Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir

CHAPTER 12: JACKIE BROWN (1997): GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND GENRE

chapter 12 JACKIE BROWN (1997): GENDER, RACE, CLASS, AND GENRE Pam Grier was one of the first important female action heroes. She was able to both exploit the male libido and assert [physical] power over men. darius james, That’s Blaxploitation! I knew I needed a great-looking 44-year-old who looks like she can handle anything but is actually very vulnerable. Sounds like Pam Grier to me. quentin tarantino, quoted in jill gerston, ‘‘Pam Grier Finally Escapes the 1970s,’’ New York Times Neo-noir Jackie Brown (1997) has it all: a gorgeous black femme fatale, a glib black criminal, a host of other peripheral characters, a low-key white male protagonist who never seeks the limelight, a pair of cocky but unsuccessful white cops, and a triple-cross complex enough to rival the plot of classic noir The Big Sleep. Jackie Brown reflects noir influences in the characters, the plot, and the working-class milieu that serves as the film’s setting.1 It also features a densely layered, information-packed mise-en-scène that rewards repeated viewing. A middle-aged, underpaid airline stewardess, Jackie Brown, played stunningly by Pam Grier, winds up backed into a corner by a gun dealer, Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), the police, and an atf (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) officer . Jackie embodies allure, intelligence, vulnerability, and strength. Despite her 143 Figure 12.1. A woman at the wheel: the triumph of a neo-noir femme fatale (Jackie Brown, 1997) considerable powers, she survives the narrative of the film, driving off alone in the final scene to a life of leisure abroad (Figure 12.1). Jackie Brown allows the ‘‘bad guys’’ some time to develop—actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro should not languish in bit parts. The lawmen , like the insurance investigator Riordan in The Killers, are peripheral but necessary to Jackie’s plans, and bumbling as well. Jackie enlists the assistance of Max Cherry (Robert Forster), an homme attrapé working within the capitalist system—but at its fringes—as a bail bondsman. Max instantly falls for Jackie. Like Sam in The Killers, Max functions as kind of a liminal character, moving through the criminal and noncriminal realms with a sort of detachment and acceptance . Jackie, meanwhile, uses her considerable acumen and appeal to double cross both Ordell and the law and drive off with half a million dollars. I like Pam Grier’s portrayal of a middle-aged (and gorgeous) black woman who decides to risk it all for the chance to escape the economic prison of her life. Jackie seems at once fearful (and justifiably so, since she knows Ordell’s propensity for violence) and bold, desperate and methodical. According to Jill Gerston, writing for the New York Times, Pam Grier ‘‘always portrayed strong, resourceful women, no matter how skimpy her clothing or awful her dialogue’’ in the blaxploitation films of the seventies.2 Grier sees the characters she played in those 144 REVISION OF THE REPRESSED IN NEO-NOIR Figure 12.2. Pam Grier shining as Jackie Brown (Jackie Brown, 1997) movies as ‘‘heroines of the women’s movement. . . . They showed women how to be assertive and self-sufficient, not passive victims.’’3 Jackie Brown does much the same thing, but with a late-1990s neo-noir flair that does not insist she kill every man in her path or be killed in the final reel. Some reviewers familiar with Grier’s earlier roles evidently cannot bear to see Grier older, and not scantily clad. Richard Corliss, writing for Time, claims that Grier ‘‘is given little chance to shine; you never even glimpse her magnificent shoulders.’’4 Jackie Brown represents a new type of female character for noir narratives , but Corliss can apparently only envision an old characterization as successful . And he must have dozed off during the powerful scene in which Jackie, in a sleeveless, short red sheath, gives Ordell a verbal dressing-down out on his patio (Figure 12.2). Although I have never invested much theoretical capital in thinking about authorship or intentionality, I persistently read texts as a heterosexual white female spectator, and my own intentions influence those readings. Philip Green, in Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood, identifies himself as a male spectator and points out, quite accurately, that most of the output of Hollywood...