11/24/2023 0 Comments Blaxploitation pride deep cover 1992įollowing 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).īlack Power Richard Roundtree as John ShaftĪfeni Shakur claimed that every aspect of culture (including cinema) in the 1960s and 1970s was influenced by the Black Power movement. They also often feature a rich orchestration which included flutes and violins. These soundtracks are notable for complexity that was not common to the radio-friendly funk tracks of the 1970s. The films usually portray black protagonists overcoming " The Man" or emblems of the white majority that oppresses the black community.īlaxploitation 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).įollowing 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. The genre's films are often bold in their statements and use violence, sex, drug trafficking and other shocking qualities to provoke the audience. Blaxploitation films set in the South often deal with slavery and miscegenation. Pejorative terms for white characters, such as " cracker" and " honky," are commonly used. Vincent Canby of The New York Times, 1976 īlaxploitation films set in the Northeast or West Coast mainly take place in poor urban neighborhoods. Blaxploitation films were also the first to feature soundtracks of funk and soul music. 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. Hollywood realized the potential profit of expanding the audiences of blaxploitation films. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.īlaxploitation films were originally aimed at an urban African-American audience but the genre's audience appeal soon broadened across racial and ethnic lines. The genre does rank among the first after the race films in the 1940s and 1960s in which black characters and communities are the protagonists and subjects of film and television, rather than sidekicks, antagonists or victims of brutality. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |