Proud Mary and the return of the black female… | Little White Lies

Women In Film

Proud Mary and the return of the black female action hero

04 Feb 2018

Words by Richard Watson

A woman in a dark jacket holding a gun, aiming it at the viewer. The image is lit by a warm red light, casting a dramatic shadow on the wall behind her.
A woman in a dark jacket holding a gun, aiming it at the viewer. The image is lit by a warm red light, casting a dramatic shadow on the wall behind her.
Tara­ji P Henson’s gun-tot­ing assas­sin harks back to an era of Lola Colt, Foxy Brown and Cleopa­tra Jones.

With its unwa­ver­ing fetishism of heavy artillery and fit­ted leather jack­ets, Proud Mary, seems cut from the same well-tai­lored cloth as recent stylised action­ers John Wick and Atom­ic Blonde. Yet the film, in which Tara­ji P Hen­son plays an assas­sin, also rais­es a fist in sol­i­dar­i­ty with an ear­li­er, more gar­ish­ly attired group of movie heroes: the action women of the Blax­ploita­tion era.

It’s there in the film’s title, reverse engi­neered to fit a 70s theme song (Tina Turner’s Clear­ance Clear­wa­ter Revival cov­er), and its serif-cen­tric, Ed Ben­guiat-inspired logo. It’s there in the teas­er posters depict­ing Hen­son in gun-tot­ing sil­hou­ette and sport­ing an afro col­lag­ing the film’s action. And it’s there because, well, the arche­type still casts a shape­ly shad­ow over pret­ty much every black female action hero who’s come along, all too infre­quent­ly, since.

But to locate Blax­ploita­tion as the big bang for the black female action hero would be to ignore Lola Falana sad­dling up as a cow­girl slash show­girl in 1967’s Lola Colt (aka Black Tigress). Beyond its star’s con­spic­u­ous musi­cal num­bers, it’s an iden­tik­it spaghet­ti west­ern, yet its servi­tude to the con­ven­tions of a genre dom­i­nat­ed by white male heroes only makes the pres­ence of a sexy, head­strong black female lead (whose race is nev­er nego­ti­at­ed) feel more ahead of its time. In fact, the film didn’t reach US audi­ences until 1976 – a cash-in on both Falana’s cam­paign for Faberge’s Tigress fra­grance and the Blax­ploita­tion boom.

Pam Gri­er set the stan­dard with Coffy and Foxy Brown, both direct­ed by B‑movie mae­stro Jack Hill. By the time Coffy vio­lent­ly dis­patch­es a push­er, just after the Roy Ayres-scored titles, the Gri­er per­sona − car­ing and com­mu­ni­ty-mind­ed but resource­ful and ruth­less − is as plain as the gap­ing shot­gun hole in his head. If Foxy Brown pulling a pis­tol from her afro dis­tils the character’s black-and-proud but down-and-dirty cre­den­tials, then her deliv­ery of a white crime lord’s pick­led gen­i­tals to his part­ner per­fect­ly cap­tures Grier’s hos­tile takeover of the action hero crown from its his­tor­i­cal white male hold­ers. Indeed, the flam­boy­ant fash­ions and hip-shak­ing titles of Foxy Brown, a rebadged sequel to the grit­ti­er Coffy, and the speed­boat chase in She­ba, Baby’ lend her run a Bond-esque feel.

Woman with afro hairstyle wearing a polka dot top and smiling while looking at the camera.

Gri­er had back-up. There’s a touch of 007, too, about Tama­ra Dobson’s Corvette Stingray-dri­ving, sequel-secur­ing super-agent Cleopa­tra Jones, while Black Belt Jones finds Glo­ria Hendry, fresh from the Blax­ploita­tion-bor­row­ing actu­al Bond movie Live and Let Die, tak­ing on both her father’s killers and Jim Kelly’s chau­vin­ism. When Kel­ly sug­gests, Do those dish­es or some­thing,” Hendry shoots the crock­ery before respond­ing, They’re done.” TNT Jack­son and Vel­vet Smooth, star­ring Jean Bell and John­nie Hill respec­tive­ly, bol­stered a move­ment that, like Blax­ploita­tion as a whole, would soon fizzle.

If through­out the 1980s the black female action hero seemed like the stuff of sci-fi, then by 1995 it thank­ful­ly was. Mace, Angela Bassett’s secu­ri­ty expert in Kathryn Bigelow’s dystopic LA tech­no-thriller Strange Days, occu­pies the cen­tre of a Venn dia­gram inter­sect­ing Grier’s Coffy with Sigour­ney Weaver’s Rip­ley (as tooled up by Strange Days pro­duc­er and co-writer James Cameron). It may be the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, but, like her 70s pre­de­ces­sors, Mace fights both cor­rupt white pow­er struc­tures (with clear Rod­ney King echoes, LAPD cops have mur­dered a tal­is­man­ic black rap­per) and cin­e­mat­ic sub­ju­ga­tion: Dri­ving Mr Lenny” she notes as she chauf­feurs her screw-up bud­dy Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) around town.

In 1996, assist­ed by rap­pers Lil Kim (“Rap’s Pam Gri­er”) and, of course, Foxy Brown, the atti­tude and iconog­ra­phy of the Blax­ploita­tion queens returned like Coffy aveng­ing her drug-addict­ed kid sis­ter. Set It Off, in which four African-Amer­i­can women con­spire to rob a bank, stars Queen Lat­i­fah as the Uzi-tot­ing Cleopa­tra Sims, while There­sa Randle’s aspir­ing actor in Spike Lee’s Girl 6 pays homage to Foxy Brown (while dressed as Cleopa­tra Jones) in an empow­er­ing fan­ta­sy sequence.

Gri­er her­self pro­tect­ed the neigh­bour­hood against gang vio­lence in Blax­ploita­tion reunion Orig­i­nal Gangstas and alien inva­sion in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks!, throw­ing in a turn as a gang leader in Escape From LA before tri­umphant­ly head­lin­ing Jack­ie Brown, Quentin Tarantino’s ref­er­ence-rid­dled love let­ter to her peak years per­sona. Taran­ti­no would lat­er nod to one of Grier’s peers with Ver­ni­ta Cop­per­head’ Green, Vivi­ca A Fox’s assas­sin in Kill Bill: Vol 1 and 2, whose alias Jean­nie Bell’ name checks the TNT Jack­son star.

You could argue that this nev­er-end­ing nos­tal­gia is regres­sive − your aver­age Den­zel Wash­ing­ton or Idris Elba action­er doesn’t self-con­scious­ly quote, say, Shaft or Ham­mer − but equal­ly, one can posit that, post-Black Lives Mat­ter and #MeToo, we need a full-scale return to action for these heroes. With a Misha Green-penned Cleopa­tra Jones remake in the works, Hulu devel­op­ing a Foxy Brown TV series star­ring Mea­gan Good and Kylie Bun­bury pick­ing up Tere­sa Graves’ police badge for ABC’s reboot of TV show Get Christie Love!, you had, to quote Coffy, bet­ter believe it’s comin’.”

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