Blaxploitation

Blaxploitation is an

Variety credited Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and the less radical Hollywood-financed film Shaft (both released in 1971) with the invention of the blaxploitation genre, although Cotton Comes to Harlem was released the prior year.^[5] Blaxploitation films were also the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music.^[6]

Description

General themes

[S]upercharged, bad-talking, highly romanticized melodramas about Harlem superstuds, the pimps, the private eyes and the pushers who more or less singlehandedly make whitey's corrupt world safe for black pimping, black private-eyeing and black pushing.

— Vincent Canby of The New York Times, 1976^[7]

Blaxploitation films set in the Northeast or West Coast mainly take place in poor urban neighborhoods. Pejorative terms for white characters, such as "cracker" and "honky," are commonly used. Blaxploitation films set in the South often deal with slavery and miscegenation.^[8][9] The genre's films are often bold in their statements and use violence, sex, drug trafficking and other shocking qualities to provoke the audience.^[3] The films usually portray black protagonists overcoming "The Man" or emblems of the white majority that oppresses the black community.

Blaxploitation includes several subtypes, including crime (Foxy Brown), action/martial arts (Three the Hard Way), westerns (Boss Nigger), horror (Abby, Blacula), prison (Penitentiary), comedy (Uptown Saturday Night), nostalgia (Five on the Black Hand Side), coming-of-age (Cooley High/Cornbread, Earl and Me), and musical (Sparkle).

Following the example set by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, many blaxploitation films feature funk and soul jazz soundtracks with heavy bass, funky beats and wah-wah guitars. These soundtracks are notable for complexity that was not common to the radio-friendly funk tracks of the 1970s. They also often feature a rich orchestration which included flutes and violins.^[10]

Blaxploitation was one of the first film categories to have female leads to play brave heroic action packed protagonist inside of their films. Actresses such as Pam Grier in Coffy and Gloria Hendry in Black Belt Jones open the door for actresses to become action stars inside of film which later on inspired many other films down the road such as Kill Bill and Set it Off.

Following the popularity of these films in the 1970s, movies within other genres began to feature black characters with stereotypical blaxploitation characteristics, such as the Harlem underworld characters in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), Jim Kelly's character in Enter the Dragon (1973) and Fred Williamson's character in The Inglorious Bastards (1978).

Black Power

Knowing that film could bring about social and cultural change, the Black Power movement seized the genre to highlight black socioeconomic struggles in the 1970s; many such films contained black heroes who were able to overcome the institutional oppression of African American culture and history.^[3] Later films such as Super Fly softened the rhetoric of black power, encouraging resistance within the capitalist system rather than a radical transformation of society. Super Fly still embraced the black nationalist movement in its argument that black and white authority cannot coexist easily.

Stereotypes

The genre's role in exploring and shaping

Films such as Super Fly and The Mack received intense criticism not only for the stereotype of the protagonist (generalizing pimps as representative of all African-American men, in this case) but for portraying all black communities as hotbeds for drugs and crime.^[citation needed]

Blaxploitation films such as Mandingo (1975) provided mainstream Hollywood producers, in this case Dino De Laurentiis, a cinematic way to depict plantation slavery with all of its brutal, historical and racial contradictions and controversies, including sex, miscegenation, rebellion. The story world also depicts the plantation as one of the main origins of boxing as a sport in the U.S.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new wave of acclaimed black film makers, particularly Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood), and Allen and Albert Hughes (Menace II Society) focused on black urban life in their movies. These directors made use of blaxploitation elements while incorporating implicit criticism of the genre's glorification of stereotypical "criminal" behavior.

Alongside accusations of exploiting stereotypes, the NAACP also criticized the blaxploitation genre of exploiting the black community and culture of America, by creating films for a profit that those communities would never see, despite being the vastly misrepresented main focus of many blaxploitation film plots. Many film professionals still believe that there is no truly equal "Black Hollywood" as evidenced by the "Oscars So White" scandal in 2015 that caused uproar when no black actors were nominated for "Best Actor" Oscar Awards.^[12]

Slavesploitation

Slavesploitation, a subgenre of blaxploitation in literature and film, flourished briefly in the late 1960s and 1970s.^[15][16] As its name suggests, the genre is characterized by sensationalistic depictions of slavery.

