Good Morning!
The history of Blaxploitation, although fraught with controversy over the films’ overall artistic merits and larger social role, is still one of progression. While many African Americans found the stories and characters of Blaxploitation films to be empowering, critics felt that the films reinforced negative stereotypes of African Americans as violent, hypersexual, and criminal. Therein lay a major part of the “exploitation” in which these films were said to traffic. However, seeing people of color fight and win against “the man” is considered progress, in any form.
Although Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Badaass Song is considered the first movie of the genre, film buffs cite the blaxploitation film movement with six sources of origin: (1) the precedent of integrationist films that began in the 1940s; (2) the decline of the Hollywood studio system; (3) the Black Power movement; (4) the independent black film movement; (5) the availability of talented black actors and musicians; and (6) the newly discovered profitability of the urban black film audience.
There are also subgenres within the films categorized as Blaxploitation:
Westerns – films include: The Legend of Nigger Charley, Take A Hard Ride, No Way Back, Boss Nigger
Horror – films include: Blacula, J.D.’s Revenge, Blackenstein, Abby, The House on Skull Mountain
Martial Arts – films include: Black Belt Jones, Black Samurai, Black Fist
Blaxploitation Movie Trivia
1. Which Blaxploitation movie was the highest grossing movie during the actual era?
Although the movie was produced during the era of blaxploitation movies, the producers of The Mack do not label it a true blaxploitation picture. They believe it to be a social commentary, according to Mackin’ Ain’t Easy, a documentary about the making of the film. The movie is set in Oakland, CA and was the highest-grossing blaxploitation film of its time. Its soundtrack was recorded by Motown artist Willie Hutch.
2. Black Chariot was an independently-made crime film financed by writer-director Robert L. Goodwin with money raised door-to-door in the Black community. Bernie Casey stars as an idealistic militant who joins an activist group modeled on the Black Panthers. When one of the members betrays the organization, its members seek revenge. Part of the movie was shot on videotape and transferred to film.
3. When set in the Northeast or West Coast, blaxploitation films are mainly set in poor urban neighborhoods. Ethnic slurs against white characters, such as “crackers” and “honky”, are common plot and or character elements.
Trailer for Hammer
4. Blaxploitation films set in the South often dealt with slavery and miscengenation.
Trailer for Mandingo
5. “Seven girls out there. Every ten minutes, one comes off the production line, like that. This is a business, baby, a production line, and just like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Willie’s comin’ through.”
Clip from: Willie Dynamite
Organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Congress of Racial Equality and spokesmen like Jesse Jackson denounced blaxploitation cinema, despite its popularity, for providing poor role models to black youth. (In fact, it was actually the NAACP who officially coined the term “blaxploitation.”) “The seeds of black political correctness began to take hold; the black bourgeoisie was vaguely embarrassed about these films,” says Isaac Julien, director of the documentary Baaadasss Cinema. “There was a double standard in operation, penalizing the blaxploitation films while leaving their white counterparts intact. Unfortunately, the discussion of how these films work cinematically and artistically never gets beyond the question of whether they show positive or negative images of black characters.”
As history has proven, the popular arts don’t work on an orderly continuum, the way organized social protest sometimes does. They work on a more visceral level, where it’s sometimes difficult to see progress until time passes and the audience gains perspective. As it is with Blaxploitation, looking back, the importance of the genre for its time, is undeniable.
I picked this compilation of blaxploitation clips to end the week, just for the Willie Dynamite part at the beginning. LOL ENJOY!