A few thoughts on Tarantino and Jackie Brown. "25 Years is a Long, Long Time."
What is the implied morality of the Jackie Brown universe?
When I am not writing jeremiads lamenting the debasement of American culture, politics, and morality, I am probably sitting around watching Quentin Tarantino movies.
I love Tarantino for all the reasons Wikipedia says I should admire his work: the music and pop culture, the highly stylized cinematography, the snappy, smart dialogue mixed with humor, the cameos, ensemble casts, and great acting, writing, and innovative film making. That said, perhaps for the first time, recently re-watching QT’s most underrated film, Jackie Brown, I started thinking about the inner lives of the characters in this movie.
What is the implied morality of the Jackie Brown universe?
The film opens and ends with “Across 110th Street'' (see full lyrics below). The 1973 single by Bobby Womack, written for a bigger budget, higher production version “blaxploitation” neo film noir of the same name, peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 at 56 (and rose to 19th on the Soul charts). Without digging too deep, certainly, the lyric explains the core morality for Jackie Brown the character:
“not saying what I did was right…just doing whatever I had to do to survive.”
The funky song of sorrow and hope offers an explicit acknowledgement of right and wrong and also a rationale for reaching beyond orthodox rules for “a better way of life”:
“been down so long, getting up didn’t cross my mind…you don’t know what you’ll do until you’re under pressure.”
Jackie knows right from wrong. She goes about her business trying to overcome her past, taking a few shortcuts but basically working within norms, and then, faced with an existential crisis, she decides to bend all the rules to “get free.”
The film Jackie Brown, released on Christmas Day, 1997, based on Elmore Leonard's 1992 novel, Rum Punch, stands out as the only feature-length film Tarantino adapted from another medium. His third film as director and writer, and his first offering as an A-lister, garnered positive reviews and grossed $74 million in worldwide box office receipts, but proved a sleeper in terms of immediate cultural impact.
Pam Grier, the sexy and iconic bad-ass darling of low-budget 1970s “exploitation” films, plays Jackie Brown, a flight attendant arrested for smuggling cash and trace amounts of cocaine into the country and caught up in a “cat and mouse” power struggle and battle of wits between federal authorities and a wily career criminal turned illegal arms dealer, Ordell Robbie, inhabited to perfection by Tarantino Stock Company superstar, Samuel L. Jackson.
The ensemble cast, as hinted above, crackles with great performances and layer upon layer of characterization. In addition to Grier and Jackson, the film features Robert Forster, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton, Michael Bowen, Chris Tucker, and Robert De Niro.
Ironically, for most of the movie, Jackie confounds the police and Ordell (and us) by telling the truth. We are never exactly sure who’s side she’s on as she keeps offering up the mostly straight scoop to the people she will ultimately double cross. Perversely, she finds herself in a world in which the truth proves a better subterfuge than a lie.
Ordell, on the other hand, presents no perceptible morality. He lies, cheats, steals, kills, and betrays any relationship as it suits his purposes. The story offers no indication he sees right from wrong outside of his goals. His only compass is his own self-interest. He trusts no one because he is fundamentally untrustworthy. “I can’t trust Melanie but I can trust Melanie to be Melanie.” He is only loyal to his partners in crime as long as they are useful. “Your ass used to be beautiful,” he tells his confederate seconds before he executes him. Presumably beautiful back when his fellow outlaw was more competent, useful, and not a liability. Manifestly charming and deadly, Ordell represents a completely static character.
Worth noting, Samuel L. Jackson played the most intriguing character in Pulp Fiction (Tarantino’s film previous to Jackie Brown and the one that made him a Hollywood powerhouse). In the earlier movie, we find Jules Winnfield in the midst of an epiphany. Jules (Jackson) chooses to “leave the life.” Ironically, in Jackie Brown, Jackson plays the most soulless character in this drama whose entire life seems to be “the life.” Perhaps not even capable of considering such questions, he faces no moral choices. He harbors no regrets.
The cops of Jackie Brown possess a cop morality. They have a code. They are loyal presumably to one another. They wield the power of the state. They live within the law mostly—but, like Jackie, they are willing to bend the rules to get to the right end. They don’t care especially about people or money or power. They care about the case and their single-minded pursuit of the bad guy.
Easter Egg Cameo. Sid Haig (a familiar criminal from the old 1970s films) plays the arraignment judge in this movie. Legend has it that Tarantino did not inform Grier of Haig’s role until the day of the shoot. The scene sizzles with on-screen chemistry between the two actors, even as the judge sets bond against Jackie in terms favorable to the state. Haig as the magistrate brings humanity and a certain sympathy and emotional connection for Jackie that transcends the scene as written. Perhaps more than two old chums exchanging lines of dialogue, Haig represents two sides of the same game. The criminal is the judge; the judge is the criminal. What difference does it make?
In casting, Tarantino famously reached back into his happy memories of fading favorites and resurrected the acting careers of Grier, of course, and also Robert Forster. Forster plays the aloof, wizened, and fiercely independent bail bondsman, Max Cherry, who anchors the story as an ostensibly unconnected neutral character in the unfolding drama. In many ways, Forster’s Max steals the show. Comfortable with criminals, bureaucrats, lawmen, citizens, subordinates, whoever, Max knows and understands all the rules and all the angles. Confidently, Max makes his own decisions. He fears little. He cannot be intimidated or buffaloed. Living mostly within the law—he is willing to transgress the law. But, in the end, he will not fully commit to the life of an outlaw. He will participate in the big criminal enterprise—perhaps because of his infatuation with Jackie. He will accept “fifty grand'' as his cut in the illicit comedy of manners, but he will not walk away with the girl in the denouement—despite his potent infatuation. The end of the film may well be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Max and Jackie, but it is not a happy ending to a love story.
