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Maoist movie reviews
"Foxy Brown" (1974)
Foxy Brown
Directed and written by Jack Hill
Starring Pam Grier and Antonio Fargas
American International Pictures
Rated R
94 minutes
1974
2009 December
A "revolutionary" favorite of some that MIWS has commented on
positively, "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" (1973) is considered a
blaxploitation film. The CIA/Black liberation main character in "The
Spook Who Sat by the Door," at one point tries to convince a Black
drug dealer to stop poisoning his own people. "White folks," Dan
Freeman tells Shorty, "control your neighborhood through drugs." In
the so-called blaxploitation film "Foxy Brown" also set in the United
$tates and more widely known, the "spook" who is a "spook" is a
federal narcotics agent and the boyfriend of Foxy Brown. Brown's
boyfriend is murdered by a white mob involved in drugs and
prostitution. Instead of going to the cops, Brown undertakes to
infiltrate the mob's operations. She ends up turning to a Black
liberation group toward the end of the movie. They independently
opposes the mob. In fact, they have to get past the cops to get to
the mob's heads. The mob has influence over the police. George
Jackson posters are in the backgrounds in some scenes with the
heavily armed Black group. Jackson was assassinated a few years
before "Foxy Brown" was released.
The mafia enslaves Blacks through heroin and threats. Brown herself
has to escape this. Brown tells the Black liberation group to help
her for "justice." They don't want to do it just for her to get
revenge. They let her get it, though. The Black liberation group
describes itself as a "community" organization opposing a "new
slavery" involving dope.
Foxy Brown's desire for revenge leads her to act independently of the
state and into conflict with the state. Readers who have seen the
movie "New Jack City" (1991), about crack cocaine in New York, will
recall that the Black undercover cop played by Ice-T pursues mob boss
Nino out of a desire for revenge -- in reality a not-uncommon reason
oppressed nation people work with white repressors. Thus, "New Jack
City" appears to this reviewer as an integrationist response to "Foxy
Brown." Of course, Brown's boyfriend is an undercover spy for the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, but his job, though important initially,
is a non-issue for most of the movie. In an odd way, Brown opposes
the federal government, because the the federal government in reality
is entangled with mafias and other white networks. In "Foxy Brown,"
the mafia uses prostitution to influence judges and grand jurors. The
police are portrayed as an obstacle, not helping Blacks. Before going
out of the picture, Brown's boyfriend expresses disillusionment with
the federal agency and begins to view the independent Black anti-dope
group as an acceptable alternative. The Black group itself undergoes
a change and goes from expelling local Black drug dealers to fighting
the whites at the top of the business and white facilitators. They
broaden the scope of their activity.
This reviewer would argue it's not all about revenge for Foxy Brown
over her boyfriend, one individual. After all, not all Blacks would
or could go to a Black liberation group. Brown has a relationship
with the group before she needs it to fight the mafia. At the same
time, I don't want to deny that things that start out "personal" can
grow into political consequences. "Personal" for oppressors may have
different outcomes than for the oppressed. At the same time, the
oppressed interact with other oppressed people face-to-face more than
with oppressors, and this presents a problem.
"We were colonized by the white predatory fascist economy. It
was from them that we evolved our freak subculture, and the
attitudes that perpetuate our conditions. These attitudes cause
us to give each other up to the Klan pigs. We even on occasion
work gun in hand right with them. A black killed Fred Hampton;
blacks working with the CIA killed Malcolm X; blacks are
plentiful on the payroll of the many police forces that fascism
must employ to protect itself from the people. These fascist
subcultural attitudes have sent us to Europe, Asia (one-fourth
of the fatalities in Vietnam are black fatalities), and even
Africa (the Congo during the Simba attempt to establish people's
government) to die for nothing. In the recent cases of Africa
and Asia we have allowed the neoslaver to use us to help enslave
people we love." --George Jackson, prison letter, April 1970
Pam Grier is discussed as if she were a Black counterpart of Farrah
Fawcett, who played a supposed female empowerment symbol with sex
appeal in the television series "Charlie's Angels." Alleged feminists
in the United $tates are variously Freudian and pro-pornography, on
the one hand, and concerned with sexual exploitation of females in
such activities as filmmaking. Few U.$. so-called feminists talk
about the gender privilege of white females vis-à-vis Third
World people, children, and internal colony females in the United
$tates such as Black females. Alleged feminists may or may not have a
problem with the sexuality in "Foxy Brown," but there is a difference
between Grier's character and Fawcett's. Jill Munroe works for a
detective agency. With Munroe, so-called female empowerment is posed
as being in the imperialist state or spying and vigilantism --
individual females with repressor careers or white power. Gender
liberation the Jill Munroe way is pursuing males with "ambition" and
being a 'ho for rich white males, who to an extent might as well be
faceless, repressing others, pretending to be a ditz or dumb when one
has college education or police academy training, retaining female
identity and gender distinctions for career purposes, tolerating
structures of sexual harassment, investing in pornography for private
benefit, using pornography to eroticize violence, and considering the
Black Panthers beneath one's notice except when making gender-related
attacks against oppressed nation people in a white-supremacist way.