Abrams, arguing that Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012) finds its historical roots in the slavesploitation genre, observes that slavesploitation films are characterized by "crassly exploitative representations of oppressed slave protagonists".^[17]

One early antecedent of the genre is Slaves (1969), which Gaines notes was "not 'slavesploitation' in the vein of later films", but which nonetheless featured graphic depictions of beatings and sexual violence against slaves.^[18] Novotny argues that Blacula (1972), although it does not depict slavery directly, is historically linked to the slavesploitation subgenre.^[19]

By far, the best-known and best-studied exemplar of slavesploitation is Mandingo, a 1957 novel which was adapted into a 1961 play and a 1975 film. Indeed, Mandingo was so well known that a contemporary reviewer of Die the Long Day, a 1972 novel by Orlando Patterson, called it an example of the "Mandingo genre".^[20] The film, panned on its release, has been subject to widely divergent critical assessments.^[21] Robin Wood, for instance, argued in 1998 that it is the "greatest film about race ever made in Hollywood, certainly prior to Spike Lee and in some respects still".^[22]

Legacy

Influence

Blaxploitation films have had an enormous and complicated influence on American cinema. Filmmaker and exploitation film fan Quentin Tarantino, for example, has made numerous references to the blaxploitation genre in his films. An early blaxploitation tribute can be seen in the character of "Lite," played by Sy Richardson, in Repo Man (1984).^{[citation needed]} Richardson later wrote Posse (1993), which is a kind of blaxploitation Western.

Some of the later, blaxploitation-influenced movies such as

In Michael Chabon's novel Telegraph Avenue, set in 2004, two characters are former blaxploitation stars.^[24]

In 1980, opera director

A 2016 video game, Mafia III, is set in the year 1968 and revolves around Lincoln Clay, a mixed-race African American orphan raised by "black mob".^[27] After the murder of his surrogate family at the hands of the Italian mafia, Lincoln Clay seeks vengeance on those who took away the only thing that mattered to him.

Cultural references

The notoriety of the blaxploitation genre has led to many parodies.^[28] The earliest attempts to mock the genre, Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin and Rudy Ray Moore's Dolemite, date back to the genre's heyday in 1975.

Coonskin was intended to deconstruct racial stereotypes, from early minstrel show stereotypes to more recent stereotypes found in blaxploitation film itself. The work stimulated great controversy even before its release when the Congress of Racial Equality challenged it. Even though distribution was handed to a smaller distributor who advertised it as an exploitation film, it soon developed a cult following with black viewers.^[5]

Dolemite, less serious in tone and produced as a spoof, centers around a sexually active black pimp played by Rudy Ray Moore, who based the film on his stand-up comedy act. A sequel, The Human Tornado, followed.

Later spoofs parodying the blaxploitation genre include I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Pootie Tang, Undercover Brother, Black Dynamite, and The Hebrew Hammer, which featured a Jewish protagonist and was jokingly referred to by its director as a "Jewsploitation" film.

Robert Townsend's comedy Hollywood Shuffle features a young black actor who is tempted to take part in a white-produced blaxploitation film.

The satirical book Our Dumb Century features an article from the 1970s entitled "Congress Passes Anti-Blaxploitation Act: Pimps, Players Subject to Heavy Fines".

Another of FOX's network television comedies, Martin starring Martin Lawrence, frequently references the blaxploitation genre. In the Season Three episode "All The Players Came", when Martin organizes a "Player's Ball" charity event to save a local theater, several stars of the blaxploitation era, such as Rudy Ray Moore, Antonio Fargas, Dick Anthony Williams and Pam Grier all make cameo appearances. In one scene, Martin, in character as aging pimp "Jerome", refers to Pam Grier as "Sheba, Baby" in reference to her 1975 blaxploitation feature film of the same name.

In the movie

The sub-cult movie short Gayniggers from Outer Space is a blaxploitation-like science fiction oddity directed by Danish filmmaker, DJ, and singer Morten Lindberg.

Jefferson Twilight, a character in The Venture Bros., is a parody of the comic-book character Blade (a black, half human, half-vampire vampire hunter), as well as a blaxploitation reference. He has an afro, sideburns, and a mustache. He carries swords, dresses in stylish 1970s clothing, and says that he hunts "Blaculas". He looks and sounds like Samuel L. Jackson.^{[citation needed]}

A scene from the Season 9 episode of The Simpsons, "Simpson Tide", shows Homer Simpson watching Exploitation Theatre. A voice-over announces fake movie titles such as The Blunch Black of Blotre Blame.

