Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Pam Grier
Yes, Tarantino gives the flick its throwback Blaxploitation sheen, from the opening-sequence font to the semi-desaturated color and its cast of grimy supporting characters (most memorably, Samuel L. Jackson’s gun-dealing Ordell Robbie) but without the fight-the-power message. But Tarantino doesn’t so much directs whatever shot Grier appears in so much as he follows her with the camera like his hopelessly smitten male protagonist Max Cherry (Robert Forster) as she calculates how to escape from Ordell and the Feds to a better life . Every frame with Grier is a loving study of steely eyes and swerve, even when she’s a gunshot or a choke away from death. Badassery redux, and she received several nominations (said Golden Globe, NAACP , Screen Actors Guild) and an award (San Diego Film Critics Society) for it.
Grier has been moving and grooving since, doing critically acclaimed roles on Linc’s, Law and Order: SVU, The L Word, and Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. And several of us are waiting with rubbing hands and bated breath for RZA’s The Man With The Iron Fist, in which she co-stars. (Oh! She’s also on Twitter, y’all.)
She says of Foxy: My Life In Three Acts. In it she describes the life-altering experience of two boys raping her when she was six when Grier’s aunt left her unsupervised. It traumatized her–she said whenever she spoke she stuttered–and her family due to the “guilt and anger.” She also wrote about her needing to downplay her pulchritude due to a date rape when she was a young woman. She said she wrote her story, including these events, because
“I’ve had mentors who know of my legacy and family history, along with my career in surviving and falling, crawling and learning, and being very, very open and curious,” she explained. “I said, ‘If I do it, I want it to be a work of lessons learned that I can share with others.’ You seek help. You seek friendship.”
In my eyes–from her writing about the sexual violence done to her to her green lifestyle and activism to her iconic by-your-own-hands roles–Grier is definitely what I’d term a “self-care feminist,” a person who believes that part of creating a just world for women and people who support us is to take care of our selves, including our self-definitions, so we’re able to carry on with that struggle. Reflecting on her past relationships, Grier says:
“At some point you have to realize you will be walking away from someone you do love…[b]ut out of love for yourself, O.K.?”
Page 3 of 3 | Previous page