The New Wave of Blaxploitation
Anyone out there remember Pam Grier? Not you Tarantino, we’ve heard enough from you on this subject, everybody loved Coffy, now you got money because we forgot how much. How ‘bout Superfly? Any of you seen the actual movie, not just heard the soundtrack? The Mack? Bone? Shaft? Isaac Hayes? Blackbelt Jones? Cleopatra Jones?
A wave of films came out in the 1970’s about black people and black life. They often had antiestablishment plots, were frequently criticized for stereotypical characterization and glorification of violence. Towards the beginning black folk were excited because they were finally getting some representation on the screen. White folk were excited because it was something new and interesting (and funny) to look at. The movies started off as a fluke, a sudden representation by major distribution companies of black made, black acted films. Films like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song which director Mario Van Peebles had to scrimp and borrow ($50,000 from Bill Cosby) and wheel and deal to get the money for. The movie ended up making $15,000,000. White Hollywood executives took note.
That’s the way Hollywood works, when they see something making money, they pounce on it with distribution deals and squeeze money out of it for a while. Then comes the next step, Hollywood puts together a poor version of it using their own resources figuring the audience won’t know the difference and they'll get ALL the money, save what they pay to the black talent they have to use to make it look black. For a while the audiences don’t know the difference. Blacula? Blackenstein?
Soon films were no longer being made by African American filmmakers, instead they were being made by white production companies and eventually both black and white people got sick of seeing stories about black people made by white people, and the genre died down. For a while. They had to wait for Spike Lee and Jon Singleton to remind them that black stories make money.
It was the preview on TV for Beautyshop that made me think about it. How come we need Barbershop, Barbershop: Back in Business, and Beautyshop? How come they re-made Shaft and Car Wash? And what about stereotypes? Are these movies any better for black America than the blaxploitation movies of the 70's? Are they any better for white America? What movies am I talking about? Recently:
Beautyshop
Guess Who? (does Ashton Kutcher really deserve to be a white Sidney Poitier?)
Blade – Trinity
Barbershop 2
Shaft (again?)
Bad Boys 2
Soul Plane
Daddy Day Care
Juwanna Mann
I, Robot
Hitch
Like Mike
Pootie Tang
White Chicks
2 Fast 2 Furious
Undercover Brother (film geeks would call this film an example of “self-reflexivity”)
Stereotypes? What stereotypes? I feel like that list in itself proves my point.
Exploitation is different from stereotyping. It does not matter whether the representations are true to life or not. It makes it worse when they reinforce negative stereotypes, yes, but it doesn’t have to do that to exploit. All it has to do to exploit is use the black experience for profit.
This year the movie Ray won six Oscars. Chris Rock hosted the Oscars and pointed out that there were more black actors nominated than usual. Of course, none of the other talent was black, I noticed. At least Chris represented for Brooklyn. According to polls taken of American viewers, Ray would have been their choice for best picture if they had it. Forget the Oscars, let’s look at the box office dollars:
RAY TOTAL US GROSS $75,305,995.
RAY TOTAL WORLDWIDE GROSS: $96, 604, 349.
That may sound like a lot, but Ray was the 37th highest grossing film of the year 2004. None of the films that made more than it did had an all black cast 9 out of 10 of them had no black characters in a major role. The 41st highest grossing film of the years was White Chicks. The 46th highest grossing film was Barbershop 2.
Who made all the money off these movies? It wasn’t Jamie Foxx. The movie Ray was funded and the revenues were collected by 62-yr old Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz. Phil owns the nation’s largest movie theater chain, 16 sport teams including the Kings and 30% of the Lakers, some touring companies (including Britney Spears’), the Staples Center in Los Angeles (GO LAKERS!), real estate, oil, telecommunications, and now entertainment collectives. Guess what: Phil’s not black.
Money is being made by black talent, and there is representation, and that’s a good thing. Most of the money, though, is being made off of black talent, not by. The money is being made by the production companies, which are white owned. There are a few exceptions to this, but they don’t make up 15% of the whole, which is what black America is, 15% of the whole. However, when it comes to buying power, black America is more than that.
Black consumers outspend all other groups in apparel, food, beverages, cars and trucks, home furnishings, telephone service and travel. How about the media? Seven billion dollars per year is spent by black consumers on entertainment media. Plus, black themed things sell to whites (and Latino... and many other ethnic groups) pretty well now that we’ve had a little more integration, but still enough stereotypes and racism to make those movies so funny and edgy.
Let’s not forget television. As usual, it’s ahead of the film world. WB is no longer a black network (only 1 in 10 of the shows in their lineup features an all black cast – The Steve Harvey Experience), in case you didn’t notice. They’re phasing out the frog. UPN still likes to cater to a black audience, let’s look at their lineup:
Kevin Hill
Girlfriends
America’s Top Model
Cuts
Half and Half
Eve
It’s kind of a safe black, isn’t it? A white black.
So? What’s the big deal about the return of blaxploitation? Well, for one the representations haven't really changed all that much in caliber. They may be different, and about different parts of black life, but they still stereotype, and the underlying stereotypes really aren't that different than they were thirty years ago. And we're paying billions of dollars for things to remain that way.
The big deal is that there are real movies being made independently distributed, produced, directed, acted, and written by African Americans (www.blackflix.com). There are movies that are about black experience (Hotel Rwanda) that are worth more time and thought than movies like Soul Plane. It’s our job as the audience to demand better representations, and to pay for them Otherwise we’ll just get the same load of re-hashed exploitive films in another 25 years. It only seeems like we're moving forward because we can't remember the past.
