JimboTheBrit (MSN addy itsnumberis666@hotmail.com Feel free to add me!)
First off, I just wanna say that I loved the film. But I was wondering, what IS blaxpoitation? Is it a genre? It's just, as a 17 year old white English guy, I haven't really had the culture to explain it to me.
JC
Taken from Wikipedia:
Blaxploitation is a portmanteau, or combination, of the words “black” and “exploitation”. It is a film genre which emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made that targeted the urban African American audience. The films featured primarily black actors, and were the first to have soundtracks of funk and soul music. Although criticized by civil-rights groups for their use of stereotypes, they addressed the great and newfound demand for afrocentric entertainment, and were immensely popular among black audiences.
JimboTheBrit (MSN addy itsnumberis666@hotmail.com Feel free to add me!)
Ta very much
very good question Jimbo. Some people think ANY black movie of the early 70's is a blaxploitation movie, which it isnt. Movies not made by the large movie studios, with the black stereotypes overdone were targeted directly to and for Black audiences. "Cooley High" and "Shaft" actually dont fit into the "blaxploitation" genre and are just Black movies. The low budget, low profile movies of this era, which were usually privately financed, with the creative freedom and exploitation of the Black urban culture at the time turned out these creative and dynamic movies.
Once the biggest Black actors of that time, Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby did "Uptown Saturday Night and "Lets Do It Again" for the large studios, and middle America turned out to see it, this paved the way for the large studios to do movies like "Cooley High" ,"Claudine", and "Car Wash" with huge acclaim, and there was no more need for blaxploitation movies.
One might also say that there were different degrees of Blaxploitation. Movies such as Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971), Shaft (Gordon Parks, Sr., 1971), and Superfly (Gordon Parks, Jr., 1972) set many of the archetypes and contexts for the genre, but they were also serious, straightly played films rather than the hyperbolic, absurd parodies that would come later.
shareMy understanding was that the term "blaxploitation" was coined by people who did not like the representation of black characters as hustlers etc. in these films (a lot of anger was pointed at Superfly)*. I basically understand it as a sex ane violence (exploitation) film with a black cast from the seventies. But I'm not entirely comfortable with the term "blaxploitation".
The branding of the recent DVD releases "soul cinema" seems to encompass a lot more of these films that don't really fit under "blaxploitation"
*(I should note that I just picked all this up on some DVD featurette, possibly the one on the Pam Grier Women In Prison movies)
...What most people don't realize is that at one point the studio concidored casting Robert Redford or even Frank Sinatra in the title role in "Shaft". Would that have made the film WASP-exploitation, Italian-exploitation? Of course Gordon Parks wouldn't have that and insisted on a black actor, Richard Roundtree, as John Shaft. When it was released more then two thirds of the audience was white. None the less it was denounced by many critics and the NAACP as "blaxpoiletion"...It might be understantable that many of the "Superfly" (another Parks movie) clone movies might have been looked down upon, but such non hustler movies as "Lady Sings the Blues" (about blues singer Billy Holiday) "Sparkle" and even "Brother from Another Planet" have appeared on lists of blaxpoilation films. Film biographies, show bisiness stories and science fiction, along with gangster and deective movies, have been produced by Hollywood for generations, but nobody has ever called it whitexploitation so there is a obvious double standard.
People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated-Ernestine (Silks) in "The Human Stain"
You miss the point entirely. While it's true that Hollywood has portrayed whites in bad, low budget, or stereotypical movies, they are represented in a variety of ways and much more broadly. Blaxploitation films were all formulaic, and tended to be one dimensional in their characterization of African Americans. They where coined blaxploitation for a reason - Hollywood capitalizing on African American's thirst to see themselves on the big screen in what could arguably be characterized as strong roles.
share...The point I was trying to make is that it is wrong to call a movie blaxploitation movie simply, because it's main character is black. Long before he was an acclaimed reporter and photographer for Life Magazine, the author of books like "The Learning Tree and "A Choice of Weapons" and a screen writer and producer he was a crime reporter in New York City during the thirties. If anybody could write a good script about urban criminals he could and he did. The studio wanted to cast a white actor in the lead, but Parks, who had written directed, and even composed the musical score for the critically acclaimed film version of "The Learning Tree", had enough clout to say no... Most mainstream critics liked the movie and there was no discussion of it being directed only at black audiences. In fact it played in theater all over the country. I can still remember seeing the ""Shaft is Rated "R" so if you want to see it you gotta ask your mama" TV ads when I was a kid (I didn't). The area where I lived and still do is mostly as was the majority of people who bought tickets to see the movie and excepted the Shaft character as a likable action oriented hard boiled detective who happened to be black...Had the studio had there way and "Shaft" had been turned into a Sinatra "Tony Rome" saves the mafia dons daughter from rival mob clone the criticism would have been something like: "Gordon Parks is a great African American director producer. Look what he did with "The Learning Tree". What's he doing making a movie about Italian Gangsters?"...There might have been some further criticism of depicting Italians as gangsters, a hot topic in 1972 when the "Godfather" was released, but that would have died down. Today it would be shown on Sinatra night along with the the first "Manchurian Candidate" and the first "Oceans Eleven". It certainly wouldn't have had a stigma like blaxploitation attached to it...Don't get me wrong. There were some horrible Gilder/grind-house movies were aimed at black audiences during the seventies. It was not "Shaft", but an attempt to do a serious movie about racist repression called "Sweet Sweat Back" that started trend. Soon the formula of the black hero fighting "the man" became set in stone and the original political and social meaning was lost. Also there were black knock offs of the "Exorcist", Dracula you name it. Their were the "Cleopatra Jones" female stereotypes with the full Afros (a good place to hide razor blades), who wouldn't hesitate to literally blow someones head off or drive a car over a bad guy. There were the male stud stereotypes. I think some film makers were trying to sign up every former black NFL player regardless of acting ability...Worst of all even some European studios tried to get into the American urban market. I can distinctly remember seeing a Jim Brown movie, supposedly set in New York, in which NYPD police officers arrived at a bad depiction of the JFK airport in Fiat squad cars with European sirens blaring or wobbling. If you didn't laugh at this stuff you would cry...The NAACP and many critics weren't laughing. They wanted Hollywood to stop making and/or distribution what they called blaxploitation movies. The Carter administration supposedly had civil rights activist and cabinet member Andrew Young pressure the studios which had a rather interesting effect. The studios canceled all black oriented projects. Even a planned project called "The Bodyguard" with Diana Ross and Robert Redford was shalved although it was finally made, in the nineties with Whitney Houston in the lead role. It wasn't until the eighties and Spike Lee that black films began to reappear.
People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated-Ernestine (Silks) in "The Human Stain"
I'm not going to argue the merits of labeling an entire genre of film "Blaxploitation." Mainstream media coined this phrase. It is what it is, you don't have to agree with it or like it. They were and effort by Hollywood to capitalize on African American's desire to see movies that featured people of color - hence the term "Blaxploitation." They weren't called this simply because the main character was black. They were called this because they indeed capitalized on the urban movie market. While they were playing all over the country, I doubt you would have found a lot of whites going to see them.
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