Blaxploitation

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Blaxploitation

• American Film Since 1969

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Unpublished Poem (1989)

• Most people in the world are Yellow, Black,
  Brown, Poor, Female, Non-Christian and do not
  speak English
• By the year 2000 the 20 largest cities in the
  world will have one thing in common 
• None of them will be in Europe none in the United
  States 
• By Audre Lorde

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Introduction

• Last week
• Hollywood from the Studio Era to 1969
• The Studio System and monopolistic practices
• The demise of the Studio System
• The beginning of the Hollywood Renaissance

• This week
• The rep of race in Hwood
• James Sneads definitions
• Race and sexuality
• 1960s
• politics of integration
• Sidney Poiter
• 1970s
• politics of separation
• Blaxploitation
• Shaft (Parks 1971)

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Hollywoods Representation of Race

• Until recently
• And many would argue still occurring
• HW film consistently offered/s
• stereotypes of all races
• African-Americans
• Asians
• Mexicans
• Arabs
• Native Americans
• Natives

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Terms

• Stereotype
• oversimplified, overgeneralised assumptions
• Used to give others power works in conjunction
  with ideology
• Ideology
• Refers to a system of beliefs that groups of
  people share and believe are inherently true and
  acceptable
• Rarely questioned seems natural or the truth
• Dominant Ideology appears as "neutral, all
  others differ from the norm and are often seen as
  radical, no matter what the actual vision may be.
  
• white patriarchal capitalism (white,
  middle-class, heterosexual men)
• Hegemony
• dominance of 1 group over other groups, w/ or
  w/out threat of force that cultural perspectives
  become skewed to favour dominant group
• Propaganda
• Ie. a film produced for the express purpose of
  convincing the viewer of a certain political
  point (not limited to documentary films)

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Louis Althusser (1918-1990)

• Ideology
• not exactly a false system of ideas, rather
  conceptual framework through which one interprets
  self, culture, history
• Ideology saturates everything language to
  culture
• Oppressors oppressed see world through same
  ideology
• Human life as we understand it is dependent on
• a functioning ideology making sense of self
  world
• No essential individual subject pre-existing
  society
• Rather society creates subjectivities
• Repressive state apparatuses (RSA)
• Prisons, police, military
• they force submission
• Ideological state apparatuses (ISA)
• Political system, religion, schools, advertising,
  sports
• They evoke willing submission to dominant culture
• Ideology is invisible pervasive (little hope
  for change)

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Production of Meaning

• Encoding
• Meaning intended by author
• Decoding
• Meaning produced/interpreted by reader/viewer
• Readings
• Dominant
• readings in accordance with encoded meaning
• Oppositional
• reading that questions the ideological
  assumptions of the text
• Negotiated
• resists some of the encoded message but accepts
  others

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Questions

• Does Hollywood reflect American society
  accurately?
• Or does it reflect certain portions of the
  population?
• What ideology is reflected in Hollywood film?
• Does it reinforce a specific ideology?
• What are some of the ideas it reinforces?
• Where do you think meaning is produced
• In encoding or decoding?

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HWs Early Rep of Race

• Hollywoods portrayal of race
• Mainly negative
• Stereotypes of black masculinity
• Hypersexual and violent
• The Birth of a Nation (1915)
• threat to biological purity of white race
• sexual threat to purity of white women
• Entertaining and comedic
• The Black Minstrel
• Ie. Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927)
• White actors in black face

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Images of Others

• Infantilised
• primitive, children in adult bodies
• Animalised
• apes, savages, and associated with nature
• Sexualised
• lusty and libidinous
• Debased
• immoral and evil
• Desexualised
• asexual or sexually passive

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The Centre and the Margins
Absent from the screen means absent from HWs
image of America

• Manthia Diawara
• white people the centre
• others at the margins
• Marginalised peoples
• Space and power
• centre is where the power is
• Space and virtue
• centre is for the virtuous
• In society and in film narratives
• Who is the protagonist?
• Who has power to drive the narrative?

