Jackie Brown and the Blaxploitation Revival

Remembering Pam Grier, again! 

Pam Grier, this legendary name brings an image to mind instantly. Jive-talkin' dope pushers, cat-fighting go-go dancers and, of course, a kickass afro woman who can hide anything from razor blades to a small handgun. And she's been thrust back (periodically) into the mainstream with a vengeance. Her last big comeback vehicle was the 1997 blaxploitation themed crime thriller - Jackie Brown where she plays a struggling midddle-aged flight attendant caught up in a dirty money crime tangle. Jackie Brown incidentally was the third full-length feature film from Quentin Tarantino, Hollywood's favorite former video store clerk. 

Amidst a growing anti-Tarantino backlash, the director hoped to quiet critics with Jackie Brown, his adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 1992 novel, Rum Punch. The unlikely star of Jackie Brown was the then-48-year-old Grier, best known for Coffy (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975) and a host of other AIP classics. The question was whether Tarantino's latest disco-era muse will be able to capitalize on the same magic touch that introduced Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs, 1992) to a new generation of film buffs and made John Travolta  (Pulp Fiction, 1994) filmdom's $20 million man. Fortunately, Jackie Brown lived up to the expectations grossing $74.7 million, against a budget of $12 million and earning Pam Grier several awards and nominations including a Best Actress at the Golden Globe. Her co-stars Robert Forster and Samuel L Jackson also benefited with Forster getting an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and Jackson winning a Silver Bear Best Actor award at the 1998 Berlin International Film Festival where the movie was also nominated for the Best Film Golden Bear.

Not every '70s comeback case is as lucky. Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan saw his US career finally take off with Rumble in the Bronx (1995), but subsequent films, merely re-releases of older Hong Kong films, didn't catch fire at the box office. It was only when he started making US features, like the 1998 action comedy Rush Hour with Chris Tucker, that he was able to maintain his buzz in this country. 

The difference between them may be this. The genre of film that Grier is best known for is (still) undergoing something of a revival. From the resurrected career of Rudy Ray "Dolomite" Moore to the remake of Shaft (1971), Blaxploitation icons are everywhere. Why have these films, and the people behind them, become such critical darlings? 

What many in the mainstream press are finally picking up on has been known to film scholars and students for at least the last decade. These films are among the most important and best documented examples of ethnographic filmmaking available. They were, for the most part, produced by black filmmakers, with black casts and crews, for a black audience, much like early "race" films of the teens and twenties that have become required viewing in film history classes. 

As such, they present a view of 1970s America from a black, urban perspective, something missing from even the best intentioned, Norman Jewison directed mystery drama  In the Heat of the Night (1967) or Stanley Kramer's comedy drama Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - both starring Sidney Poitier or other racially tinged, socially conscious films of the previous decade. 

It was almost a comically distorted view to be sure, a world of pimps in velvet suits and kung-fu fighting call girls, but it addressed issues like social and economic injustice from both within and without the community. "The Man," specifically the crooked white cop or politician, was the least of the problems facing those inhabiting the world of Blaxploitation features. More often than not, much as it might hurt some egos, "whitey" was only a passing presence in the hood, a cop on the take or a mafia figure out for a cut of the action, not a central part of urban inner-city life. 

Ironically, most of the major blaxploitation films people remember today were second generation films with a Hollywood pedigree. Films like Shaft and even Pam Grier's biggest hits were signaling the death of the independent black cinema of the '70s through assimilation. With Jackie Brown, and later, the new Shaft (2000), or Robert Downey Jr's risky role in Tropic Thunder (2008), filmmakers have been hopping on the same bandwagon, some would say honoring, others would say harvesting, the morally ambiguous feel and flavor of this genre. The most notable examples have been Pootie Tang (2001), the very funny Undercover Brother (2002) starring Eddie Griffin and Black Dynamite (2009) starring Michael Jai White besides the more recent Taraji P Henson and Danny Glover starrer Proud Mary (2018) and Superfly (2018)

With a big budget and even bigger stars, it may be, as fellow pop culture connoisseur (and, some would say, washed-up hack) Bono would say, "even better than the real thing". Long live the Blaxploitation revival! 

P.S. Remember to checkout Brown Sugar, a reliable Netflix-style VOD streaming service that claims to offer the “biggest collection of the baddest movies” in the Blaxploitation genre on the internet. Pam Grier, now 69 is coincidentally the Ambassador of the Brown Sugar Network! 

This post originally appeared in the Axiom magazine. It's been updated and revised to make it more relevant to current audiences.