Blaxploitation Genre- How To Improvise
 "Can you dig it?" —Super Fly
Introduction
Hollywood’s attempt to cash in on the African American market with stereotypical tough and oversexed action heroes. Also refers to more honest low-budget "black" movies. Popular from the
early 1970’s until the Coalition
Against Blaxploitation and other
activists hastened its decline in
the late 1970’s.
Essence
- Plays up Black stereotypes of being tough, no-nonsense and over-sexed.
- The 1970s were mean, racist and sexist times.
- Street-talk.
- Wobbly because camera must be hand-held.
- Afros and moustaches.
- Harsh thrillers and dramas with "Black" settings and characters.
Characteristics
| Where | US Cities, especially the ghetto (slum area).
Bars, seedy but happening clubs, strip clubs, bedrooms, alley ways. |
|---|
| When | Early 1970s. |
|---|
| Who | Antiheros. Detectives, pimps, whores, pushers, junkies, gangsters, hustlers, kidnappers, brothers trying to make it; policemen, the DA; crooked congressmen and bent cops.
Names of Blaxploitation characters can distinctive and/or suggestive. Examples: John Shaft; Doodlebug Simkins; Foxy Brown; Cleopatra Jones; Gravedigger Jones; Sugarman; Bumpy Jonas; Youngblood Priest; Willie Dynamite; Sugar Hill. |
|---|
| What | Casual sex; fighting; chases; driving; detective work; drug dealing, taking and selling; pimping and ho’ing; robberies. |
|---|
Examples (from Amazon)
|
Cart
