https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/entertainment/movies/2022/02/16/blaxploitation-classics-like-shaft-radiate-black-power-50-years/8926580002/

BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2022: BLACK PROGRESS

50 years on, movies anchored in messages of Black Power continue to resonate


Blaxploitation film classics such as 'Shaft,' 'Super Fly,' 'Cleopatra Jones' and 'Foxy Brown' conjured a Black Power movement that echoes today.

Marco della Cava and Rasha Ali, USA TODAY

Published 5:01 AM EST Feb. 16, 2022 Updated 10:30 AM EST Feb. 16, 2022


As our movie opens, a camera hovers above Times Square before slowly panning down and zooming in. Theater marquees show pornographic films. Dirty streets are choked with yellow taxis. Pedestrians hustle forward with downcast eyes.

Finally, a staccato beat plays on a high-hat cymbal followed by a funky guitar riff as the lens finds an elegant and commanding Black man in a brown leather coat exiting the subway. The title card comes up. In block letters: “SHAFT.”

The low-budget movie focusing on the exploits of private eye John Shaft, a role to be reprised multiple times by Richard Roundtree, rocked the cultural firmament like an earthquake.


“Shaft” was made for $500,000 and grossed $13 million, nabbing a best original song Oscar for title track composer Isaac Hayes. Soon, the floodgates would open, releasing a deluge of so-dubbed Blaxploitation movies throughout the 1970s.

The legacy of this controversy-stirring oeuvre is undeniable, cultural experts say. Blaxploitation films, born when Black consciousness was ascendant, stirred the imaginations of kids who in the ’80s created indelible hip-hop tales, in turn inspiring filmmakers Spike Lee, John Singleton and even Quentin Tarantino.


There was also the music, lasting soundtracks conjured by an all-star pantheon that includes Curtis Mayfield, Earth Wind and Fire, Rose Royce, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Bobby Womack and Roy Ayers.

But more than anything, Blaxploitation films were a turning point for Black people in American cinema. A century ago, pioneering Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux provided a rare platform for Black films created by Black people centering on Black stories.


IN THE ENSUING DECADES, Hollywood's vision for Black actors limited them to roles that were minimal and stereotypical at best and downright racist at worst. If there were star turns, they were limited to big names such as the great Paul Robeson, the captivating Dorothy Dandridge and the inimitable Sidney Poitier.

But "Shaft" was a revolution. It set a template for Blaxpolitation films that featured Black actors in every key role. And it presented the denizens of ghetto street life in all their colorful, unvarnished and honest reality.


While this wasn't the first time nefarious Black operators were presented on film, these characters had special resonance with Black people who had come up North through the Southern migration.

These new urban dwellers soon found themselves in situations that perhaps lacked the overt racism of the South, but nonetheless perpetuated systemic racism in terms of restrictions on where they could live, the type of jobs they could hold and the social arenas in which they could operate.


Many experts note that "Super Fly" featured one of the first mainstream references to "The Man," a catch-all that implied Black people had critical cards stacked against them especially when it came to access to political and financial power.

While many Blaxploitation anti-heroes may have plied their trades in the streets, at least they were taking control of their own destiny against considerable societal forces. Put another way, rather than continue to simply be sidelined and stereotyped players in a white vision of the world, the stars of Blaxploitation movies, to borrow from James Brown, said it loud: “I’m Black and I’m proud.”


“I say to my students today, those Blaxploitation characters were the equivalent of superheroes,” says Todd Boyd, professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “If there was a common theme to most of them, it is that there’s always a representation of Black power in them.”

These movies “created a genre and a lifestyle that in the 50 years since we see represented across the culture, from music to fashion to film,” says Boyd, nicknamed the Notorious PhD, whose writings on the topic include “The Notorious PhD's Guide to the Super Fly '70s: A Connoisseur's Journey Through the Fabulous Flix, Hip Sounds, and Cool Vibes That Defined a Decade.”

“To think back to 1972, you have both ‘Super Fly’ and ‘The Godfather’ come out, both of which help write the history of gangster films going forward,” he says. “By the ’80s, you have images from Blaxploitation movies informing gangsta rap, and by the ’90s, well, there’s no Tarantino without Blaxploitation movies.”