HWs world is heterosexual as well as white.
Even if women (read white) have gained equality,
what about lesbians and/or women of colour?
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Binary Oppositions

• Lola Young Fear of the Dark (1996)
• binary oppositions
• White is good, pure, and normal Black is then
  evil and alien
• stems from fear of otherness
• control the other through stereotypes
• Also transfer anxieties about self onto the other
• Stuart Hall New Ethnicities in Black British
  Cultural Studies (1996)
• Racism in dominant culture is constructed through
  a play between identity and difference
• Conception of blacks as of an inferior race
• Yet, also inexpressible envy and desiring of the
  other
• Femininity Madonna and Whore
• Black subject noble savage and violent
  avenger

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James Snead

• Book White Screens/Black Images (1994)
• Mythification
• static, ahistorical, subordination of blacks
• Blacks as slaves and servants or savages
• Marking
• blacks always caricatures reduced to a couple of
  conventions
• black skin, big white rolling eyes, tap dancing
• eg. Blackface Ali G
• Omission
• exclusion by reversal, distortion or other
  censorship
• The absence of black characters in films

Ali G
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Race and Sexuality

• Black masculinity, according to Hollywood,
• Is a sexually potent threat
• Black character can be positive and good
• but only if his sexuality can be contained
• Black masculinity as a threat to white culture
• with its supposed potential to be hypersexual
• This is a stereotype
• Containment of threat
• denial of black sexuality
• Ie. no romance for the black hero
• Especially with white stars

None of the black heroes (right) got to kiss the
love interest even though they have sex with
them in the books on which the films are based. I
bet Tom Cruise would have been allowed to
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Quotations

• Aldore Collier of Ebony Magazine
• For Black actors, though, romance has been, for
  the most part, an unrequited experience. For
  decades, there was no intimacy or passion for
  Black actors on screen. All emotion was implied
  or simply ignored. Screen legends such as Lena
  Horne, Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier
  either had no romantic partners or their
  on-screen relationships with the opposite sex
  were in most cases devoid of intimacy.
• David Molden in Black Issues in Higher Education
  (1996) 112
• African Americans are tired of the same types of
  films depicting us in a negative lifestyle. This
  is such a small picture of Black America. The
  Black middle and upper classeseducated and
  employedhave grown by leaps and bounds.
  Furthermore, all other ethnic groups would be
  likely to support our work if we stopped always
  presenting Africans Americans as inept,
  ghetto-ridden, down-trodden and oppressed, and
  instead began to present a more accurate picture
  of the total African-American community.

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Sidney Poitier Hollywood Star

• Big in 1950s 1960s
• First black actor to achieve star status
• popular w/ white and black audiences
• 1st black star to rival white ones for big box
  office success
• Positive representation of black masculinity
• Many of his films raised race as a problem in US
  society

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From the 60s to the 70s

• 1960s
• Political attitude of white culture towards
  blacks Integrationist
• that blacks and whites should live, work, and
  study together
• govt policies, include affirmative action in
  schools/workplace
• Ie. blacks subsumed into white mainstream culture
• 1970s
• Political attitude of blacks towards white
  culture Separatist
• Dates back to the 19th century Martin Delaney
  and others promoted the "Back to Africa"
  movement. The literal return to Africa was seen
  as the only option for blacks because, white
  supremacy could never be displaced.
• In the mid-'60s, when the integrationist ideal
  reached its peak, the black-power wing of the
  civil-rights movement grew by advocating black
  self-determinationie. through the establishment
  of exclusively black schools and a
  self-sustaining black economy.

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Blaxploitation

• Hollywood wanted to capitalise on
• Black audiences new attitudes
• Black Power/Civil Rights Movement late 60s
• Black casts but often white producers
• Positive representations?
• A more militant kind of black masculinity tough
  and sexual
• Calvin Lockhart, Raymond St. Jacques, and Jim
  Brown as heroes
• Or just a new stereotype?
• First Sweet Sweetbacks Baadasss Song (1971)
• Independent, all black production
• Then Shaft (1971)
• Approximately 60 films between 1971 to 1975
• Some good a lot not so great