Martha Southgate's 2005 novel Third Girl from the Left is set in Hollywood during the era of blaxploitation films and references many blaxploitation films and stars such as Pam Grier and Coffy.

Notable blaxploitation films

Main article: List of blaxploitation films

1968

• Uptight (film) a 1968 American drama film directed by Jules Dassin. It was intended as an updated version of John Ford's 1935 film The Informer, based on the book of the same name by Liam O'Flaherty, but the setting was transposed from Dublin to Cleveland. The soundtrack was performed by Booker T. & the MG's. This movie follows the story of a Black nationalist organization in Cleveland (largely based in the Hough and Glenville neighborhoods) that becomes disillusioned with non-violence after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and prepares for urban guerilla warfare.

1970

• The Black Angels is about a black motorcycle gang and is part of the outlaw biker film genre.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! A sequel to In the Heat of the Night
  , it is a pre-Shaft blaxploitation, and stylistically different from the original film.
• Carter's Army is a television film about a unit of black soldiers in World War II.
• Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge
  ), on the hunt for a money-filled cotton bale stolen by a corrupt reverend named Deke O'Malley.

1971

• Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is written, produced, scored, directed by and stars Melvin Van Peebles. The hero, named Sweetback because of his sexual powers, is an apolitical sex worker. His pimp, Beadle, makes a deal with a couple of police officers to let them take Sweetback into the station so it looks like the cops are picking up suspects. While Sweetback is in custody, the police arrest a young black militant and take him to a rural area to torture him. Sweetback steps in and beats the police unconscious. With the police chasing him, Sweetback comes to understand the power of the black community sticking together. He uses his ingenuity and survival skills to outwit the police and escape to Mexico.^[29] Music by Earth Wind & Fire.
• short-lived TV series starring Roundtree.^[30] The concept was revived in 2000 with an all-new sequel starring Samuel L. Jackson as the nephew of the original John Shaft, with Roundtree reprising his role as the original Shaft. A direct sequel to the 2000 film was released in 2019, also titled Shaft
  .
• The Bus Is Coming is a 1971 American drama film about a young black soldier who returns home to Los Angeles from combat in Vietnam to find out that his brother had been killed by a gang of racist cops. He struggles between maintaining his beliefs surrounding liberalism and centrism, or being radicalized from his brother's death, and possibly joining the Black nationalist organization the Black Fist. This movie was directed by Wendell James Franklin and starred Mike B. Simms and, Burl Bullock.

1972

• Come Back, Charleston Blue, starring Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques, loosely based on Chester Himes' novel The Heat's On. It is a sequel to the 1970 film Cotton Comes to Harlem. All tracks written by Donny Hathaway except "Little Ghetto Boy"
• Ed Cambridge), to a man he looked up to as a child (Rudy Challenger), and a mobster (Don Diamond
  ).
• Super Fly (dir. Gordon Parks Jr.) features a soundtrack by Curtis Mayfield. Super Fly is one of the most controversial, profitable and popular classics of the genre.^[31]
• The Legend of Nigger Charley (dir. Martin Goldman) is written by, co-produced by and stars Fred Williamson. It was followed by the sequel The Soul of Nigger Charley (1973).
• Hammer (dir. Bruce D. Clark) stars Fred Williamson as B.J. Hammer, a boxer who gets mixed up with a crooked manager who wants him to throw a fight for the Mafia.
• Billboard Black Singles Chart
  .
• Black Mama, White Mama is a women in prison film partly inspired by The Defiant Ones (1958) starring Pam Grier and Margaret Markov in the roles originated by Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis
  .
• William H. Marshall) who is bitten and imprisoned by Count Dracula
  . Once freed from his coffin, he spreads terror in modern-day Los Angeles.
• Melinda (dir. Hugh Robertson) features music by Jerry Peters and Jerry Butler.^[32]
• Slaughter stars Jim Brown as an ex-Green Beret who seeks revenge against a crime syndicate for the murder of his parents. It spawned the sequel, Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973).
• Trouble Man stars Robert Hooks as "Mr. T.", a hard-edged private detective who tends to take justice into his own hands. Although the film itself was unsuccessful, it did enjoy a successful soundtrack written, produced and performed by Motown artist Marvin Gaye.
• The Final Comedown (dir. Oscar Williams) features music by Grant Green and Wade Marcus, and stars Billy Dee Williams. The film is an examination of racism in the United States and depicts a shootout between a radical black nationalist group and the police, with the backstory leading up to the shootout told through flashbacks.
• Black Gunn is a 1972 American neo-noir crime thriller film, directed by Robert Hartford-Davis and starring Jim Brown, Martin Landau, Brenda Sykes, Herbert Jefferson Jr. and Luciana Paluzzi. The film is considered an entry blaxploitation sub-genre, but is unique to the genre in several different ways. The film is set in Los Angeles where a nighttime robbery of an illegal mafia bookmaking operation is carried out by the militant African-American organization BAG (Black Action Group). Though successful, several of the bookmakers and one of the burglars are killed. The mastermind behind the robbery, a Vietnam veteran named Scott, is the brother of a prominent nightclub owner, Gunn. Seeking safe haven, Scott hides out at his brother's mansion after a brief reunion.

