Joe: American in blue collar drag

Abstract

Joe deserves extended comment, not because it is a film of art, but because of the numbers of people who like it and who hate it. What we see in the film together with what we know of its origins allows us to identify it as an exploitat ion film. But it can hardly be dismissed on that basis. In fact, real problems first appear when that judgment is made. There are two senses in which a film can be exploitative. First, it can exploit the desire for a certain kind of spectacle. In this kind of film, the plot, characterizations and filming are casual accessories of the pay-off scenes, the ones the audience has really come to see. The pay-offs vary with the particular kind of prurience being catered to (sexuality in the skin flick; revenge in the crime, spy or war movie; domestic ruin in the melodrama). The second sense of exploitat ion applies to the subject matter rather than the audience. In these films, the human Bernard Beck