The Rise and Fall of Blaxploitation

Abstract

Abstract More than a bit of irony figures in the use of the termBlaxploitation. The epithet is usually associated with the production of the 60 or so Hollywood films that centered on black narratives, featured black casts playing out various action‐adventures in the ghetto, and were released roughly between 1969 and 1974. But Blaxploitation might as easily and accurately describe the cruel injustice of slavery, or, for that matter, much of the historical sojourn of black folk in America. Nevertheless, in this essay I confine the rubric to its narrowest contemporary understanding, which arises from the film industry's targeting the black audience with a specific product line of cheaply made, black‐cast films shaped with the “exploitation” strategies Hollywood routinely uses to make the majority of its films (Monaco 1984, 63–64; Cagin & Dray 1984, 52). These concoctions were marketed to a basically inner‐city, black youth audience in anticipation of substantial box office profits. My discussion is guided by the argument that the Blaxploitation genre emerged out of the dialectical interactions of three broad, overdetermining conditions of possibility. First and most obvious to observers of the late 1960s scene is that these films were made possible by the rising political and social consciousness of black people (taking the form of a broadly expressed black nationalist impulse at the end of the civil rights movement), which translated into a large black audience thirsting to see their full humanity depicted on the commercial cinema screen. This surge in African‐American identity and revolutionary politics led also to an outspoken, critical dissatisfaction with Hollywood's persistent degradation of African‐Americans in films among black leaders, entertainers, and intellectuals. Ultimately, the mounting pressure of these conditions coincided with the near economic collapse of the film industry at the end of the 1960s. In turn, this forced Hollywood to respond to the rising expectations of African‐Americans by making black‐oriented features in order to help solve the film industry's political and financial problems.

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