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So now I’m not digging that far back into history. That’s not an accident. Because what we’re really talking about with Ms. Grier is the history of film, and that doesn’t go back that far.
Pam Grier is an award winning actress who came out of some problimatic film genres. I am down with (from modern sensibility) taking issue with those flicks. But I don’t think that means we should discount Pam, and more importantly, where her career went from there.
Foxy Brown, for whatever you want to say about it, was important. A movie with a title character both black and a woman? We see those now, but do they get much in the way of respect or attention? Rarely. She is arguably, the first female action star. (Don’t believe me? Ask Tarantino. Dude’s a film nerd the way I could only hope to be a gaming nerd.) And she looked the part. I believed her kicking ass and taking names. I believed her tough and rugged and in change. I believed she paved the way for Sarah Conner and Ellen Ripply, despite the difference in film genre.
So what about your setting? Your game? What can you get from Pam when you’re putting together your histories and back stories?
Presence. When you’re creating those BIG important events, those bits of history that will matter to the story, its too common to just put a bunch of dudes names on things and be done with it. Like with the history of film in our real world, there are women and people of color all over the damn place and they matter. They change things. They effect the future of those histories. (Read: the present.) Even as your player characters are doing things that shape the history of your world right now in game, ask yourself, are the movers and shakers all men? Are those who influence the history happening right now only men? Or are you leaving room for the ‘exceptional’ woman to be found in every pocket of history? Pam’s a building block of modern film, and therefore, modern history. Is there a Pam Grier in the history of your setting? In the history that’s being made right now? (and yes, I mean more than just PCs.)
