It has not been a great last week for Black women.
They are just about the only voting demographic who did not show significant support for Donald Trump. The others all had their reasons, I suppose. I hope we don't have to examine those reasons through the ashes of a destroyed country. (Really, I'm still fine. In fact, I'm only regularly mentally engaging with the election whenever I sit down to write a new blog post.)
Black women? They supported Kamala Harris, perhaps because she was one of their number. But perhaps also because they can see things clearly in a way others cannot.
So it felt good to watch a movie in which a Black woman was empowered to seek vengeance against those who would keep her down, of multiple races. She comes up against just about every other demographic -- the demographics that were acknowledged in 1973, I should say -- in Jack Hill's Coffy.
In the big brawl/food fight that is the "funniest" part of this movie, she may even come up against another Black woman, though I think that's more collateral damage than the target of her righteous fury.
In her third movie in this series, Pam Grier stars as the title character, an emergency room nurse who pulls out a metaphorical spray gun of revenge after her younger sister is hospitalized with her heroin addiction. When riding in a car with the only good man we meet in this movie -- her honest police officer friend Carter, played by William Elliott -- she tells Carter that she wants to get everyone involved with delivering drugs into her poor sister's hands. He counters with the fact that it all leads back to "a farmer in Thailand," and when asked whether she was going to get them too, she responds "Well why not?"
And so she decides to go undercover as a prostitute, which will give her access to the various bad men she's picked out as the first recipients of her punishment. Only, it doesn't take very long for someone to get wise to her plans, putting her in harm's way herself.
Harm's way is a familiar place specifically for Pam Grier in blaxploitation movies. Thinking back to the first time I saw her in this series, Foxy Brown, I remembered being taken aback by the extent of the violence and debasement against her before she finally rises up as the victor at the end. In that movie she is actually drugged and raped. In this movie there is an attempting drugging and raping, intended to be followed by her murder, only Coffy had earlier switched out the dope with sugar, as part of the plan to point dealer King George (Robert DoQui) toward the grave even before she might have a chance to do it herself. Without actually being laid low by heroin, she is able to escape, and take out a couple henchmen with her.
But some of what befalls Coffy before that is even more vile, in a sense, and separates this from some of the other blaxploitation movies I've watched that have one foot clearly on the side of trying to be fun. When the gangster Vitroni (Allan Arbus) first has her in his room one night, having been impressed by her fight when taking on the other jealous prostitutes and covering them in salad and other edible artillery, he is rough with her and uses every combination of expletive and N-word to degrade her. She's supposed to be a prostitute, so she realizes this might be part of his kink -- or at least has to be pretend she thinks this as a form of deference to "her client." When he spits in her face, she's not so sure. And I might have audibly gasped.
And then there's the uncomfortable stuff that does not have anything to do with her. Coffy is caught trying to kill Vitroni with a gun she smuggled into the room in a teddy bear, but he was wise to her and had his henchmen lurking. She frames King George for the setup -- which might be a bit of a dick thing to do, if King George weren't a monster -- so the same two henchmen pick up George the next day. He thinks it's a friendly visit, until one of the henchmen pulls a gun and they drive out to a remote location. I could not totally believe what I was about to see unfold: George with a noose around his neck, dragged behind their car, first on foot, then struggling on the ground, then just a lifeless corpse crashing into nearby obstructions as the car fishtails around corners. You get one final shot of what's left, though Hill mercifully does not hold it for more than a second.
Films like Coffy remind us that there was a fierce political agenda behind these movies, in addition to trying to give us entertainment. It's hard to imagine someone putting such imagery up on screen without an understanding of the moral responsibility that accompanies it. An image of a Black drug dealer being steadily murdered through a high-speed lynching, or a Black prostitute being spat on and called the N-word, could never be part of any but the most vile people's definition of fun.
