stories are being told to white his money; Coffy, a nurse, who, after her the Cat. In fact, on the surface Bakshi’s tion. “All this niggers’ town has to offer is children on a plantation, in this film the sister is hospitalised due to a drugs over- animations often appear more exagger- some cheap booze and some women,” stories are told from a black person to dose, decides to enact justice against the ated, more grotesque, and potentially he says as he heads for the pleasure a black person. Pappy, unlike Remus, is entire drug cartel by playing roles (using more offensive. What is whimsical and house. However, finding his daughter not a cheery Uncle Tom with a happy dis- her sexuality and her cunning) to switch comical caricature in Disney, becomes a working there, he draws a gun, only to position. He is blunt, abrupt and to the drug stashes and turn criminals against mixture of exaggerative satire, surrealist receive a knife in his chest from Brother 72 73 point. each other. Each character is not unlike political commentary and grotesque real- Rabbit. One+One Filmmakers Journal

Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear and he is “tired of trying to segregate, inte- escape. Brother Rabbit is suc- Preacher Fox run to the car. The trio need grate and masturbate anymore.” It is in cessful and takes over Harlem. to leave town, and the obvious place to this respect that neither Brother Rabbit head to is Harlem. When they arrive in nor Black Jesus is the genuine politically Harlem, it is marred with poverty: Old subversive tricksters. Their tricks are Blaxploitation and man bones hunts through the trash, pick- there to serve their self-interest. the Trickster ing out things that whites have thrown It is not long before Black Jesus out; Perl tells the story of her failed re- catches up with Brother Rabbit. Using Whilst Coonskin breaks with lationship with Malcolm the cockroach the classic Brer Rabbit-reverse psychol- the problematic Remus charac- who left her because “It’s always cold ogy technique (“Please don’t throw me ter, the Rabbit brings issues of here and a few scraps found at your table out that window ledge...”), Brother Rabbit his own. The trickster, whilst no ain’t as good as the garbage down town. escapes, then returns with Brother Bear subservient, does not necessar- And there ain’t no fear of the whole damn and shoots Black Jesus dead. With Black ily represent a genuine opposi- building falling down on our heads or Jesus gone, Brother Rabbit attempts to tion to oppression. In Coonskin junkies crushing you under foot.” Mean- take over the racket in Harlem. He tells the poverty of Harlem manifests, while, in a more symbolic vain, a white the gangster community “Black racket not in the genuine attempt to Miss America, naked, but wrapped in the money stays in Harlem. No more Ma- achieve justice and equality, but American flag, has blacks killed for mak- fia, Police, Mayors, Senators, Judges or in the use of revolutionary ideas ing sexual advances towards her. The vi- Presidents.” It’s our money up here let’s by scam artists, the desire to in- sion of America is one of poverty, injus- keep it.” He, however, has two barriers discriminately kill whites, black tice and exploitation dished out against that he must first overcome before he can crime against the black com- America’s social and economic outcasts. run the rackets in Harlem. The first is a munity, the black middle-class’ The trio arrive in Harlem and meet an- cop called Mannigan, the second is the rejection of the black underclass other problem: The black Jesus! Black Mafia. Brother Rabbit must prove himself. and bigoted corrupt white cops Jesus is part revolutionary, part religious who feed off of injustice. It is leader and part nightclub sensation. Black Mannigan is a corrupt and racist cop in this setting that the trickster Jesus, we are told, gives people the pow- who takes a cut of the drugs and pros- emerges, not as an emancipator, er to kill whites. The indiscriminate hatred titution services in Harlem. Whilst he drugged up. Finding his colleges dead he but as a self-interested individual who of whites continually rears throughout the makes money off of crime in the black shoots into the air fanatically. The police feeds off of tensions for their own ends. film. Preacher Fox, at one point tells us community, he has very little respect for surround him and when he (albeit unin- The film demonstrates how poverty and that “Killing crackers, I guess that is okay this community. “Yeah I don’t wash when tentionally) shoots at them. They shoot oppression creates, not the “emancipat- any day.” At another point, the black Je- I go up town that’s for sure,” he says. him dead. ed” and “empowered” heroes of Disney sus shoots images of John Wayne, Elvis “Niggers ain’t worth washing fa’.” movies, but instead social divides, hatred Presley and Richard Nixon. Black Jesus, He has two sidekicks, one of whom His