I’m about halfway through Inglourious Basterds and spent some time yesterday thinking about the forthcoming Machete. Both are perfectly wrought genre pictures, of so-called Jewsploitation and Mexploitation, respectively. With an important difference: the former is set in another time and place and the latter is set right here, right now.
The historical pulp or -sploitation genres are intended as cathartic entertainment, as a way of remembering and thus healing a past violence, rather than as propaganda that aims to incite future violence. (Blaxploitation could not have preceded the Civil Rights movement and less so the Black Panther Party.)
Given the broader historical narrative in which these revenge fantasies unfold, they are also incapable of escaping irony. Even when its producers and/or audiences cling to its surface meaning, like someone suffering from nightmares might pull up a blanket, the subtext remains: a festering wound that will not be healed by being dressed up.
For this reason, the most beloved pulp films are seldom naive: to balance the scales of justice, everyone must pay, including the audience.
Consider, for example, the Westerns of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah. Among other pleasures, the Pilgrim-sploitation movies gave the descendants of the dirt-poor immigrants who conquered the American West a chance to take their final revenge on both nature and the Native American nations they had to battle – and often lost to. But while making a gesture of healing old wounds, such movies often opened new ones.*
Which makes me wonder: is America ready for Mexploitation? I hope so.
*Sadly, America is still waiting for the Native American-sploitation flick. To the victor go the spoils. Casinos notwithstanding.