Max occupies the liminal space between the lawman and the criminal. By vocation he is in a gray area. By nature as well. Is he the moral center of this drama? He is the person we trust. He is the person Jackie senses she can trust. Do we fault him for his complicity in a morally ambiguous sting? Do we doubt his final decision to remain unaffiliated? In the end, he seems to understand the outer bounds of what he and Jackie can “get away with,” how much he he can justify for himself and “live with,” and the difference between the two.
An Aside on Race. Max “shows up on time,” seems to adhere to an Anglo sense of justice, demonstrates a faith in the Puritan work ethic in which consequences follow actions in a cosmically just manner. While few in the 1997 audience would have characterized him this way, in the cultural milieu of 2022 we can imagine he commands all the privileges of his “whiteness.” He has the advantage of understanding “the code,” benefiting from the structure of society, and also skillfully skirting the rules with fewer consequences than Jackie (a “forty-four year-old Black woman”).
But Max also stands for a certain colorblindness (a common Hollywood trope in previous times albeit increasingly controversial in ours). He is bored with Ordell in every way and sees right through his appeal to “white guilt.” Moreover, race does NOT seem to unite anyone. Jackie and Max and his assistant Winston make an effective team without an overt accounting to race. In contrast, Ordell cynically appeals to race often but he has no true loyalty to race. While his criminal gang includes Blacks and whites, they are only united by dishonest imprudence, a lack of moorings, a propensity for manipulation, and easy elimination—if need be.
In the Tarantino oeuvre, Jackie Brown pays homage to 1970s blaxploitation films. Grier played titular characters Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), both classics in the genre. But veteran crime novelist Elmore Leonard did not write his Jackie (Burke) of Rum Punch as a black woman; rather, the forty-four year old stewardess working for a bargain South Florida airline, caught in a dangerous no-win dilemma between the cops and a ruthless hard case, was a desperate but resourceful white woman down to her final last chance.
Of course, it must be said, for all the “blaxploitation” tropes, the provocative “ethnic” dialogue, and the habit of featuring Samuel L. Jackson as a swashbuckling antihero, Tarantino is a white man making movies for white men. In the quarter century following Jackie Brown, more than a few Black commentators have raised an eyebrow at Tarantino’s unabashed privilege and the writer/director’s propensity for African American cultural appropriation.
Back in 1997 a young Tarantino existed in a world that hailed an amoral Bill Clinton, whom we lauded in enlightened quarters as America’s First Black President, and later described comically but not inaccurately as a “smooth and fantastic hillbilly who should [have been] declared emperor of the United States.” The Christmas season of 1997 rested precariously just weeks before the Drudge Report introduced Monica Lewinsky to the world, before the first modern impeachment, before 911, Iraq, and Afghanistan, before the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, in the shadow of Rodney King and O. J. Simpson, but long before we could have imagined the racial tumult of Trayvon Martin, Black Lives Matter, and George Floyd. Back then America could still envision Rudy Giuliani as an uber-competent, crime-fighting mayor bringing sophisticated social science and data-driven policing to turn back the scourge of urban lawlessness on the mean streets of New York City and offering an antidote to a decades-long national spike in violent crime. Today, after a few decades of relative security and schooled in diversity, equity, and inclusion, in a moment when our impulses to decarcerate and defund may have peaked, the Jackie Brown universe may well strike us as not merely fantastic and wistfully nostalgic for moral ambiguity but crudely insensitive and unsafe. To add to the poignancy of “now versus then,” Jackie Brown comes near the beginning of a nine-picture relationship Tarantino enjoyed with independent movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein. For all the sexy self-reliance and explosiveness of a signature Tarantino female lead, in vivid display with Grier’s rendering of Jackie Brown, in retrospect, the entire enterprise rested on a foundation built by a man whose serial misogynistic savagery would embody the #MeToo era. So much to unpack.
What of Jackie herself? White or Black. Based or Woke. Classic feminine protagonist or sex kitten caricature.
Facing the camera full on, driving away in style, mouthing the words to the film’s urban spiritual, she gets away from the “pimps trying to catch a woman that’s weak” and finds a better life on the other side of town.
In 1997 we cheered. I think we still do.
Across 110th Street
I was the third brother of five
Doing whatever I had to do to survive
I'm not saying what I did was alright
Tryna break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight
Been down so long, getting up didn't cross my mind
But I knew there was a better way of life, and I was just trying to find
You don't know what you'll do until you're put under pressure
'Cross 110th Street is a hell of a tester
Across 110th Street
Pimps trying to catch a woman that's weak
Across 110th Street
Pushers won't let the junkie go free
Across 110th Street
Woman trying to catch a trick on the street, ooh baby
Across 110th Street
You can find it all in the street
I got one more thing I'd like to talk to y'all about right now
Hey brother, there's a better way out
Snorting that coke, shooting that dope, man, you're copping out
Take my advice, it's either live or die
You've got to be strong if you wanna survive
The family on the other side of town
Would catch hell without a ghetto around
In every city you'll find the same thing going down
Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town
Help me sing it
Across 110th Street
Pimps trying to catch a woman that's weak
Across 110th Street
Pushers won't let the junkie go free, oh
Across 110th Street
A woman trying to catch a trick on the street, ooh baby
Across 110th Street, look
You can find it all in the street
Yes, you can
Oh, look around you, look around you, look around you
Look around you, uh, yeah