Lecture 10:
Blaxploitation, Race and Genre in
the 1970s
Shaft (1971)
Directed by Gordon Parks
Professor Michael Green
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Previous Lecture
•
Racial Projects and
Guess Who’s
Coming to Dinner
•
Sidney Poitier and
Supertoms
•
Interracial Buddy
Films and The
Defiant Ones
•
Writing About Film
2
This Lecture
•
Race and Genre
Anxiety in the 1970s
•
Blaxploitation:
Setting the Context
•
Blaxploitation as
Genre
•
Writing About Film:
Using Sources I
3
Race and Genre Anxiety in the
1970s
Dirty Harry (1971)
Directed by Don Siegel
Lecture 10: Part I
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The Purpose and Function of Genre
• Genre conventions encourage repetition,
reconfiguration and renewal of familiar
cinematic forms – war movie, western, sci-fi,
melodrama – to appeal to audiences who
take pleasure in their familiarity.
• Genres are used by Hollywood as a
convenient way to predict ticket sales, but
they are also ideological in the way that their
conventions reflect and reify such subjects as
race, class, gender and sexuality.
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Genre Reflects Society
• In their sameness from era to era, genre
conventions – such as gunfights and horse
riding in the Western – often contribute to an
ahistorical view of the world.
• However, alternations in these conventions
also signify the historical moment in which
the film is made, sometimes reflecting broad
structural and social changes.
• “Revisionist” Westerns of the late 1960s and
early 1970s – The Wild Bunch, McCabe and
Mrs. Miller – are a good example.
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Race in Genre Representation
“Race plays a crucial role in generic
representations. Hollywood westerns, war
movies, detective stories, melodramas, and
action-adventure films often rely on racial
imagery, underscoring the heroism of white
males by depicting them as defenders of
women and children against predatory
‘Indians,’ Asians, Mexicans, and black
people . . . they move toward narrative and
ideological closure by restoring the white
hero to his ‘rightful’ place.”
– George Lipsitz, “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation”
Genre in the 1970s
•
Lipsitz argues that the blockbusters of the
1970s – such films as The Godfather (1972)
Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) – relied
upon familiar genre conventions to affirm
continuity and uphold conservative ideology
and white patriarchy in an era of drastic
social change.
•
However, these blockbusters followed an
era of “genre anxiety” in which genre films
more overtly represented the social and
cultural anxiety of the era.
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“Genre Anxiety”
“The racial crises of the 1960s in the U.S. gave
rise to “genre anxiety,” to changes in generic
forms effected by adding unconventional
racial elements to conventional genre films.
The emergence of those films, their eclipse
later in the 1970s by changes in Hollywood’s
marketing and production strategies . . . can
best be understood not as aesthetic changes
alone but as a register of dynamic changes
in social relations.”
–
George Lipsitz, “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970s
Cinema”
Race and Genre in the 1970s
•
Many genre films from the era
showed racial concerns as well,
including the detective film
Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970);
the Westerns Buck and The
Preacher (1971) and Blazing
Saddles (1974); action films
such as Gordon’s War (1973)
and comedies such as Car
Wash (1975) and A Piece of the
Action (1977).
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Case Study: Blacula
•
Blacula (1972) used the genres of horror
and vampire movies to reflect the racial
tensions of the era and to advocate for racial
and social equality.
•
Lipsitz argues that the movie presents “a
playful mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar
. . . by inserting contemporary social
concerns into a familiar genre.”
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Blacula.
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Reinforcing Genre Conventions
•
As some films from the
era subverted genre
conventions to reflect
and advocate for social
change, other films
strengthened and
reinforced genre
conventions as a way
of upholding
conservative values.
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Dirty Harry.
Race and Phallic Symbols
•
•
Black men have been associated with
phallic symbols, suggesting, from a
Freudian perspective, the anxiety white
society has typically had about black male
sexuality and, to be blunt, size.
In the south, during the days of lynching,
black men would often be castrated. In
films, they're typically killed first and
usually by a phallic symbol like a sword, a
gun, a spike, etc.
Examples in Film
•
•
Hence, the connection between stereotypes
of black man as sexual threats and the use
of phallic symbols in film.
Examples include Dirty Harry, Conan the
Barbarian (1982); Live and Let Die (1972).
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Directed by John Milius
Upholding Patriarchal Power
“Crime films of the early 1970s, including Don
Siegel’s Dirty Harry, reflected “white anxiety”
about the black self-activity and subjectivity of
the 1960s as well as about economic
stagnation by reconfiguring the genre to
present authoritarian white male heroes as the
only remedy for a disintegrating society . . [in
Dirty Harry] criminals and civil libertarians of
both genders are coded as “female” forces
undermining patriarchal power.”
–
George Lipsitz, “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970s
Cinema”
Summary of Points
• Genre conventions appeal to audiences who
take pleasure in their ahistorical familiarity.
