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I. From New Black Consciousness to Blaxploitation

African-Americans, since forcibly brought to the New World by slave-traders, took advantage of their various forms of action to overcome the everyday present racial struggle in their lives. In the late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s, due to crucial instruments such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement one particular conduct developed, New Black Consciousness.

New Black Consciousness brought the factor of being pride of one’s skin-color and exceptional situation to the race issue. Though this was not entirely new, most blacks now felt more than before in a symbolic position. Their proud status would impress millions of blacks and other minorities in the US and show them that it was possible to disapprove of oppression and segregation, which still was present in many white peoples’ minds. New Black Consciousness was the effective community spirit, which welcomed all blacks with open arms. No longer was being black a situation of being ashamed of; no longer meant being black subordination to thoughts and orders of the white man.

This particularly had a massive influence on all forms of African-American cultural production. Everything gained a new look. One could frequently see proud and self-confident cultural expression with afro-haircuts, leisure suits, or high heels, the radio vehemently shouted “Say it loud - I’m black and I’m proud” ¹ across America, and the new freedom also gained its shape by the frequent consumption of drugs and the finding of complete fulfilment in sexual freedom. For so many blacks, expression met innovation with this love for sex, drugs, Funk and Soul.

Along these sweeping innovations within African-American cultural expression came one in film, which would shape the face of cinema of the future generations; Blaxploitation.

This project aims to portray and analyze the culture of Blaxploitation. In the first place, the historical and cultural background will be examined; secondly the era of Blaxploitation shall be surveyed, focusing on its films and music. The large influence and recent revival of Blaxploitation will also be covered, with a focus on the movie Shaft - Any Questions? (John Singleton, 2000) in the last chapter.

¹ A term used by popular African-American singers and entertainers, for example James Brown. It soon became a decisive slogan of this new black generation.

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II. Historical and Cultural Background

The era of Blaxploitation commenced in the late 1960’s, fully formed throughout the 1970’s, and eventually vanished in the 1980’s. Many decisive preceding events had huge influence on this era. The socio-historical and socio-political, and moreover the cultural events in the US all manifested themselves on screen in Blaxploitation movies, as directors and screen-writers used film as the medium to reflect the harsh reality they as blacks were confronted with everyday. As is stated by critic Richard Maynard, “black images in American films have usually been reflections of the history of race relations in [the US]” ² . Many Blaxploitation movies had something significant to say about the racism still so prevalent in American culture. Before focusing on this dilemma a closer look on the social and political circumstances in the US is needed.

Politically the US was facing a state of emergency. As the Cold War was casting a shadow over the world, America’s fight against Communism led US-armies into Vietnam after 1965 were they were facing huge resistance by the North-Vietnamese revolutionaries under the leadership of nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh. No clear progresses and successes could be reached, and for many soldiers victory seemed as impossible as the war seemed pointless for the population at home. Both presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had to handle millions of Anti-Vietnam protesters.

Black youth strongly sympathized with the Anti-Vietnam protesters and the spirit of growing counterculture. Unlike their fathers and mothers, who were influenced by the non-violent ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement, young blacks in the 1960’s and 70’s were much more radical in fighting against governmental injustices. Though the Civil Rights Movement had achieved to unite blacks and also many whites throughout America, a fact that brought about successes in the struggle for equality such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the shortcomings only had limited effect. A wave of race riots in many major American cities occurred and showed that now Black Power had taken on the former role of the peaceful resisting of injustices. After innovators and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. as well as progressives and supporters of the Civil Rights Movement like John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the younger generation reacted with this more radical answer to the issue of discrimination. Black Power stood more in the tradition of a radical Malcolm X and, raised by the thoughts of the chairman of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Stokely Carmichael, soon had followers all over the country. Other black activist groups like CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) expelled their white members, and thus broke with the tradition of the Civil Rights Movement which welcomed white members. Racial integration was no longer a goal for the new black generation. The aesthetic renaissance, consisting of an increasingly militant and vocal Black Arts Movement, one of whose most notable alumni was the writer Amiri Baraka, was another source of identification for the new generation of African-Americans.