The enduring nature of these films is down to three factors, says Yohuru Williams, professor of history and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“One is the pure nostalgia factor at this point for those of us who grew up aware of these powerful movies,” he says. “You’d go see 'Blacula' and there was a Black man (William Marshall) at the center of the action suddenly. And then you factor in those amazing soundtracks that were in heavy rotation in most homes.”


The other key elements, he says, include the look and feel of the then-nascent Black Power movement that carries over today “into Beyonce’s ‘Formation,’ which clearly shows how Blaxploitation films stylized and shared with the planet what Black Power looked like.”

Lastly, he says, the movies simply broadcast to Black and white America alike what conditions were like in the streets. In a word, dire. “If they say hip hop today is the CNN of the streets, you could argue that the realism in these films was meant to imply that maybe a polite pursuit of civil rights wasn’t enough,” Williams says.

SCHOLARS CONTINUE TO DEBATE everything from the merits to the very definition of what makes a Blaxploitation movie. Most, however, agree that the genre kicked off with 1970’s “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” an action-comedy directed by the actor Ossie Davis featuring Cleavon Little and the blue comedian Redd Foxx.

“Cotton” was followed quickly by a one-two punch in 1971, with Melvin van Peebles’ “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” and, a few months later that summer, “Shaft,” which was directed by celebrated photographer-musician-writer Gordon Parks.


Then, in 1972, another milestone: “Super Fly.” Set in crime-riddled Harlem, the movie follows drug dealer Youngblood Priest (Ron O’Neal) as he looks to make one last big score that will enable him to finally get out of the game.


“Super Fly” was unflinching in its presentation of street life, from thieving junkies to corrupt white politicians, from interracial sex to the ever-present violence.

It also had an unmistakable political message: Black people are left with so few options for advancement outside of crime than even when they work hard to escape that avenue, flight proves elusive.

That pessimistic view anchored to a criminally oriented life drew the ire of some Black leaders, notably Junius Griffin, then the president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the NAACP. It was Griffin who claimed these films exploited Blacks – giving rise to “Blaxploitation” – by painting them in a negative light.


“There were a lot of church groups, civil rights organizations and art groups that thought these were very detrimental movies, that they were exploitative of Black youth and were teaching the wrong morals and values,” says Gerald Butters, history professor at Aurora University in Illinois and author of “From Sweetback to Super Fly: Race and Film Audiences in Chicago’s Loop.”

Despite the protests, Black audiences voted with their feet. Movie theaters in urban centers were packed for screenings of Blaxploitation movies as audiences reveled in the opportunity to see people who looked and lived and loved like them on the big screen. Many movies produced for hundreds of thousands raked in millions.

“Those theaters (in inner city Chicago) were out-grossing theaters in other area that were showing ‘Love Story' and ‘The Godfather,’” says Butters. “By African Americans going to their theaters, they were saying that this is our space, too.”

Where “Super Fly” focused on a disillusioned drug dealer and “Shaft” trumpeted the exploits of a tough detective, “Sweet Sweetback” was more raw, telling the story of a sexually prolific protagonist who takes on the white power structure with venom. The movie was touted as required viewing for Black Panther Party members by the group’s impressed co-founder, Huey P. Newton.

“Blaxploitation is synonymous with the Black Power movement, a time after (Martin Luther) King (Jr.) and Malcolm (X), a time when 9,000 people meet filled with possibility in Gary, Indiana” at the National Black Political Convention, says James L. Taylor, chairman of the politics department at the University of San Francisco and author of “Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.”



James L. Taylor, chairman of the politics department at the University of San Francisco and author of “Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.”

You must remember, in the South a Black man was in danger if he showcased his masculinity, but in many Northern cities where Blacks migrated, the macho and the superman could come out.
Taylor says that while decades of Black representation in film ran mostly to “humiliation” in the minstrel tradition, these 1970s films, starring and sometimes also directed and produced by Blacks, ultimately both reflected a familiar urban reality and projected a newfound pride.

“You must remember, in the South a Black man was in danger if he showcased his masculinity, but in many Northern cities where Blacks migrated, the macho and the superman could come out,” says Taylor. “The bop. The walk, it conveys freedom. It said, ‘Black men are now free to be men,’ and Black women also were no longer bound by Southern expectations. There’s a sense of Black brotherhood and sisterhood reinforced.”