second target is the Mafia which and character flaws born out of a need however, is not a real revolutionary. His is black, but is wealthy and shares equal is ran by the Godfather, a grotesque, de- for survival. Thus, whilst vehemently at- aim is purely to make money. Black Je- disdain for niggers: “Hay you should have glamorised version of Marlon Brando’s tacking racism, Bakshi is simultaneously sus and his “revolutionaries” do not of- seen this place I bought in Levittown. character. The Mafia family, however, critiquing the tensions and non-revolu- fer a genuine emancipatory revolution, There isn’t a nigger for forty miles” he have already heard of Brother Rabbit and tionary power struggles that emerge in but manipulate racial tensions and hatred says. When the three of them turn up in attempt to use Preacher Fox and Brother ghettoised life. In this context, Coonskin to make a quick buck. The trio are not Harlem they find that their cut is no long- Bear to get to him. They set up a box- attempts to address the manner in which seduced. They see through Black Jesus’ er there. The rabbit has already taken it. ing match they aim to capture the rabbit, radical and revolutionary politics can be pseudo-revolutionary façade and start Searching out the Rabbit, Mannigan finds but brother Rabbit is ahead of them and appropriated and misused. This theme, making trouble for him. But this doesn’t himself alone in a club with a stripper. It creates a tar baby version of himself. The of course, runs throughout Blaxploitation mean that the trio are real revolutionaries. is a trap! Before he has time to realise he Mafia fall for his trap and each find them- itself. In The Black Godfather, the black 74 75 Brother Rabbit tells his accomplices that finds himself dragged up, blacked up and selves stuck in the tar baby trap unable to Godfather (J.J.) wants Tony, the white One+One Filmmakers Journal

Mafia boss, out of his area. However, he This claim mirrors Diablo’s belief that it cute family fun, diversity and needs the support of the “revolutionar- doesn’t matter what colour the slave empowerment. Like many of ies” to do this and meets with Diablo, a master is. Money might not care what the films lumped into the cat- political militant, to garner support. The colour the hand that spends it is, but nor egory of trash and exploitation, conversation between them is interesting does it care who it crushes and who it Coonskin is not so much pure as it demonstrates the tensions between saves. Money does not discriminate, it exploitation, but attempts to the revolutionary left and the emerging oppresses indiscriminately. Tricksters, transcend it; to use exploitation bourgeois libertarianism. Diablo is not at their worst, are simply yet another op- tropes to comment on human- convinced. “The essence of our struggle pressor, out to use the situation to their ity, poverty and racism. What is independence” he tells J.J. “We don’t advantage. makes trash and exploitation like slave master no matter what colour Tricksters, at their best, genuinely subgenres exciting are that they they are.” vert, challenge and confront. They make often do precisely this. The Diablo’s idealism only seems to make genuine emancipation possible or they, merging, with carvinalesque J.J. more impassioned. “Look I’m not go- at least, help us perceive the brutality showmanship, of controversy, ing to justify corruption to you.” He says and injustice in the world. In this respect, brutality and bad taste may, “It’s always been here and it always will Bakshi himself is a trickster. Bakshi ap- at times, manifest as a kind of be. What I am rapping to you about is propriates racist iconography and uses reactionary sideshow distrac- power baby. I know what I am. And right it to provoke and confront difficult issues tion. However, at its best, it or wrong people look up to me because surrounding racism. He turns Disney on allows us to address questions they think I am a success. I’ve got what its head, revealing what was essentially and issues in a manner that is they’ve always wanted: money! Without it denied. In this respect, Bakshi stands far more honest than the Disn- you’re nothing. Money buys dignity, pov- with the best of Blaxploitation. Unlike eyland conglomeration of fam- erty is a crime. Nobody asked you where Disney films, Blaxploitation doesn’t start ily fun, multiculturalist diversity you got your dollar; they ask you do you with the façade of equality in an unequal and reactionary conservatism. have it. That idealistic shit don’t pay your world. The films are often violent, bold In this respect, the history of rent.” It is interesting to note how J.J.’s and confrontational. For example, Sweet- trash and exploitation cinema politics have more in common with the back opens with the quote “Sire, these Malxom X could be described as trickster libertarianism of Ayn Rand, Margaret lines are not a homage to brutality that cinema. Trickster