1973

• Black Caesar, Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) is a street-smart hoodlum who has worked his way up to being the crime boss of Harlem. Music by James Brown.
• Blackenstein is a parody of Frankenstein and features a black Frankenstein's monster.
• T.N.T. Jackson
  .
• Sheba Baby
  .
• Detroit, MI and features street-smart white detective Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco) who teams with educated black detective Sgt. Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes) to investigate the theft of $400,000 at a fund-raiser for Representative Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger). Championed by Quentin Tarantino, it was released on video by Miramax
  in April 1999.
• Gordon's War stars Paul Winfield as a Vietnam vet who recruits ex-Army buddies to fight the Harlem drug dealers and pimps responsible for the heroin-fueled death of his wife.
• Hell Up in Harlem is the sequel to Black Caesar and stars Fred Williamson and Gloria Hendry, with a soundtrack by Motown singer Edwin Starr.
• Live and Let Die, a James Bond movie directed by Guy Hamilton and starring Roger Moore. Many of the villains and allies are based on stock blaxploitation characters.
• The Mack is a film starring Max Julien and Richard Pryor.^[33] It was produced during the era of such Blaxploitations as Dolemite. It is not considered by its makers a true blaxploitation picture. It is more a social commentary according to Mackin' Ain't Easy, a documentary about the making of The Mack, which can be found on the DVD edition of the film. The movie tells the story of the life of John Mickens (a.k.a. Goldie), a former drug dealer recently released from prison who becomes a big-time pimp. Standing in his way is another pimp: Pretty Tony. Two corrupt white cops, a local crime lord, and his own brother (a black nationalist), all try to force him out of the business. Set in Oakland, California, it was the highest grossing blaxploitation of its time. Its soundtrack was recorded by Motown artist Willie Hutch.
• Scream Blacula Scream is the sequel to Blacula. William H. Marshall reprises his role as Blacula/Mamuwalde.
• race war. Until its 2004 DVD release, it was hard to find, save for infrequent bootleg VHS copies. In 2012, the film was included in the USA Library of Congress National Film Registry.^[34]
• Superfly TNT
  (dir. Ron O'Neil)
• That Man Bolt, starring Fred Williamson, is the first spy film in this genre, combining elements of James Bond with martial arts action in an international setting.
• Trick Baby is based on the book of the same name by ex-pimp Iceberg Slim.
• Willie Dynamite, Roscoe Orman (Gordon from Sesame Street fame) plays a pimp. As in many blaxploitation films, the lead character drives a customized Cadillac Eldorado Coupe (the same car was used in Magnum Force).

