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Blaxploitation

Blaxploitation is a controversial film genre developed in the United States in the early 1970s. The films in this genre were some of the first to target the urban African-American audience with primarily black characters, soundtracks featuring funk and soul music and urban settings, which lead to plots involving drug dealing, prostitution and other forms of crime. Because of this, and because many characters were seen as violent, sassy, African-American stereotypes, blaxploitation films were protested by civil rights groups. The controversy was only heightened by the fact that most of these films, although featuring black actors and musicians, were often written and directed by white men.

Films such as Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Watermelon Man which were written and directed by Melvin Van Peebles, and Cotton Comes to Harlem 1970 written and directed by Ossie Davis are often categorized and referred to as "blaxploitation"; but this is a matter of some debate as they were created by African Americans. The great and newfound demand for afrocentric entertainment in the late '60s-early 70's was exploited in these films, hence an argument for inclusion in this category.

The films were nonetheless immensely popular among black audiences, possibly because they were among a very few movies which dealt primarily with black men and women, bringing them to the foreground, and because they, as a formula, had endings which were generally favorable to the central character. When set in the North, blaxploitation films tended to take place in the ghetto and deal with pimps, drug dealers, and hit men; when set in the South, the movies most often took place on a plantation and dealt with slavery and miscegenation. Almost all of them featured exaggerated sexuality and violence.

The Coalition Against Blaxploitation (consisting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Urban League, as well as many black film professionals) formed in reaction to the films, and received much media exposure and possibly quickened the death of the genre by the late 1970s.

Some film scholars defend the movies today, arguing that the genre was instrumental in allowing African Americans greater screen presence, as well as greater latitude in "mainstream" film-making as actors, directors, and writers. Some also admire the charisma of actors such as Pam Grier (Foxy Brown) and Richard Roundtree (Shaft) and the soundtrack contributions of such prominent musicians as Isaac Hayes, who sang the theme to Shaft and Curtis Mayfield, whose soundtrack to Superfly remains a classic. 1971's Shaft, perhaps the most famous blaxploitation film, has even entered the Library of Congress.

Recent films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember and Undercover Brother, as well as Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Kill Bill, Vol. 1, feature nods to the blaxploitation genre.

Famous blaxploitation films include:


I'm Gonna Git You Sucka is a famous spoof of urban blaxploitation films, featuring several of the male stars of that genre. A later film, Original Gangstas , also featured many of those stars, but was made as a tribute to the genre.

The popular 1998 anime series Cowboy Bebop features several episodes with blaxploitation themes, particularly Mushroom Samba which extensively parodies blaxploitation films.

The Hebrew Hammer (2003) is another parody of blaxploitation films, but with a Jewish protagonist.

In 2004, Mario Van Peebles, Melvin's son, released Baadasssss!, a film based on the making of his father's movie in which Mario played his father.

The word "blaxploitation" is a portmanteau of "black" and "exploitation", indicating that blaxploitation is a subgenre of exploitation films. A number of other terms have been coined on the same pattern, including hixploitation ("hick," dealing with rural characters), dyxploitation ("dyke," profiting from lesbian chic), Sexploitation ("Sex" focusing on nude or semi-nude female charactors), and chixploitation ("chick," focusing on scantily clad female main characters.) These terms enjoy limited currency.

See also

History of cinema

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