cinema mirrors that of Thatcher and Ronald Reagan than the the artist has invented, but a hymn to re- and challenging authority, than simply the trickster character themselves; at its civil rights movements. In this sense, the ality” and follows this with “This Film is violence for thrills. It is in this respect that worst it is a reactionary cinema, which trickster is not so much a militant tacti- dedicated to all the brothers and sisters Bakshi seems somewhat critical of Blax- uses shock and sensationalism to make cally overcoming his master in the fight who have had enough of the Man.” This ploitation and claims that he wasn’t actu- a quick buck, but at its best it is radical for independence, justice and equality, is Blaxploitation at its best: On the one ally making a Blaxploitation film at all. and subversive. In contrast, the history but the venture capitalist who buys dig- hand, its demand is not brutality for its of Disney films could be described as a nity via money. J.J.’s sentiments are ech- own sake, but reality. On the other hand So the truth of the matter is that tradition of Remusification. In the hands oed in the civil rights politician from Cof- it calls for a united opposition to authority I used the Blaxploitation films. I of the Disney corporation a tale of mass fy, who turns out to be involved because and oppression (the Man). In this respect wasn’t making fun of the Blaxploi- genocide becomes a tale of interracial of a collaboration with corrupt police and it transcends the mere exploitation flick, tation films so much as I was using love (Pocahontas, 1995), a Dickens tale of the fact that he is taking his cut of the which simply uses shock, horror, sex, it to sell my political film.xxvi child poverty and exploitation becomes drug racket. violence and gore to bring the audience a tale of cute cats and dogs and how When asked where his alliances lay in. It produces, instead, a commentary on In Bakshi’s mind the film is a political rich and poor can unite to fight corrupt he tells the cops “For Christ sake, black, the world. satire. In this respect Bakshi attempts to capitalists (Oliver & Company, 1988) and brown or yellow, I’m in it for the green, Bakshi wanted to create something confront us with the racism that under- a tale set on a plantation can become a the green buck.” His words suggest that beyond a mere exploitation, something scores everyday life and which is cov- tale of multicultural harmony (Song of the 76 77 money, to a large extent, is colour-blind. that had more to do with facing reality ered over in a cinema obsessed with South). One+One Filmmakers Journal

Brer Rabbit in the cutesy façade of mul- ix. Wolfe, “Uncle Remus & the Malevolent lah, David Bromwich and Conor Cruse O’Brian (New ticultural togetherness, but it is a trap. Rabbit” p531 Haven, Yale University Press. 2002) p.189 The cunning fox plaster its multicultural x. Maurice Rapf, for example, proposed xvii. ibid glee to hide his bigotry beneath. Trick- something different. He tells us, “My script was ter- xviii. Brode, Multiculturalism and the Mouse. ster cinema, at its best, works to expose rible, I’ve looked at it since. The script is just as racist p.57 this. It serves to break through the liberal/ as the film, although there is a lot that is different. xix. See Brode, Multiculturalism and the Disney façade and make radical, honest, Disney didn’t make it clear that the film wasn’t about Mouse. p.59 and maybe emancipatory subversion, slavery and that it was set during Reconstruction. In xx. Korkis, Who is afraid of Song of the possible. my script, I had the white family poverty-stricken. And South. p. 20 that’s a lot different from what you see on the screen. xxi. Wolfe, “Uncle Remus & the Malevolent i. Joel Chandler Harris, New Stories of the Their house in the film is immaculate, very white -it’s Rabbit” p536. Old Platation (Sourced at http://archive.org/stream/ a white mansion on a plantation. The women wear xxii. Brode, Multiculturalism and the Mouse. toldbyuncleremus00harr/toldbyuncleremus00harr_ different dresses every time you look at them. I in- p.61 djvu.txt) dicated in my script very clearly that they should be xxiii. The wikipedia page notes accusations ii. Maurice Rapf was a screenplay writer and threadbare because they lost the war, also the whole of anti-Semitism and racism levelled at Disney and communist, who was blacklisted in the McCarthy era. reason for the father leaving the kid in the first place Disney films, and mentions specifically “Mickey’s Walt Disney asked Rapf to help rewrite the original is very different in the final script from mine. In mine Mellerdrammer, in which Mickey Mouse dresses in script of Songs of the South which Walt Disney, him- he leaves because they haven’t got enough money blackface; the “black” bird in the short Who Killed self, believed to be potentially anti-black. According to pay the people who are working there. He goes to