1974

• discotheque
  . A hit in its time, it was later pulled from the theaters after Warner Bros. successfully sued AIP over copyright issues.
• Black Belt Jones, Jim Kelly, who is better known for his role as "Mister Williams" in the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon, is given a leading role. He plays Black Belt Jones, a federal agent/martial arts expert who takes on the mob as he avenges the murder of a karate school owner.
• Black Eye is an action-mystery starring Fred Williamson as a private detective investigating murders connected with a drug ring.
• The Black Godfather stars Rod Perry as a man rising to underworld power based on The Godfather.
• The Black Six is about a black motorcycle gang seeking revenge. It combines blaxploitation and outlaw biker film.
• Foxy Brown is largely a remake of the hit film Coffy. Pam Grier once again plays a nurse on a vendetta against a drug ring, who seeks help from the Black Panthers.^[35] Originally written as a sequel to Coffy, the film's working title was Burn, Coffy, Burn!. The soundtrack was recorded by Willie Hutch.
• Claudine (film): Music by Curtis Mayfield and Gladys Knight & the Pips. Cast/Diahann Carroll.^[36]
• Get Christie Love! is a TV movie later released to some theaters. This police drama, starring an attractive young black woman (Teresa Graves) as an undercover cop, was later made into a short-lived TV series.
• Johnny Tough stars Dion Gossett and Renny Roker
  .
• Space Is the Place is a psychedelically themed blaxploitation film featuring Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Arkestra.
• Sugar Hill is set in Houston and features a female fashion photographer (played by Marki Bey) who wreaks revenge on the local crime Mafia that murdered her fiancé with the use of voodoo magic.
• Three the Hard Way features three black men (Fred Williamson, Jim Kelly, and Jim Brown) who must stop a white supremacist plot to eliminate all blacks with a serum in the water supply. Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
• Three Tough Guys stars Isaac Hayes and music by Isaac Hayes.
• TNT Jackson stars Jean Bell (one of the first black Playboy playmates) and is partly set in Hong Kong. It is notable for blending blaxploitation with the then-popular "chop-socky" martial arts genre.
• Love Unlimited Orchestra
  .
• Truck Turner (dir. Jonathan Kaplan) stars Isaac Hayes, Yaphet Kotto and Nichelle Nichols. A former football player turned bounty hunter is pitted against a powerful prostitution crime syndicate in Los Angeles. Music by Isaac Hayes.^[37]

1975

• Sheba, Baby, a female private eye (Pam Grier) tries to help her father save his loan business from a gang of thugs.
• The Black Gestapo, Rod Perry plays General Ahmed, who has started an inner-city People's Army to try to relieve the misery of the citizens of Watts, Los Angeles. When the Mafia moves in, they establish a military-style squad.
• Boss Nigger, along with his friend Amos (D'Urville Martin), Boss Nigger (Fred Williamson) takes over the vacated position of Sheriff in a small western town in this Western blaxploitation film. Because of its controversial title, it was released in some markets as The Boss, The Black Bounty Killer or The Black Bounty Hunter.
• Disney's Song of the South. It features the voice of Barry White
  as Br'er Bear.
• Darktown Strutters (dir. William Witney) is a farce produced by Roger Corman's brother, Gene. A Colonel Sanders-type figure with a chain of urban fried chicken restaurants is trying to wipe out the black race by making them impotent through his drugged fried chicken.
• Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is the retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde tale, starring Bernie Casey.
• Dolemite is also the name of its principal character, played by Rudy Ray Moore, who co-wrote the script. Moore had developed the alter-ego as a stand-up comedian and released several comedy albums using this persona. The film was directed by D'Urville Martin, who appears as the villain Willie Green. The film has attained cult status, earning it a following and making it more well-known than many of its counterparts. A sequel, The Human Tornado, was released in 1976.
• Mandingo is based on a series of lurid Civil War novels and focuses on the abuses of slavery and the sexual relations between slaves and slave owners. It features Richard Ward and Ken Norton. It was followed by a sequel, Drum (1976) starring Pam Grier.
• The Candy Tangerine Man opens with pageantry pimp Baron (John Daniels) driving his customized two-tone red and yellow Rolls-Royce around downtown L.A at night. His ladies have been coming up short lately and he wants to know why. It turns out that two L.A.P.D. cops - Dempsey and Gordon, who have been after Baron for some time now, have resorted to rousting his girls every chance they get. Indeed, in the next scene they have set Baron up with a cop in drag to entrap him with procurement of prostitutes.
• Lady Cocoa (dir. Matt Cimber) stars Lola Falana.
• Let's Do It Again, Music: Composed by Curtis Mayfield.
• Welcome Home Brother Charles. After being released from prison, a wrongfully imprisoned black man takes vengeance on those who previously crossed him by strangling them with his penis.