While Foxy Brown's occupation is unclear, Brown confronts a
Euro-Amerikan bitch at the top of the mafia. This reviewer is sure
some so-called feminists will find something to upset them in this
depiction of female conflict, too, but the truth is that white
females, actually in love with white males or not, do put
Euro-Amerikan oppression before imagined cross-national female
solidarity. And, love is not all. Even people in love can be the
enemy, it is pointed out in "Foxy Brown."
Foxy Brown has a conflict with her own brother, Link (Antonio
Fargas). Ultimately, though, Link Brown suffers gravely as a result
of his error. Link is in a trap from the beginning. He tells Foxy
that he went into shady business because he couldn't find the
employment to have the living standards he saw around him. As it was
in the 1970s, Black unemployment today is greater than white
unemployment. Complicating struggle, unemployment exists
simultaneously with parasitism such that when Blacks do get a job in
the United $tates, they, like whites, become exploiters.
"The black colonies of Amerika have been locked in depression
since the close of the Civil War. We have lived under regional
depression since the end of chattel slavery. The beginning of
the new slavery was marked by massive unemployment and
underemployment. That remains with us still." --George Jackson,
prison letter, April 1970
"Dialectical materialism is my bag. I identify with anyone who
hates just one fascist. I don't want a piece of the [fascist]
pie, I don't want all of it even. I think it's rotten, should be
discarded, we should start all over again. This new start should
be made without individualism (read isolation), mysticism (read
religion), with a modification of the language for the purpose
of removing the concept of possession (read capitalism), without
the hard-hat mentality (read William F. Buckley, Playboy,
Central Intelligence Agency)." --George Jackson, prison letter,
May 1970
Not blinded by love, Foxy Brown seems to ponder what working with the
government has done to her boyfriend. He has undergone an operation
to change his facial appearance. The bandages still on, Brown wonders
whether the operation will have made her boyfriend a "stranger" to
her. Perhaps the apprehension about physicality is a metaphor about
the boyfriend's ideology or position. On a more literal level, Brown
and a female with whom she was fleeing from the mafia end up at a
lesbian bar, whereas power is more or less obviously suspect in their
sexual interactions with males. Before, they had agreed to work on a
judge together to make things more "fun" for them. The barkeeper is
under the influence of the mob. Foxy beats up some of the patrons,
but maybe there is a point there about not fooling oneself that one
is attracted to the opposite sex or about doing revolutionary
activity asexually. Brown is not with her boyfriend for most of the
movie. Though the Black liberation group is male (if Brown is not a
member of it herself), there is no indication that Brown trades sex
for the group's assistance, and no girlfriends, or other females not
struggling as much as the males, hang around the group. Brown puts
her own life at risk while not having sex with anyone except perhaps
the mafia's prostitution clients/targets, and thus there is no
question about 'ho activity interfering with politics.
(Pseudo-feminists discuss alleged sexism of the Black Panthers, but
do not expect females to risk as much as males, though they expect
females and males to be in the same organizations and oppose the
separation of politics and romance.) In so many ways, "Foxy Brown"
raises that the penis is not the only thing that matters.
Brown's boyfriend calls the Black liberation group vigilantes, not
that that is necessarily a bad thing he suggests. The group does not
have state power. In the real world, whites have state power, and
still there are white vigilantes working with the government. When
Blacks are called vigilantes and opposed, one knows the problem is
that they are not with the right mafia. Some who claim to oppose
vigilantes support white mafias. It would not be surprising that
Liberal integrationists oppose all vigilantes and are skeptical about
Black groups that use force, but the mafia and chauvinist vigilantes
exist with Liberal cover. The mafia includes so-called
revolutionaries and so-called progressives in corporations and the
government whose idea of being radical includes making violent
provocations and racist attacks, and committing crimes, against
Blacks who aren't breaking the law. As finance capital fuses with the
state and fascism arises, repression previously carried out by mafias
and different kinds of mobs becomes both formalized and more
developed.