Cock Robbin; Sunflower, the half donkey/half black to Rapf, Disney hired him because he was “against Atlanta to get some money so he can pay the blacks centaurette with a watermelon in Fantasia; the fea- ‘Uncle Tomism’” and “a radical.” Unfortunately Rapf who work on the farm. That’s different. ture film Song of the South; the Indians in Peter Pan; was unable to exert a positive effect on the script and xi. He even says [in Raph’s script], “We gotta and the crows in Dumbo.” It also, however, goes on was fired as a result of differences with the original pay these people. They’re not slaves.” So when Re- to quote Neil Gambler saying “‘Walt Disney was no writer. For more on the controversies which framed mus is told he can’t read anymore stories to the boy. racist,[...] He never, either publicly or privately, made the making of Song of the South see Kim Korkis, Who He picks up his things. He’s mad. He is not going to disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white is afraid of Song of the South and other Forbidden get the father, he’s leaving. He says, “I’m a freeman; I superiority. Like most white Americans of his gen- Disney Stories. (Theme Park Press: Florida. 2012.) don’t have to take this.” (Kim Korkis, Who is afraid of eration, however, he was racially insensitive.’” see iii. Maurice Rapf quoted in Kim Korkis, Who Song of the South and other Forbidden Disney Sto- Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_ Top: Still from Oliver & Company is afraid of Song of the South and other Forbidden ries. p.19-20) Disney#cite_ref-122 (sourced 05/10/2013) Above: Still from Pocahontas Disney Stories. (Theme Park Press: Florida. 2012.) xii. Frederick Douglas quoted in Kim Korkis, xxiv. Brode, Multiculturalism and the Mouse. p.20 Who is afraid of Song of the South. p.48. See Brad- p.59 Malcolm X, with allusions to Brer Rab- iv. Ralph Bakshi interviewed in Reflections on ley Tuck, Just a spoonful of sugar... The Dialectics xxv. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under bit, tells us that the white conservatives Blaxploitation: Actors and Directors Speak edited by of Work and Play in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins Socialism, http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar- don’t hide their racism. “They are like David Walker, Andrew J. Rausch and Chris Watson (One+One Filmmakers Journal. Issue 6. 01/04/2011) chive/wilde-oscar/soul-man/ wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl (Maryland: Scarecrow Press Inc. 2009) p.2 xiii. Douglas Brode, Multiculturalism and the xxvi. Bakshi Interviewed in Reflections on that keeps the Negro always aware of v. Bernard Wolfe, “Uncle Remus & the Malev- Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment. (Aus- Blaxploitation p.3 where he stands with them. But the white olent Rabbit” in Mother Wit From the Laughing Barrel: tin: University of Texas Press. 2005) p.54-55 xxvii. Malcolm X, “White Liberals” Track 9 liberals are foxes, who also show their Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folk- xiv. Jean Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse of on Malcolm X: The Best of His Speeches (Audio). teeth to the Negro but pretend that they lore. Edited by Alan Dundes. (University of Mississipi. the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Man- (Stardust Records 2007) p.247 are smiling. The white liberals are more 1973/1981) p. 536 kind. (Kindle) Location135 dangerous than the conservatives; they vi. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask. xv. Rousseau, A Discourse of the Origin and lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs (London: Pluto Press. 2008) p.134 Foundation of Inequality Location 139 from the growling wolf, he flees into the vii. Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus, his xvi. Jean Jacques Rousseau, “The Social open jaws of the ‘smiling’ fox.” Disney Songs and his Sayings. (Kindle Books) Location 34 Contract” in The Social Contract and First and Sec- 78 79 films are like smiling foxes, who frame viii. Ibid Location 120 ond Discourses. Edited by Gita May, Robert N. Bel- Filmmakers Journal

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Articles can be theoretical or practical; however, we are not 5 stars reviews based. We want to encourage a thorough and critical analysis of filmmaking and its social and cultural effects and implications. Contributors should not write from a consumer perspective, or merely a theorist. All articles should be influenced by the act of filmmaking to a greater or lesser extent. We encourage a wide variety of articles whether autobiographical, journalistic, historical, philosophical, socio- political or whether they are manifestos, letters, diaries, sketchbooks or interviews. However the perspective of the filmmaker or the critical re-invention of film, as a theme, is of central importance.

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