1976

• Black Shampoo is a take-off of the Warren Beatty hit Shampoo.
• Cirio Santiago
  ) (also known as She Devils in Chains, American Beauty Hostages, Foxfire, Foxforce), features three female athletes who are kidnapped during an international track meet in Hong Kong and fight their way to freedom. This is another cross-genre blend of blaxploitation and martial arts action films.
• The Muthers is another Cirio Santiago combination of Filipino martial arts action and women-in-prison elements. Jeanne Bell and Jayne Kennedy rescue prisoners held at an evil coffee plantation.
• Passion Plantation (a.k.a. Black Emmanuel, White Emmanuel) is a blend of the Mandingo and Emmanuelle, erotic films with interracial sex and savagery.
• Velvet Smooth, Johnnie Hill is a female private detective hired to infiltrate the criminal underworld.
• The Human Tornado a.k.a. Dolemite II, Rudy Ray Moore reprises his role as Dolemite in the sequel to the 1975 film Dolemite.
• J. D.'s Revenge, a cab driver is possessed by a dead gangster who seeks revenge for his murder over 30 years ago.

1977

• Black Fist features a street fighter who goes to work for a white gangster and a corrupt cop. The film is in the public domain. Cast members include Richard Lawson and Dabney Coleman.
• Black Samurai (dir. Al Adamson) is based on a novel of the same name by Marc Olden, and stars Jim Kelly. The script is credited to B. Readick, with additional story ideas from Marco Joachim.
• Bare Knuckles stars Robert Viharo, Sherry Jackson and Gloria Hendry. The film is written and directed by Don Edmonds and follows L.A. bounty hunter Zachary Kane (Viharo) on the hunt for a masked serial killer.
• Petey Wheatstraw (a.k.a. Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-In-Law) is written by Cliff Roquemore and stars popular blaxploitation genre comedian Rudy Ray Moore along with Jimmy Lynch, Leroy Daniels, Ernest Mayhand and Ebony Wright. It is typical of Moore's other films of the era, Dolemite and The Human Tornado, in that it features Moore's rhyming dialogue.

1978

• Death Dimension is a martial arts film directed by Al Adamson and starring Jim Kelly, Harold Sakata, George Lazenby, Terry Moore, and Aldo Ray. The film also goes by the names Death Dimensions, Freeze Bomb, Icy Death, The Kill Factor and Black Eliminator. A scientist, Professor Mason, invents a powerful freezing bomb for a gangster leader nicknamed "The Pig" (Sakata).

1979

• Disco Godfather, also known as The Avenging Disco Godfather, is an action film starring Rudy Ray Moore and Carol Speed. Moore's character, a retired cop, owns and operates a disco and tries to shut down the local angel dust dealer after his nephew becomes hooked on the drug.
• Penitentiary (dir. Jamaa Franklin) follows the travails of Martel "Too Sweet" Gordone (Leon Isaac Kennedy) after his wrongful imprisonment. Set in a prison, the film exploits all of the tropes of the genre, including violence, sexuality and the eventual triumph of the lead character.

Post-1970s Blaxploitation films

• The Last Dragon (1985) is a martial arts action film with blaxploitation elements.
• I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) is a comedic spoof of classic 1970s blaxploitation and features many of its stars: Jim Brown, Bernie Casey, Antonio Fargas and Isaac Hayes.
• Action Jackson (1988) is a film where the protagonist Jericho Jackson (Carl Weathers), uses catchphrases to taunt his opponents. Craig T. Nelson, Sharon Stone and Vanity also star.
• Rusty Cundiff
  ) is a Comedy horror anthology film with Urban themes.
• Original Gangstas (1996) brings together 1970s blaxploitation stars Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson and Jim Brown.
• Jackie Brown (1997, dir. Quentin Tarantino) stars Pam Grier and Samuel L. Jackson in an homage to the blaxploitation genre. Based on the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, Tarantino's title change, casting of Grier and 1970s-style poster art, are all references to Grier's 1974 film Foxy Brown.
• Pootie Tang (2001) incorporates many blaxploitation elements comedically.
• The Return of Dolemite (2002), the third chapter to the Dolemite series, later retitled as The Dolemite Explosion for the DVD release.
• Undercover Brother (2002) stars Eddie Griffin as a blaxploitation-style secret agent.
• Full Clip (2004) is made in the graphic novel style.
• Hookers In Revolt (2008, dir. Sean Weathers). With its prevalence of pimps and prostitutes, it is an inventive throwback to early 1970s blaxploitation.^[38]
• Black Dynamite (2009) stars Michael Jai White and spoofs blaxploitation films.
• Proud Mary (2018) is an action thriller starring Taraji P. Henson and Danny Glover.^[39]
• Get Christie Love! (2018), a made-for-TV remake of the 1974 film starring Kylie Bunbury which, unlike the original, was never picked up for a TV series.
• Jason Mitchell
  .
• Undercover Brother 2 (2019), a sequel to the 2002 film starring Michael Jai White.
• The Harder They Fall (2021) is a Netflix Western film starring Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba.
• They Cloned Tyrone (2023) is Netflix Afrofuturistic neo-Blaxploitation film starring John Boyega, Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx

