From oppositional readers to positional producers: the making of black female heroism in Coffy

摘要

This essay explores the production history and textual relations of Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973), an exploitation film starring Pam Grier about a black female vigilante which briefly topped Variety's chart of highest grossing films in America. The relative simplicity of Coffy's production context – a bottom-line exploitation picture from American International Pictures written and directed by white male hired-hand Jack Hill – combined with the heightened images of sex and race in the film's textual representation, offers a revealing site for exploring the encoding processes of filmic identity politics. Scholarly unease about the film's representational politics has given rise to readings that rely heavily on ‘oppositional gazes’ to account for Coffy's popularity and appeal. This essay, by contrast, examines the film's positional producers, considering the generic, commercial and creative determinants of the film production. In turn, it examines how these determinants fed into the representation of Coffy's heroine, focusing on her class status, fighting heroism and sexuality. I argue that, through her collaboration with Jack Hill, Pam Grier had more agency in the shaping of her own emerging screen image than has previously been acknowledged. By combining established ideas from feminist and black film studies with cultural industries approaches, I argue that compelling narratives like Coffy, about individuals from oppressed groups, are often informed and energized by the unequal, high-stakes conditions of their own determination.