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Different genres

• Blaxploitation reworked old familiar genres
• Blacula (1972)
• a horror film
• Blaxploitation had tough guys
• But also tough women
• Tamara Dobson Pam Grier
• Cleopatra Jones (1973)
• an action film
• There were no similar images of white women in
  the 1970s

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Shaft (Parks 1971)

• Huge success
• Cost 1.2m but made 7.1 in US rentals
• 80 of audience black
• 20th highest earning film of 1971
• Isaac Hayes soundtrack
• No. 1 on the charts for 2 weeks, bestseller for
  another 60 weeks
• sold over 1 million copies, Won an Oscar
• Theme Song by Isaac Hayes
• Whos the black private dick
• thats a sex machine with all the
  chicks? SHAFT!
• Damn right!
• Whos the man thatll risk his neck for his
  brother man? SHAFT!
• Can you diggit?
• Whos the cat that wont cop out
• when theres danger all about? SHAFT!

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Spectatorship and Race

• Diawara
• problems of identification for black spectators
• Identify with or resist the other?
• praises Independent Black Cinema (ie. Spike Lee)
  for
• promoting representations of real black
  experience
• offering positions of subjectivity to blacks
• Some questions critics of race ask
• Can identification occur across race?
• Can black audience identify w/ John Wayne as a
  white hero?
• Can white audience identify w/ Eddie Murphy as a
  black hero?
• Can a black audience identify w/ J-Lo as Latin
  woman?
• What about white audiences and cross-racial
  identification?

Ques How does a Hollywood film get across this
problem in films like Rush Hour or Beverly Hills
Cop?
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Diawara and Birth of a Nation

• 5 min chase scene
• Ques How did you read it?
• Whats the encoded meaning?
• What was your decoded reading?
• Look at the editing, mise-en-scène, narrative
• all guide and inform your interpretation of the
  scene
• Ques what would be the
• Dominant reading?
• Oppositional reading?
• Negotiated reading?

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NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST RACIAL, RELIGIOUS and
ETHNIC STEREOTYPING ...ITALIAN AMERICAN
COALITION ALERTS PARENTS TO SHARK TALE VIOLENCE
ANDSTEREOTYPING CALLS FOR A BOYCOTT OF
MARKETING PARTNERS
Washington - September 24, 2004

• The Coalition Against Racial, Religious and
  Ethnic Stereotyping (CARRES) today alerted
  parents to the violence and ethnic stereotyping
  in DreamWorks' soon- to-be-released animated
  children's movie, Shark Tale and called for a
  national boycott of all products that promote the
  film and its characters.
• The movie is about a fish named Oscar, who gets
  involved with gangster sharks and killer whales.
  The gangster-fish have Italian names and are
  voiced by Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorsese and
  actors from The Sopranos. It premieres nationally
  Oct. 1, the first day of Italian American
  heritage month.
• Shark Tale is a production of DreamWorks SKG,
  owned by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and
  David Geffen. To promote it,DreamWorks formed
  partnerships with some of the nation's largest
  corporations, including Coca-Cola and Burger
  King. Since January CARRES has petitioned Dream
  Works to change the names of the gangster
  characters and remove Italian expressions from
  the dialogue. It also has written to the movie's
  corporate sponsors asking them not to promote the
  film.
• "Since our requests fell on deaf ears, we are
  calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola, Burger King,
  Krispy Kreme, General Mills, Hasbro Toys and
  Activision, the movie's principal marketing
  partners," says CARRES spokesperson Dona De
  Sanctis.
• It is the first time that the major Italian
  American organizations have called for a national
  boycott to protest the defamation of people of
  Italian heritage. Italian Americans represent the
  fifth largest ethnic group in the United States,
  numbering 16 million according to the U.S. Census
  Bureau. "Shark Tale is a kid's version of
  GoodFellas," says CARRES member John Mancini,
  chairman of the Italic Institute. "We are
  profoundly disappointed in Steven Spielberg who
  chooses to negatively influence children this
  way. Shark Tale will be translated into many
  languages and reproduced on DVDs," says OSIA
  National President Joseph Sciame "The characters
  will be in video games, on cereal boxes and
  fast-food meals all over the world.

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The End