But it must have been a really tough balancing act, because there would be no point to make a blaxploitation film if it couldn't be profitable. You can say that about any film, really. Even in cases where they've wildly miscalculated a film's potential profitability, the desire was there to make money. The genre aspects that fall short of this level of confrontation are there to do that, but these others were not deemed to be deal breakers, and indeed they were not, since Coffy became one of the more iconic blaxploitation films. For Blacks living in America in 1973, there was no such thing as pure escapism, no such thing as joy without nearby pain swooping in to remind them of its presence. These films understand that, and they give audiences an outlet through the ultimate victory of the protagonist over the male forces that try to hold her down and kill her. (May we be so lucky with our outcome over the next four years.)
Coffy does lean into another dominant aspect of the genre, rarely so dominant as it is here. Even with a number of the other movies I've watched involving the sex industry, I've rarely seen such a parade of bare breasts in any movie. Let's go back to that "funniest" scene. When Coffy and a jealous prostitute played Lisa Ferringer, who is King George's girlfriend, have their "catfight" that involves a whole food setup at a party, and eventually involves about five other women, each other woman has her breasts exposed as she's dispatched. It's almost as though it's some sort of finishing move by Coffy, that the ripping of their dress to reveal their ladies is going to render them combat deficient. But we get lots of other topless shots throughout this movie, including Grier several times. Which maybe still surprises me, since once we got into the 1980s, it was always the supporting characters who did nudity in movies, rarely the lead.
Before I get to my summation, there's one other person I'd like to mention here, and that's Sid Haig. He's of course the horror icon who I first met in Rob Zombie's movies (and in Spider Baby: The Maddest Story Ever Told), but this is now also the third blaxploitation movie in which I've watched him this year. In fact, he's appeared in both of Grier's other movies, those being Foxy Brown and Black Mama, White Mama. He's part of a package deal with Jack Hill, it seems, as Hill also directed him in Spider Baby and Foxy Brown. Grier and Haig now become the two most regular participants in this series, appearing in a quarter of the films each -- or what will be a quarter once I've watched my 12th film next month. His comeuppance here is pretty great.
Although this series does not wrap up until next month, I'm going to be ending it on what I think will be a lighter note, so this seems like a good time to be reflective about what I've watched. Especially in light of the fact that a man was just put into power who abuses, disrespects and degrades women and people of color.
Coffy does not distinguish itself from the other movies I've watched this year in terms of the greater story arc and where the film ends up. In fact, it is sort of the prototypical blaxploitation movie, if what I've watched this year gives me any additional expertise to make that sort of assessment. There are prostitutes (real and fake). There are pimps. There are drug dealers. There are corrupt cops. There are mob bosses. And there's a woman -- yes, more of these than not involve a female avenging angel rather than a male -- who is going to rise above it all to set things right, narrowly escaping with her own life, and unable to escape without severe damage. (The image of Coffy at the end, with deep lacerations above her cleavage, is memorable.)
It does, however, distinguish itself in the details. Moments that are a bit more disquieting than they needed to be. A deliberate choice to direct our gaze toward something we can't unsee. A purposeful question about what it means to be watching something like this, even as it points toward a "happy" ending in which the female protagonist has achieved some measure of her ultimate goals. As we see from the image of an exhausted and quite injured Coffy walking down the beach, toward what I hope is a metaphorical sunrise, we know that she wishes she never had to be here in the first place. She'd much rather be saving lives in a hospital room than in the streets.
I'm going to hope that the Black woman in America can rise up today, as she did 50 years ago -- even though we know much of that was fantasy. It's just a shame that Kamala Harris could not quite make it there. It reminds us again of all the malevolence we're up against. It is perhaps too strong to call today's male Trump voters a series of pimps, drug dealers, corrupt cops and mob bosses -- but I wish it were further off the mark than it may be.
I'll wrap up this series in December on what I hope is a lighter note: Shaft in Africa. Which somehow also came out in 1973. (Were there a hundred blaxploitation movies in cinemas in 1973?)
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