P-Valley’s The Pynk is More Than a Strip Club (Part Two)

This piece is the second section of my article on P-Valley. To get further context on the show's plot, you can read the first part here. Previously, I discussed the dynamic of Mercedes and her mom, Patrice, and the way their lifestyles have caused the erosion of their relationship. In this section, I will discuss the themes surrounding the plotline of the Pynk’s destruction in the pursuit of building a casino. In the last section, I will wrap up with some connections between these two plot lines and my final thoughts.

The Place of a Strip Club in the Pursuit of Respectability

The Promised Land Casino plotline is first introduced from the point of view of Andre as he sets his sights on a prime location of a property in Chucalissa. The mayor, Tydell Ruffin, is also in on the deal. In episode 3, it’s shown that Mayor Ruffin negotiated with the white developers to permit them to build on land in Chucalissa so that they can use their influence to get him reelected. If his plan works out, he gets to keep his position of power which is crucial for him to live out his dream of rebuilding Chucalissa.

The Pynk is not in Mayor Ruffin’s vision of the new Chucalissa he wants to build. Before the timeline of the season and throughout, he has continuously cracked down on the strip club. In the first episode, there is mention of the “No Titties & Tequila Law” that forbids the sale of liquor in the same place where there is nudity. This is a law targeted at the Pynk, the most prominent strip club in town. If the Pynk gets cited as breaking this law, it puts them at risk of losing their liquor license which would ruin a large part of their business or force them to serve liquor under the table at the risk of even bigger legal consequences.

In episode 7, Mayor Ruffin exposes his motivations and vision for Chucalissa. He has a conversation with Andre, a main negotiator in the casino deal, and his nephew, in which he emphasizes that he is from a generation that experienced the height of segregation. He's trying to keep his position of power not just for himself but as a symbol of being a black person in a position of power in the south. Not only does he want to be a black person in power, but he also wants to go above and beyond to prove that he's worthy of that position. To solidify his legacy, he wants to clean up Chucalissa and make it what he considers better. His motivations are driven by respectability politics. Respectability politics is a concept in which it is believed that black people will only be able to be respected by white society if they act as respectable (read: as white) as possible. This can be applied to everything from appearance to living conditions to career choices. The structurally run-down and low-income town of Chucalissa where the most popular activity is spending the night getting drunk at a strip club doesn't read as respectable.

The demolishing of the Pynk and the building of the Promised Land Casino is only the first step for Mayor Ruffin. He believes that the money the casino brings in to Chucalissa will lead to not only more respectable jobs for the residents but more development for better living conditions. While he sees this as a positive, it could be argued that this is simply a process of gentrification. Gentrification is when urban areas, usually occupied by low-income populations, are renovated with newer and more expensive living spaces and businesses. While this attracts more money and newer residents to the area it also displaces the original residents because the area becomes unaffordable to live in. In Mayor Ruffin’s quest for respectability, he is destroying the roots of his hometown to then build it from the ground up.

Mayor Ruffin’s transparently manipulative regulation gets very little push back because he not only has support from the majority religious population of the town but also the businessmen who see the location as ripe for tourism. His use of a law that includes the words “community blight” plays to a moral justification for his forced closing of the Pynk. If his plan becomes public, the people will believe that the mayor is simply making a moral decision to lift the reputation of the town. In a scene in a Chucalissa barbershop, he is met with praise when he talks about how he’s keeping his promise of turning the city around when he got elected. Whether the plan matches up with his morals is difficult to decipher, but it can’t be dismissed that he is also in on the financial part of this deal. He is the one talking with the casino businessmen and negotiating the purchase of the land. He is playing all sides and if the deal goes through he will benefit in three different ways: he gains favor with the general population, favor with the businessmen that can bring more business and money into the town, and he fulfills part of his vision for the future of Chucalissa.

Final Thoughts

The Pynk is at the center of both of these complex storylines and this, in turn, pushes the stories of those who work there at the forefront of P-Valley. The strip club and its employees aren’t a B plot or simply eye-candy for the audience, even if the advertising surrounding the show may highlight the sexual material. Mercedes isn’t simply a stripper: she’s a fully fleshed-out character with a complicated personal history and family life who’s looking to make a career change. I didn’t have space to discuss them here but almost all the other strip club employees have their own stories and are critical to the development of the season’s plot.

The show also encourages the audience to root for the Pynk when it’s in danger of being destroyed by showing how vital it is to the town as a whole and what’s at stake if it’s lost. Mayor Ruffin focuses so heavily on the Pynk because it’s such a Chucalissa staple. It represents everything he wants to scrub from the town’s image. The other side of this is that it represents the types of people that are left behind in the pursuit of respectability and “societal progress”: Black women, people in poverty, sex workers, and gender non-conforming people like the nonbinary Uncle Clifford.

In these two articles, I’ve only touched on a small portion of the expertly-crafted stories written by main writer and showrunner Katori Hall and her team of entirely female directors. If you weren’t aware of the show before reading this, I hope this has intrigued you. If you’re already a fan, I hope you’ll stick around for my thoughts on the second season (whenever it comes out).