• But genres are also ideological, often
reflecting broad social changes.
• Race and gender play a crucial role in genre
representation.
• In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some
genre films reflected and advocated for
social change while others reinforced genre
conventions and as a way to reinforce social
and cultural conventions.
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Author’s Final Point
“The directors of these 1970s films had
different agendas, ideologies, and
interests. None of them intended either a
purely ideological statement or a selfconscious innovation in genre form . . .
Whether acknowledged overtly or covertly,
the social crises of the early 1970s
suffused these films with an instability that
posed serious challenges to traditional
genre conventions.”
–
George Lipsitz, “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in
1970s Cinema”
Blaxploitation: Setting the Context
Foxy Brown (1974)
Directed by Jack Hill
Lecture 10: Part II
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Sidney Poitier
•
Poitier was the leading black male actor in
America in the 1960s – and virtually the
only one.
•
He symbolized in Hollywood films of the
1950s and 1960s the rising young
American black man.
•
Poitier was the key to the commercial
success of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
because he was well recognized and
acceptable to the white audience.
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Rejecting Sidney Poitier
• However, by 1967 and the triple success of
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, To Sir with
Love and In the Heat of the Night, black
audiences began to reject the kinds of
characters played by Sidney Poitier and the
racial social problem films he appeared in.
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in particular
was harshly criticized by black and white
critics for its shallowness, its liberal piety and
lack of realism.
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New Representation
• New representations of African Americans
began to depict them as more masculine;
they were not always suppressing their
physicality or emotion in deference to
threatened white audiences.
• In contrast to Poitier, these heroes were
often physical, militant and/or politicized.
– Jim Brown in The Dirty Dozen (1967)
– Woody Strode in Che (1969)
– Fred Williamson in M*A*S*H (1970)
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Industry Trouble
• From 1967 – 1976, studios, distressed by
their dwindling profits and fading audience,
turned over the keys of the kingdom to “the
movie brats” a generation of young directors
who had been
– Film school graduates
– Influenced by European art films
– Profoundly affected by contemporary history
• They made a number of films aimed at
younger audiences that embraced social
realism and tough, complex themes. 22
The New Hollywood
•
•
•
Among the most popular of these films
were Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969)
and Robert Altman’s M*A*SH (1970).
Other seminal films of the period include
Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, The
Graduate, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown,
Midnight Cowboy and Mean Streets.
These films were informed by the concerns
of an era, as well as the end of the
Production Code in 1968.
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New Black Films
•
During this time of Hollywood financial
struggle, doors opened for a few African
American directors as well, including:
–
–
–
•
Gordon Parks – The Learning Tree, 1969
Ossie Davis – Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1970
Melvin van Peebles – Watermelon Man, 1970
These films and a few others like them
subverted traditional Hollywood
representations of blackness.
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An Honest Depiction
•
•
•
These directors were rejecting not only the
sanitized, desexualized black figure
presented by Poitier, but also the more
masculine figures played by Brown and
Williamson, who they felt were still
subjugated in white narratives.
The wanted to see an honest depiction of
blacks, a black POV and a black worldview.
Some of these films were financially
successful, opening the door for more.
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Blaxploitation as Genre
Blacula (1972)
Directed by William Crain
Lecture 10: Part III
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What is Blaxploitation?
• Blaxploitation: A genre of American film of
the 1970s – 50 or so were made, on limited
budgets – featuring largely AfricanAmerican casts and with African American
actors in lead roles.
• The movies were usually action-adventures
set in the urban ghetto.
• They featured violence and sexualized
black characters and situations – a
departure from previous black-themed films.
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Ramping up Production
• Desperate over their
financial downturn,
Hollywood upped
production of blackthemed films from 6 in
1969 to 18 in 1972.
• Hollywood’s shift towards
a more black-oriented
product created the
boom of the
Blaxploitation genre.
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Sweet Sweetback . . .
• Political and economic conditions in 1971
made possible Melvin Van Peebles Sweet
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song which
became a big hit and launched the genre.
• Sweet Sweetback was an independent film
that Van Peebles brilliantly marketed.
• The movie, once controversial, tells the story
of a black man who challenges the
oppressive white establishment, a template
that other Blaxploitation films would follow.
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Sweet Sweetback.
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Shaft
• Sweet Sweetback was followed a few
months later in 1971 by Gordon Parks’ Shaft.
• The movie was originally written for a white
actor, but with the popularity of Sweetback
and the formula it innovated, along with
Hollywood’s desire to woo black audiences,
the protagonist was changed to black.
• The movie was hugely successful and
spawned an Oscar winning soundtrack by
Issac Hayes.
Pause the lecture and watch the clip from Shaft.
