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Also this issue: Tiny Spies Clod, James Clod |
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August 8-14, 2002
movies
 FLY GUY: Ron O'Neal in Superfly. |
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Reconsidering the legacy of blaxploitation cinema.
Say the word “blaxploitation” and a fixed set of images comes to mind, underscored by the hi-hat and wah-wah of “Theme From Shaft.” But blaxploitation -- a still-controversial term, but the generally accepted one -- is more than Shaft’s swagger or Foxy’s ’fro. From I’m Gonna Git You Sucka to Undercover Brother, films have usually couched their affection for the black action boom movies of the 1970s in the language of camp, drawing on flamboyant clothes and fragrant street slang.
But it wasn’t camp or kitsch that drew British director Isaac Julien to make Baadasssss Cinema, the perceptive and wide-ranging documentary which premieres on the Independent Film Channel next Wednesday. The London-born Julien, whose Young Soul Rebels was recently revived for the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, has consistently made films which explore transgressive figures from black history, from 1988’s Looking for Langston (Hughes) to 1996’s Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask. Though there wouldn’t seem to be much common ground between Fanon’s post-colonial writings and, say, Truck Turner, Julien says his interest in both sprung from the same source. Blaxploitation movies, Julien says by phone, “were the first time you saw black protagonists who were behaving badly, who were loud and unapologetic in terms of a black vernacular, attitude and behavior.” As Samuel L. Jackson, star of 2000’s slick Shaft remake, puts it in the documentary, “We were tired of seeing the righteous black man.”
In Baadasssss Cinema -- which features interviews with Pam Grier, Gloria Hendry, director Larry Cohen, Quentin Tarantino and critics Elvis Mitchell, Armond White and Ed Guerrero -- Julien links the rise of blaxploitation, which was at its height from 1972 to 1976, to the influence of the black power movement and the hunger for characters who played the game by their own rules, in the mold of the hero of Melvin Van Peebles' seminal Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971). But while Van Peebles' movie, which he self-marketed to drive-ins when major distributors wouldn't touch it, was explicitly conceived in a revolutionary mode, others were acts more of marketing than mayhem, their participants looking for no more than their shot at success. Fred Williamson, nicknamed "The Hammer" during his pro football days, was a canny opportunist who caught the wave early and quickly gained control over his own projects, which often bore such bald and unsavory titles as Bucktown and Boss Nigger. He serves as Baadasssss Cinema's devil's advocate, deflating high-flown interpretations and rejecting claims of greater significance. But though he denies to this day that there was any political intent behind the movies he made, his own words indicate differently. "My films were not Œget Whitey' films," he says from his home in Palm Springs. "I kill[ed] everybody that was bad. I beat up black people, pink people, yellow people, blue people -- I just wanted the hero image. At that time, the riots were happening, they were still siccing dogs on black people in the street; we needed heroes. I wasn't interested in political confrontation. Give me a guy, when the smoke cleared, the brother was left standing."
Not surprisingly, Williamson reacts strongly to the use of the term "black exploitation," taking it as a personal insult -- "Who's being exploited?" he asks rhetorically. Williamson has done better than most, consistently producing such projects as 1996's Original Gangstas, which starred Jim Brown, Grier, Superfly's Ron O'Neal and himself. On the Edge, with Williamson, O'Neal, Brown and Bernie Casey, has just been completed and will be released exclusively through Blockbuster Video stores, and Williamson says he's taking meetings at MGM to talk up a third movie in the Black Caesar series.
But overall, the story is something like "a tragedy," Julien says, as Hollywood lost interest and performers like Hendry found themselves pounding the pavement in search of roles that had once again become scarce. In the year of Halle and Denzel, Julien sees a triumph of a movement that helped black actors wriggle out of the gilded straitjacket of "role model" performances (even though the NAACP and CORE objected loudly at the time). "There's a way in which, particularly in popular culture, people can't live without stereotypes," Julien explains. "It's interesting looking at movies like Training Day or Monster's Ball. Neither of these movies are positive representations in that sort of boring sense. In terms of cinema, we are attracted to the things which are transgressive, the things which are dangerous, and we know that all those things and race are meshed together."
Williamson is distinctly more pessimistic, and openly bitter about Hollywood's failure to knock on his door. "Movies today are all about special effects," he says. " Our movies were about characters, the way people walked, the way people dressed." While blaxploitation's effects have been keenly felt in the world of hip-hop music, Williamson isn't satisfied. "I don't see any black exploitation revival. I think it's all bullshit. What's bringing the interest back is the young kids who never saw it before and the older ones who remember how it really was. There's the gap in between [who] don't really give a shit, and the gap in between are the ones who are making the 80 and 90 million dollar films.Those are the ones who don't really get the point, and unfortunately, those are the ones who make the decisions in Hollywood about what movies to make."
IFC’s Baadasssss Cinema weekend includes screenings of Foxy Brown (Aug. 14, 11 p.m.), Superfly (Aug. 15, 10 p.m.) and Shaft’s Big Score (Aug. 16, 10 p.m.). All three air back-to-back on Aug. 17 at 8 p.m.
