Blaxploitation

Gordon Parks Shaft (1971) started a phenomenon known in the film industry as blaxploitation. Parks created this with his extensive knowledge of the African American community, he had worked for Life magazine as the first African American to join the company, he cofounded Essence magazine and was even the godfather of Malcom X’s daughter. However, Melvin Van Peebles released the film Sweet Sweetback’s Badaaaaass Song (1971) shortly before Shaft. A film that also helped to create the blaxploitation genre. Although the release of Shaft as a mainstream studio production pushed the boundaries of mainstream Hollywood. Prior to 1971, seeing an African American in a film that introduced the character in a role other than servants, slaves or criminals…

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ruled against discrimination based on race, color, religion, or sex. During the decade of the 1970’s, the concern of race and bigotry was still occurring throughout America despite the fact that it was after the Civil Rights Act was passed. Media had a ton to do with the racism that was going on in the country. The source of media that had a major impact was motion pictures. The African American community were hardly pictured in movies nor were they given the lead…

The Blaxploitation films in the decade of the 1970’s are one of the greatest examples of Hollywood benefiting from the independent film industry. African American viewers were demanding to see black actors cast in more prominent and leading roles within films, and Hollywood responded by creating movies specifically for urban black audiences. These Blaxploitation films followed a specific outline that changed the traditional characteristics of the typical white male hero by, "substituting a…

Tarantino grew up in a poor multi-racial neighborhood in Los Angeles where a size-able portion of the community was dominated by art and created and consumed by African-Americans. In his childhood, he watched Blaxploitation films like Shaft, Mandingo, and his personal favorite Foxy Brown; he also enjoyed Soul Train and the 70s music African-Americans were playing at that time. Growing up in a dominant African American culture has helped sculpture Tarantino taste in music, characters, and stories…

“black identity” was marked by a specific cinematographic kind: the Blaxploitation. The term “Blaxploitation”, is composed from the word “black” and “the exploitation” and defines literally the exploitation (of the image) of the Black. Blaxploitation is, this day the most impressive and noticeable action of the Afro-Americans to control and promote their image on big screen. At first, the emergence of the Blaxploitation was build with Afro American directors such as Melvin Van Peebles, Gordon…

This article focuses on the the 1970s blaxploitation film Blacula and how “its mixture of genres contains the possibility for a double-edged critique”(Hefner). The main motivation for this article was to draw focus to the idea of blackness in contrast with “heteronormative patriarchal whiteness” seen throughout this movie and others. Many of the claims the Hefner made about the stereotypes black and whites portrayed in these films had some truth to them, but the language he chose to explain his…

Quickly a formula arose for creating successful black films, and a torrent of such films hit theaters everywhere. The formula was to have a hypermasculine, dangerous, and individualistic black hero as protagonist, and to imbue the film with the hottest trends in music, fashion, slang, and attitude. Employing this formula gave success to films such as Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song, and Superfly. The era of popular blaxploitation films lasted from about 1970-1975, but the impact of that…

opacity to convey this. Shaft, being a Blaxploitation film, allows common themes such as race to take on a whole different meaning. In other film race might simply just be a distinguishing trait to tell one character from another. But in Shaft, race equates power. METHOD / APPROACH TO THE FILM This paper will focus on the conversation on how race and opacity convey power in Blaxploitation films. This paper will analyze the film Shaft (1971) and how its uses of opacity and race parallels other…

That is not to say that all Blaxploitation films could be typified as such. Some were categorically different based on style, audience, and political content. Lott notes that Blaxploitation films had an aesthetic problem with being blackface representations of white films and stereotypically black. These are mostly attributed to Hollywood taking the role of producing the nonrepresentative black film as the industry naturally does with most movies. Naturally, there has been a major shift to…

Katayoon Rohani Professor Odom Black studies 140B May 15, 2017 Five on the Black Hand Side Extra Credit The blaxploitation genre continued with Oscar Williams's "Five on the Black Hand Side", based on a play by the recently deceased Charlie L. Russell. Watching it I was reminded of "All in the Family": the old-school patriarch, the mousy mom, and the rebellious offspring. While the plot centers on the mom's finally standing up to her domineering husband, there's more. A truly outstanding scene…