² www.calendarlive.com/movies/lat_shaft000616.htm (March 20th, 2005)

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One of the more popular advocators of Black Power was the Black Panther Movement. Led by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, blacks armed themselves to patrol ghettos and keep the police from harassing their fellow black citizens. The leftist movement made a clear statement on how to defend oneself against racism. Among the younger generation the party had huge followings, which would lead to the New Left, the organized effort to realize a social and political system change. Furthermore Black Power uncovered suddenly to middle-class white America in which situation blacks happened to be: Both racism and discrimination were daily routine for many of them.

Focusing on Hollywood and the huge movie industry in the US during that period, one must clearly note that many major studios avoided risky topics like the issue of racism and prevailing discrimination in their movies. But increasingly blacks at this time were establishing themselves in the Hollywood movie industry. Besides discrimination, during the Cold War period there was pressure to address another issue in film, the issue of integration. Not only were schools and colleges attempting desegregation but also Hollywood was making attempts to employ black crewmembers and actors. Blacks were no longer meek characters blending in with the background but were now winning lead roles in films. Moreover, at a time when theatrical attendances were approaching an all-time low up to one third of people who still attended cinemas were black. For the strongest part, black characters were present in the comedy film genre, were for example popular stars and entertainers like Flip Wilson and Bill Cosby launched their careers, playing ordinary roles for blacks. An exception to it was popular actor Sidney Poitier, who played more developed roles, portraying a black upper class citizen, who left behind the problems of ordinary inner-city blacks. Poitier had single-handedly altered the hegemonic perception over a period of twenty years, to the point of having become the highest-grossing box-office star of 1968 (largely due to his portrayal in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (Stanley Kramer, 1967) of an internationally eminent doctor, who might be measured to seek to marry beneath himself in his courting of the daughter of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, were it not for his race). A clear success among whites and the Hollywood industry, Wilson, Cosby and as portrayed Poitier were all following stereotypes. The first two entertaining mostly a white audience, joking with many clichés, which a white audience understood in ways of their knowledge on how the black American culture works. Poitier, in the black population, was criticized for following the format of a slave-period house nigger, or Uncle Tom, one living in the house with his master who adapts to his white master’s life and manners to avoid the problems his counterparts, the field niggers, had. African-Americans portray of and play with black stereotypes and thus entertaining a white audience led to a huge debate among African-Americans. Minstrelization, as this tradition was called, dates back to early forms of the popular Minstrel Shows during the era of slavery, in which whites, dressed up as blacks, imitated black style, song and speech and achieved huge success. For one thing, this form of early entertainment was very fruitful and marks the roots of today’s stand-up comedians around the world. Nevertheless, because whites stole the special ways of presentation from blacks, a majority of blacks didn’t accept this interpretation of their own

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lives. Over the years, as many examples - from the Cotton Club ³ to Bill Cosby - show, many black actors and artists became rich and popular by entertaining in the tradition of Minstrel Shows and playing with stereotypes. But in the eyes of Black Nationalists and the advocators of Black Power, they lost their so-called street credibility. Minstrelization was something the advocators of New Black Consciousness never wanted. It clearly broke with the slogan so many blacks had internalized over the years: “Keep it real”. A new developed genre of film advocated a so-called De-Minstrelization, not by abandoning the stereotypes, but by exaggerating and overdoing them, a way to present them in a different light to a white audience. The “Now show ‘em you’re Bad” of the “Big Black Motherfuckers” in these films proved that. The films came to be known as Blaxploitation films.

