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1 The Pleasure of Looking Black Female Spectatorship and the Supermama Heroine She’s the Godmother . . . The baddest One-Chick Hit-Squad that ever hit the town! —Coffy ad I am the baddest chick. . . . I’ll show you magic. —Lil’ Kim, “Magic Stick” Black Seeing: Going to the Movies While Black “The thing about Cleopatra is that she was sharp, you know?” “I liked the way she looked. And talked. Just the way she spoke was so sophisticated and cool.” “I like her look, the way she carried herself; her whole vibe is sharp to me. And she was a dark-skinned, strong, beautiful woman. That’s what I like.” That from my friend Zina B, a postmodern, Manolo Blahnik–wearing, majestic chocolate Cleopatra diva herself. I was in Atlanta at Zina B’s house with her mother and sister, my sister, and several other women between thirty and forty-five. We had gathered to watch Cleopatra Jones and one of Pam Grier’s films, Coffy. Two of the ladies remembered seeing Cleopatra Jones back in the day, two more had seen it on video, and for the rest it was a first viewing of the film starring a nevertheless familiar screen character. We had just finished watching it—which was an experience of communal bonding and interactive spectating. We laughed in glee when Cleopatra kicked some so-called tough guy’s or chick’s butt, shared and yelled our appreciation at her high chic appearance—“We ain’t mad at you, girl”—and held a running conversation about her animal print fur coats, high-brimmed hats, tailored man suits, and majestic, ebony physique. At the 14 . “baad bitches” and sassy supermamas end of the movie, we were feeling good and talking about how bad Tamara Dobson as Cleopatra was and wondering who in the world could play that role now. Only a Grace Jones–like diva, we agreed, but who? The conversation became a little less enthused as I slipped inCoffy—we’d all seen it at least once. Zina B volunteered that she liked Grier—who was really beautiful—but hated the Coffy-type roles “’cause they were too degrading.” Another one of the sisters who had seen many of the blaxploitation films at the movies as a teen offered that at least Coffy and Foxy won. Back in a 1974 Ms. article, “Keeping the Black Woman in Her Place,” Margaret Sloan, a founder and chairwoman of the National Black Feminist Organization, appreciated the rarity of a fighting black woman action movie character like Coffy, saying she loved her despite the limitations of the narrative.1 In a 1975 interview with Grier, Jamaica Kincaid echoes Sloan, describing Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Sheba Baby (1975) as technically flawed and violent films with one “outstanding redeeming value”: the films offered the rare Hollywood showing of an “independent, resourceful, self-confident, strong, and courageous ” woman. “Above all,” Kincaid stresses, “they are the only films to show us a woman who triumphs!”2 Grier has said that her roles “exemplified women’s independence.” She projected shades of her African American women relatives’ tough attitudes and no-nonsense business personas into her portrayal of Foxy Brown. “I based my screen characters,” Grier reveals, “on my mother, aunts, and grandmothers . They were the kind of women who would fight to their last breath before they’d give their purse to some punk robber.”3 Grier herself came up with a few of the resourceful survival maneuvers in both Coffy and Foxy Brown. For example, in the first film, Coffy escapes a violent encounter with some other women by pulling out a switchblade that she’s hidden in her Afro. In the latter, Foxy uses her car to rescue her brother, and in another scene, the infamous lesbian brawl, Foxy artfully uses a chair to fend off some hostile Amazon-sized women. I queried various black women viewers by distributing a survey that posed several key questions: Did you like these black female heroines and their films (Coffy, Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones)? How would you describe any or all of these films and roles (Grier’s or Dobson’s)? What do you remember about them? What did or do you like about them? Dislike? The most oft-repeated sentiment by the respondents was that they liked that the characters were strong women, but their appreciation of black female heroines who fought back didn’t negate what many black women referred to as the over-sexualization...

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