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A Flood of Productions
“After Shaft in 1971, there came a flood of
productions, extending through 1974, that
while they crudely tried to emulate the
success of Shaft and Sweetback, repeated,
filled in, or exaggerated the ingredients of the
Blaxploitation formula, which usually
consisted of a pimp, gangster, or their baleful
female counterparts, violently acting out a
revenge or retribution motif against corrupt
whites in the romanticized confines of the
ghetto or inner city.”
– Ed Guerrero, “The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation”
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Energy and Style
“These elements were fortified with liberal
doses of gratuitous sex and drugs and the
representation of whites as the very
inscription of evil. And all this was rendered in
the alluring visuals and aggrandized sartorial
fashions of the black underworld and to the
accompaniment of black musical scores that
were usually of better quality than the films
they energized.”
– Ed Guerrero, “The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation”
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Examples from the Genre
• The 50 or so
Blaxploitation films
included:
– Black Jesus (1971)
– Superfly (1972)
– Blacula (1972)
– Cleopatra Jones (1973)
– Gordon’s War (1973)
– Foxy Brown (1974)
Pause the lecture and watch the
clip from Superfly
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Social Features
“Where white suburban America saw violence
and destruction, black audiences saw
resistance to the specific wrongs of the inner
city, which included disenfranchisement,
poverty, decay and police brutality. The films
were accused of being one-dimensional and
needlessly violent by many reviewers, yet
they addressed a facet of their audience’s
experience, even to the extent of quoting
imagery similar to that seen on TV.”
– Paula Massood, “Black City Cinema: African American Urban
Experiences in Film”
Business as Usual
• While African-American filmmakers were
substantially involved in making early movies
in this genre, their participation in subsequent
productions was minimal.
• Dominant Hollywood – white and male – flush
again from the success of the counterculture
films, began to control production.
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The Fate of the Genre
• Hollywood had abandoned Blaxploitation and
other counterculture films by the mid-1970s.
• Out of its fiscal crisis, the studios returned to
the conservative filmmaking they had
engaged in since the silent era.
• Black critics and intellectuals also contributed
to the demise of Blaxploitation, complaining
about the negative representation of blacks.
• By the end of the decade, only one black star
existed in Hollywood: Richard Pryor.
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Writing About Film: Using Sources I
Superfly (1972)
Directed by Gordon Parks Jr.
Lecture 10: Part IV
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Summary: Tips and Suggestions I
• Whenever you critically engage specific
topics and terms, you must provide
definition and context.
• In critical film writing, understand the
difference between plot and representation.
• Every section in your paper must reiterate
your thesis.
• Keep it to one topic per paragraph.
• Stick to the film to be analyzed.
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Summary: Tips and Suggestions II
• Do not include more than a few lines of
plot summary in your paper.
• In a critical paper, don’t include opinionated
language. In other words, no evaluations!
• The revision process is fundamental to the
writing process. It is most crucially about
streamlining and enhancing ideas and
arguments to make them strong, clear,
organized, convincing.
• Get help!
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Using Sources as Support
• Sources should only support
your argument; always
proceed your own voice and
thesis.
• Use sources to
– Contribute to your thesis by
supporting your argument point
– Provide context or background
for your topic.
– Offering a counterargument for
you to refute.
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Use Sources Judiciously
• Do not use sources to speak for you!
• Do not use quotations that repeat your
points.
• Avoid quoting more than is needed.
• Brief quotations are generally more to the
point than long passages, as too many
lengthy quotations weaken the flow of your
argument and muddle your voice.
• Integrate research into your argument;
don’t let it stand for your argument.
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Integrate and Explain
• Introduce direct quotations with your own
words, which explain to your reader how to
understand or interpret the quotation.
• After quoting, explain the significance of
quotations; never end a paragraph or
section with a quote.
• Use direct quotations only when the
author's wording is necessary for your
analysis or particularly effective.
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Example
“In The Devil Finds Work, James Baldwin
argues that The Birth of a Nation “cannot
be called dishonest; it has the Niagara
force of an obsession.” 5 The obsessive
force of The Birth of a Nation comes as a
logical consequence of its function as film
legitimating the “common sense” of white
supremacy.” 6
– George Lipsitz, “Genre Anxiety and Racial Representation in 1970s
Cinema”
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Be True to the Original
• End citation alone is not sufficient for direct
quotations; place all direct quotations within
quotation marks, as in the previous example.
• Be sure to copy quotations exactly as they
appear, using ellipsis to omit words or
sections, and brackets for modifications to
grammar.
• “None of [the directors] intended either a
purely ideological statement or a selfconscious innovation in genre form . . .”
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Get Help!
• Uses sources takes practice and it can
sometimes be confusing so get help when
you need it.
• Review your discipline's main professional
reference material on writing – MLA,
Chicago, APA – among other.
• Ask your professors and instructors.
• Use the library support staff! They know this
stuff very well.
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End of Lecture 10
Next Lecture: Laughing Mad
about Black Masculinity
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