Always black cultural production was innovative and energetic when it was pushed by social struggle and problems blacks had to face. Out of the 1960’s New Black Consciousness developed Blaxploitation. Blaxploitation was not entirely new, because it used a pattern and signifying a number of African-Americans had made use of, including another popular stand-up comedian, Richard Pryor. Pryor crossed the so-called “color line”, by not obeying a fixed moral pattern the black entertainers had to follow. He told jokes that in the eyes of his white audience would seem extreme, blatant and, in a way, rebellious. What Pryor did was an attack on the tradition of black adaptation to white America, an attack on Minstrelization, and thus earned criticism from a number of groups, consisting of a majority of whites and upper-class bourgeois blacks. Only few people understood Pryor’s signifying and were able to get his new style of joking. Pryor thus followed the example of some African-Americans in history who used this power play with stereotypes: The De-Minstrelization of black America by vivid exaggeration. The era of Blaxploitation marked another example of De-Minstrelization. It was enriched because, after the era’s first movies earned huge criticism, they became top-grossing sellers and most movies turned into blockbusters. Soon the white audiences came to love Blaxploitation movies, and not only white producers, but also white directors and screenwriters started to make their own Blaxploitation films. The original spirit of Blaxploitation was soon sold out and their true message lost more and more of its value in the many movies that followed some early masterpieces.

By definition the genre is a fusion of two different words - black and exploitation, a term created by the Hollywood trade magazine Variety to describe this type of expanding black film ⁴ . The problem comes with the question who is being exploited? Compared to genres developing at the same time, for example the splatter movies or the genre of porn movies, where the film’s images rather than its plot or discourse exploits one’s desire to watch the violence or sexuality, the Blaxploitation movies exploit “our desire to see […] African-Americans, on screen, doing presumably what one expects or wants to see African-Americans doing” ⁵ . The many factors described earlier contributed to the emergence of Blaxploitation as a genre; one

³ A popular night-club in Harlem, where only whites were allowed through the front-door. The visitors were entertained by a number of black artists, including Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Ethel Waters.

⁴ Tabnu, T. Henry. Blaxploitation. Page 1.

⁵ Koven, Mikel J. Blaxploitation Films. Page 7.

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of the main ones being also the economic issues faced by Hollywood studios. The 1948 Supreme Court anti-trust ruling obligated the major film studios such as Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, Columbia and others to divest themselves of their cinema chains across the country. They now had less power over all the aspects of the film industry, providing many more opportunities for black artists to enter the business. Another aspect, which had a strong impact on the formation of the genre, was the decline in film which arose as a result of a growing television industry because it provided easier access to entertainment in the home. This gave rise to an independent black film movement. Independent contractors were now creating movies and competing directly with the larger studios.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971), regarded as the first Blaxploitation film, was an independent venture on Peebles’ part, who not only wrote, produced and directed it but also acted as Sweetback in the film. The Civil Rights Movement was at its peak when Blaxploitation movies began. With race riots taking place nationwide and the Black Panthers, who had a large following in poor areas of the big cities, advocating militant action, it was obligatory for the film industry to respond in some manner. There was now a need to illustrate the black man in a more positive manner than had been done in the past as the media was depicting him as a militant and revolutionary. Blacks were more socially conscience and wanted to flee from evil and need which was happening around them. The black audience, stung by the assassination of Martin Luther King, and increasingly uncomfortable with Poitier's polite and bourgeois persona now insisted on a new kind of screen hero: "A black, urban, poor male striking back at a system which had denied him basic rights and respect" ⁶ . Thus the Blaxploitation movies consisted of a black action hero working himself successfully through a white-dominated world. The genre dealt with the repressed feelings of an almost powerless society and stood as a means of escape from the cruel reality of racism. As the soundtracks and scores stated it, black was now beautiful to all of the spectators. Although they may not have been able to relate to the trendy, confident individuals represented, the idea of just knowing that someone of black color could reach such high levels of achievement was enough of a morale boost. The black community was looking for a source to vent their frustrations and anger towards the white race. With Blaxploitation not only the audiences but also the black actors, directors and musicians had found it. Author Darius James stated that with Blaxploitation, “black people […] take back the images of racism and use them as a weapon against those who oppress them.” ⁷ III. The Era of Blaxploitation III.1 Blaxploitation - The Movies

Historians and scholars have identified three films, which started and boosted the Blaxploitation genre: Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis, 1970), Across 110 ^th Street (Barry Shear, 1972), and, for the most part, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Most of the succeeding Blaxploitation blockbusters build upon these three. The latter concentrates on the life of a

⁶ http://www.geocities.com/othniel_s/hood.htm (July 25th, 2005)

⁷ James, Darius. That’s Blaxploitation. Page .