Posted on 08/13/2002 8:39:38 AM PDT by Tancred
Blaxploitation Films Get Closer Look Tue Aug 13,11:22 AM ET
By DOUGLAS J. ROWE, AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Three decades after the brief ascendancy of blaxploitation movies, the people in front of and behind the cameras can still feel disrespected.
That's the most heart-rending aspect of "Baadasssss Cinema," a documentary debuting Wednesday on the Independent Film Channel (10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific).
The retrospective kicks off IFC's blaxploitation tribute, featuring "Foxy Brown" Wednesday, "Superfly" Thursday and "Shaft's Big Score" Friday. (All four will be rebroadcast Saturday).
The documentary includes interviews with some of the era's stars and directors ( Pam Grier, Gloria Hendry, Fred "the Hammer" Williamson, Melvin Van Peebles) and clips from memorable movies. Academics and film critics also have their say, while director Isaac Julien offers the social backdrop for the phenomenon.
The IFC Original film's title is a genuflection to what is generally thought of as the seminal blaxploitation movie, Van Peebles' "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" — which Julien calls "the Godardian film of blaxploitation cinema ... It's the only art film from the genre. All the rest of them are trying to be like Hollywood films."
Julien's documentary simply defines blaxploitation as "a commercial-minded film of the '70s for black audiences." The genre, which lasted roughly from 1971 to '75, was also characterized by violence, funky fashion, oversized Afros, distinctive R&B and soul, and empowered black protagonists, both male and female.
Often the movies were crime dramas, tenanted by pimps and drug dealers — and that's what drew criticism back then.
After his movie came out in 1971, Van Peebles remembers: "What Hollywood did — they suppressed the political message, added caricature — and blaxploitation was born."
But even from the get-go, Van Peebles acknowledges, "The colored intellegentsia were not too happy about it."
Williamson, who played in the National Football League before taking up acting, says with some anger: "NAACP and CORE — they're the ones who created this terminology: black exploitation. That has to be clear, on the record. It came from them. It didn't come from the white press."
He wonders: "Who was being exploited? All the black actors were getting paid. They had a job. They were going to work. The audience wasn't being exploited. They were getting to see things on their screen that they had longed for."
Hendry — whom Julien calls "the Halle Berry of the '70s" — also resented the term. "How dare you pigeonhole us?" says the actress who appeared in "Black Caesar," "Hell Up in Harlem" and "Slaughter's Big Rip-Off."
Grier, star of "Coffy," "Foxy Brown" and Quentin Tarantino's 1997 blaxploitation tribute "Jackie Brown," recalls in the film that critics would say: "Oh my God, we shouldn't show pimps to white America ... They'll think we're all like this ... Oh my God, can we do other films?" Her rebuttal: "Yeah, but no one will come and see 'em."
Julien, who has taught film at New York and Harvard universities, said in an interview that the vitriolic reaction to blaxploitation movies could be attributed to a lot of anger at the time.
"In an allegorical sense, they epitomized all the failures of the black civil rights movement," said Julien, who is British-born and black and can sound like he's on the outside looking in.
By showing drugs as an important element in that failure, he said, the movies portrayed something about black America "that is not a positive image."
Noting similar complaints this year when Denzel Washington won an Oscar for playing a less-than-admirable cop, Julien said, "You still get that discourse articulated from a certain black perspective, where they say, `But these are negative images; these are not positive images of African-Americans.' I just think that's just such a ridiculous way of looking at film."
Julien — who previously made a documentary on black music, "The Darker Side of Black" — said maybe a hundred films were made during blaxploitation's heyday and "probably not more than 10" were interesting. Some prints already are lost.
Still, he said: "Blaxploitation lives on. ... It's definitely part of the language of Hollywood cinema."
The recent parody "Undercover Brother" starred Eddie Griffin as an Afro-topped agent for a clandestine outfit called the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. And "Austin Powers in Goldmember" co-stars Beyonce Knowles as '70s-inspired crimefighter Foxxy Cleopatra.
Besides "Jackie Brown," Tarantino's movies have made nods to the blaxploitation era. In "Reservoir Dogs," there's a discussion of "Get Christie Love" — a mid-'70s TV series that tried to capitalize on the genre's popularity — and in the catalytic scene in "True Romance," which he wrote, the characters are watching the movie "The Mack."
Meanwhile, black films and filmmakers have gone in various directions, defying easy categorization.
"Genres come and go," Tarantino says in "Baadasssss Cinema."
"It's only been in the last six years that all these actors who were associated with these movies can actually talk proudly about them. They always had to kind of like almost apologize for them. Because they took such heat."
I don't know how one defines "Blaxploitation" - Samuel L Jackson's partners were Robert Deniro and Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown, and all five hoods in Reservoir Dogs were whiter n' snow.
Both were greally good films, BTW.
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