Armed struggle inside of First World borders is an opportunist
fantasy at this time, but "Foxy Brown" has merits even in comparison
with "The Spook Who Sat by the Door," which raises the dope problem
that Foxy Brown takes action to address specifically. There are those
whose basic approach to communism or Black liberation is to spread
the faith and make so-called preparations while waiting for "the
revolution." Meanwhile, instead of struggles based on science, there
are provocations and spying. It's a very Christian approach to
revolution, more pernicious than religion in a church. In actuality,
there are non-armed, non-educational struggles to be undertaken right
now that have winnable goals and advance a larger struggle. Nobody in
the First World leads armed struggle against imperialism globally,
and though the development of struggle is uneven and the oppressed of
the world, who number in the billions, are not waiting for whites or
Blacks to catch up, there are other things that can be done, such as
opposing Black enlistment in the military.
It is not often that you have a movie with "George Jackson, Field
Marshal, Black Panther Party" and "Soledad Brother" in it. It is not
that watching a movie is a substitute for studying or that "Foxy
Brown" is turning many people into scientific communists, but this
reviewer suspects gender and racial political correctness and white
female resentment of Blacks in pornography not benefiting white
females financially, and of a Black protagonist fighting a white
bitch, have gotten in the way of giving "Foxy Brown" the kind of
appreciation it deserves. "Foxy Brown" raises questions about the
root social causes of the drug-related problems of the Black
community, and appropriate strategy, whereas Hollywood today
oppresses Blacks by selling them integrationist and individualist
crap and is more inclined to peddle postmodernism than portray the
Black Panthers positively.
"Life has been one long string of disappointments for Robert. It
wouldn't be good to just take lightly his wishes to see you
become more aggressive in your development. It isn't necessary
to disappoint him. You can satisfy him, help yourself, and serve
the cause of black self-determination by picking yourself up and
taking Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward." --George Jackson,
prison letter, September 1969
"To seize power for the people and relegate fascism to the
history books the vanguard must change the basic patterns of
thought. We are going to have to study the principles of
people's movements. We are going to have to study them where
they took place and interpret them to fit our situation here. We
have yet to discover the meaning of people's war, people's army.
The righteous people of the world who are struggling with the
monster on the only terms that he can be fought must have many
reservations concerning us, especially those of us who are
black. What are the fierce and wonderful people of Vietnam
thinking of us? Where is the real left wing? What has been done
to us, that makes us fail to resist?" --George Jackson, prison
letter, March 1970
"They send us to school to learn how to be so disgusting. We
send our children to places of learning operated by men who hate
us and hate the truth. It is clear that no school would be
better. Burn it; all the fascist literature, burn that too. Then
equip yourself with the Little Red Book. There is no other way
to regain our senses. We must destroy Johnson Publications and
the little black tabloids that mimic the fascist press even to
their denunciations of black extremists. Burn them or take them
over as people's collectives, and give the colonies a dynamite
case of self-determination, anticolonialism, and Mao think!!!!!"
--George Jackson, prison letter, April 1970
"The revolutionary of Vietnam, this brother is so tried, so
tested, so clearly antifascist, anti-Amerikan, that I must be
suspicious of the sincerity of any black who claims
anti-Amerikanism and antifascism but who cannot embrace the
Cong. The Chinese have aided every anticolonial movement that
has occurred since they were successful in their own,
particularly the ones in Africa. They have offered us in the
Amerikan colonies any and all support that we require, from hand
grenades to H-bombs. Some of us would deny these wonderful and
righteous people. I accept their assistance in my struggle with
our mutual enemy. I accept and appreciate any love that we can
build out of our relation in crisis. I'll never, never allow my
enemy to turn my mind or hand against them. The Yankee dog that
proposes to me that I should join him in containing the freedom
of a Vietnamese or a Chinese brother of the revolution is going
to get spat on. I don't care how much he has to offer in the way
of short-term material benefits." --George Jackson, prison
letter, April 1970
"International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the
extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the
blacks inside the U.S., wondering and waiting for us to come to
our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan
monster are much more difficult than they would be if we
actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are the only ones
(besides the very small white minority left) who can get at the
monster's heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire.
We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will."
--George Jackson, prison letter, April 1970