A wave of films came out in the 1970’s about black people and black life. They often had antiestablishment plots, were frequently criticized for stereotypical characterization and glorification of violence. Towards the beginning black folk were excited because they were finally getting some representation on the screen. White folk were excited because it was something new and interesting (and funny) to look at. The movies started off as a fluke, a sudden representation by major distribution companies of black made, black acted films. Films like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song which director Mario Van Peebles had to scrimp and borrow ($50,000 from Bill Cosby) and wheel and deal to get the money for. The movie ended up making $15,000,000. White Hollywood executives took note.
That’s the way Hollywood works, when they see something making money, they pounce on it with distribution deals and squeeze money out of it for a while. Then comes the next step, Hollywood puts together a poor version of it using their own resources figuring the audience won’t know the difference and they'll get ALL the money, save what they pay to the black talent they have to use to make it look black. For a while the audiences don’t know the difference. Blacula? Blackenstein?
Soon films were no longer being made by African American filmmakers, instead they were being made by white production companies and eventually both black and white people got sick of seeing stories about black people made by white people, and the genre died down. For a while. They had to wait for Spike Lee and Jon Singleton to remind them that black stories make money.
It was the preview on TV for Beautyshop that made me think about it. How come we need Barbershop, Barbershop: Back in Business, and Beautyshop? How come they re-made Shaft and Car Wash? And what about stereotypes? Are these movies any better for black America than the blaxploitation movies of the 70's? Are they any better for white America? What movies am I talking about? Recently:
Beautyshop
Guess Who? (does Ashton Kutcher really deserve to be a white Sidney Poitier?)
Blade – Trinity
Barbershop 2
Shaft (again?)
Bad Boys 2
Soul Plane
Daddy Day Care
Juwanna Mann
I, Robot
Hitch
Like Mike
Pootie Tang
White Chicks
2 Fast 2 Furious
Undercover Brother (film geeks would call this film an example of “self-reflexivity”)
Stereotypes? What stereotypes? I feel like that list in itself proves my point.
Exploitation is different from stereotyping. It does not matter whether the representations are true to life or not. It makes it worse when they reinforce negative stereotypes, yes, but it doesn’t have to do that to exploit. All it has to do to exploit is use the black experience for profit.
This year the movie Ray won six Oscars. Chris Rock hosted the Oscars and pointed out that there were more black actors nominated than usual. Of course, none of the other talent was black, I noticed. At least Chris represented for Brooklyn. According to polls taken of American viewers, Ray would have been their choice for best picture if they had it. Forget the Oscars, let’s look at the box office dollars:
RAY TOTAL US GROSS $75,305,995.
RAY TOTAL WORLDWIDE GROSS: $96, 604, 349.
That may sound like a lot, but Ray was the 37th highest grossing film of the year 2004. None of the films that made more than it did had an all black cast 9 out of 10 of them had no black characters in a major role. The 41st highest grossing film of the years was White Chicks. The 46th highest grossing film was Barbershop 2.
Who made all the money off these movies? It wasn’t Jamie Foxx. The movie Ray was funded and the revenues were collected by 62-yr old Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz. Phil owns the nation’s largest movie theater chain, 16 sport teams including the Kings and 30% of the Lakers, some touring companies (including Britney Spears’), the Staples Center in Los Angeles (GO LAKERS!), real estate, oil, telecommunications, and now entertainment collectives. Guess what: Phil’s not black.
Money is being made by black talent, and there is representation, and that’s a good thing. Most of the money, though, is being made off of black talent, not by. The money is being made by the production companies, which are white owned. There are a few exceptions to this, but they don’t make up 15% of the whole, which is what black America is, 15% of the whole. However, when it comes to buying power, black America is more than that.
Black consumers outspend all other groups in apparel, food, beverages, cars and trucks, home furnishings, telephone service and travel. How about the media? Seven billion dollars per year is spent by black consumers on entertainment media. Plus, black themed things sell to whites (and Latino... and many other ethnic groups) pretty well now that we’ve had a little more integration, but still enough stereotypes and racism to make those movies so funny and edgy.
Let’s not forget television. As usual, it’s ahead of the film world. WB is no longer a black network (only 1 in 10 of the shows in their lineup features an all black cast – The Steve Harvey Experience), in case you didn’t notice. They’re phasing out the frog. UPN still likes to cater to a black audience, let’s look at their lineup:
Kevin Hill
Girlfriends
America’s Top Model
Cuts
Half and Half
Eve
It’s kind of a safe black, isn’t it? A white black.
So? What’s the big deal about the return of blaxploitation? Well, for one the representations haven't really changed all that much in caliber. They may be different, and about different parts of black life, but they still stereotype, and the underlying stereotypes really aren't that different than they were thirty years ago. And we're paying billions of dollars for things to remain that way.
The big deal is that there are real movies being made independently distributed, produced, directed, acted, and written by African Americans (www.blackflix.com). There are movies that are about black experience (Hotel Rwanda) that are worth more time and thought than movies like Soul Plane. It’s our job as the audience to demand better representations, and to pay for them Otherwise we’ll just get the same load of re-hashed exploitive films in another 25 years. It only seeems like we're moving forward because we can't remember the past.
posted by LazySusan at 1:09 PM
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