Other

• Baadasssss! (2003), a biopic about the making of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, starring Mario Van Peebles.
• Dolemite Is My Name (2019), a biopic about the making of Dolemite, starring Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore.

See also

• Hood film
• Race film
• Race record
• List of blaxploitation films
• List of topics related to Black and African people § Cinema and theater
• Stereotypes of African Americans § Film and television
• Post-civil rights era African-American history

References

1. ^ "Say It Loud! The Black Cinema Revolution". Harvard Film Archive. October 21, 2016. Retrieved January 31, 2024.
2. ^ Anderson, Tre’vell (June 8, 2018). "A look back at the blaxploitation era through 2018 eyes". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 8, 2018. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
3. ^
   JSTOR 2901183
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4. ^ Denby, David (August 1972). "Getting Whitey". The Atlantic Monthly: 86–88.
5. ^
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6. ^ Ebert, Roger (June 11, 2004). "Review of Baadasssss!". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on February 17, 2007. Retrieved January 4, 2007.
7. ISSN 0362-4331
   . Retrieved February 25, 2018.
8. ^ "Blaxploitation: A Sketch - Bright Lights Film Journal". March 1, 1997.
9. ^ Holden, Stephen (June 9, 2000). "FILM REVIEW; From Blaxploitation Stereotype to Man on the Street". The New York Times. Retrieved April 26, 2010.
10. ^ "Music Genre: Blaxploitation". Allmusic. Retrieved June 21, 2007.
11. ^ Boyd, Herb (1996). "African-American images on television and film". The Crisis. 103 (2): 22–24.
12. ^ ^{a b c} eztha_zienne (June 29, 2016). "BaadAsssss Cinema Documentary 2002" – via YouTube.^{[dead YouTube link]}
13. Seattle Times
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14. ^ Addison Gayle, Black World, December 1974
15. ISBN 978-1-78138-267-7
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16. ISBN 978-1-4408-3206-2
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21. ^ Symmons, Tom (2013). The Historical Film in the Era of New Hollywood, 1967–1980 (PhD thesis). Queen Mary University of London. p. 87.
22. ISBN 978-0-231-07605-0
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23. ^ "Beggin'". Youtube.com. November 22, 2007. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved August 8, 2013.
24. ^ "Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue: Read an exclusive excerpt". National Public Radio. August 12, 2012. Retrieved September 25, 2014.
25. ^ BERNHEIMER, MARTIN (December 13, 1990). "TV REVIEW : Peter Sellars Has His Modern Way With Mozart : Opera:Conventional ideas of Baroque drama are blithely tossed aside as Figaro gets married in the Trump Tower" – via Los Angeles Times.
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Further reading

• Blaxploitation Films by Mikel J. Koven, 2010, Kamera Books,
  ISBN 978-1-903047-58-3
• "The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation" by Ed Guerrero, in The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, eds. Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, Art Simon, (New York, 2012): Vol 3, pp. 435–469,
  ISBN 978-1-4051-7984-3
  .
• What It Is ... What It Was!; The Black Film Explosion of the '70s in Words and Pictures by Andres Chavez, Denise Chavez, Gerald Martinez
  ISBN 0-7868-8377-4
• "The So Called Fall of Blaxploitation" by Ed Guerrero, The Velvet Light Trap #64 Fall 2009
• "Black Outlaws and the Struggle for Empowerment in Blaxploitation Cinema," by Joshua K. Wright, Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring 2014), pp. 63–86 (24 pages),
  JStor
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Blaxploitation.

• Harvard Magazine: The Blaxploitation Era