Actress Pam Grier stars as Foxy Brown, seeking revenge when her government agent boyfriend Michael is shot down by gangsters in the 1974 motion picture "Foxy Brown."
Actress Pam Grier stars as Foxy Brown, seeking revenge when her government agent boyfriend Michael is shot down by gangsters in the 1974 motion picture "Foxy Brown."


There was fierce spy Tamala Dobson in “Cleopatra Jones” (1973), reincarnated queen Vonetta McGee in “Blacula” (1972), and the impossibly tough yet seductive Pam Grier in a host of films such as “Coffy” (1973), as a nurse seeking revenge against drug dealers, and “Foxy Brown” (1974), in which she takes on a drug syndicate that killed her boyfriend.

Tarantino famously brought Grier back to a mainstream audience by making her the focal point of his Blaxploitation-influenced film “Jackie Brown” (1997), a salute that was later echoed in his Jamie Foxx star-vehicle, “Django Unchained” (2012).



Tarantino’s films are evidence of both his passion for the genre and of blatant cultural appropriation, experts say. And if there was exploitation going on in those ’70s films, it was every instance in which Blacks were shortchanged out of the production’s success by a Hollywood power structure that then featured few Black heavyweights beyond the likes of actor Sidney Poitier.

Though Hollywood clearly saw the dollars signs when Blaxploitation films started to score at the box office, the mostly white, older executives didn’t feel a connection to the films they were bankrolling, says Josiah Howard, author of “Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide.”



We were so hungry to see ourselves on film that we ignored the boom mic in the frame in ‘Super Fly,’ we ignored the bad lighting in ‘Shaft.’

“They were seen as cheap products made for Black audiences that they would reap millions of dollars from” without investing much in the actual productions, he says. “We were so hungry to see ourselves on film that we ignored the boom mic in the frame in ‘Super Fly,’ we ignored the bad lighting in ‘Shaft.’ We wanted to see ourselves empowered and young and beautiful so much that production values didn’t pull us out of the story.”


The songs featured in Blaxploitation films are a hit parade of classics. “Pusher,” “Super Fly” and “Freddie’s Dead” by Curtis Mayfield (who makes an appearance playing in a club in “Super Fly”). Isaac Hayes’ indelible theme song from “Shaft” (with its outré line, “They say this cat Shaft is a bad mutha--/Shut your mouth!”).


There's also the insistent R&B funk of “Sweetback’s Theme” (performed by a then unknown Earth Wind and Fire), and Marvin Gaye’s deft soundtrack work on 1972’s “Trouble Man” (which allowed the Motown legend to flex a different musical muscle after scoring a huge hit with “What’s Going On”).

“Between the on-screen imagery from the streets, the music and the fashions, you just can’t overstate the cultural impact of these Blaxploitation movies,” says historian Williams.

Little surprise that many of these Black cinematic touchstones enjoyed both in-period extensions and modern-day makeovers.


“Shaft” almost immediately spawned sequels, with Roundtree re-upping for “Shaft’s Big Score” (1972) and “Shaft in Africa” (1973). There was even a short-lived TV series. Then in 2000, Samuel L. Jackson, a key player in Tarantino’s Blaxploitation-type films, revived the franchise playing a nephew of the original cop; Roundtree also appeared in his seminal role as Uncle John Shaft.

Similarly, on the heels of the success of “Super Fly,” star Ron O’Neal returned as Youngblood Priest in 1973’s “Super Fly T.N.T,” which he also directed. Years later, in 1990, there was "The Return of Superfly," and then in 2018, Director X helmed a full reboot called “Superfly.”

For Boyd, the power of Blaxploitation films, then and perhaps even now, is rooted in putting characters on the screen that Black audiences can both identify with and cheer on as they “fight against the system.”

For “Black Nationalism” author Taylor, it’s the inherent duality of Blaxploitation films that makes them not just historical artifacts but representations of an evolving struggle reflected on the silver screen.

“Blaxploitation films were both positive and negative,” he says. “They projected African American life and society under an aura of hardship and scarcity and poverty and crime. But always at the heart of it, there’s a cultural roux that reflects the core of Black culture, even in exploitation.”