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Blaxploitation Begins

Blaxploitation

Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s. The word itself is a portmanteau of the words “black” and “exploitation.”

The genre is characterized by nearly all-black casts and funk/soul music soundtracks. While the first movies were targeted mostly at urban, black youths, the popularity of the movies spread. This is where a disagreement occurs about what the first blaxploitation film is.

Many argue that Shaft is the first true film in the genre, because it was the first cross marketed to whites after the box office successes of “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” and the film can only truly be exploitative if “used” by whites to perpetuate stereotypes.

However, Cotton Comes to Harlem fits all the charateristics of the other films and its popularity is what drove the studios to start shooting the other, more well-known, films.

Shaft was originally set to have an all-white main cast, but was recast after black-themed films were shown to have a massappeal.

First blaxploitation film: Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Director/Writer: Ossie Davis

Cotton Comes to Harlem is a 1970 blaxploitation film starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx that revolves around the efforts of the two Harlem detectives to recover the life savings of 87 poor black families which have been stolen in a Back to Africa swindle; the money is concealed in a bale of cotton, which keeps changing hands.

Films commonly credited as being the first blaxploitation film

  • Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), tag line: The Film that THE MAN doesn’t want you to see!, Writer/Director: Melvin Van Peebles

    This movie over $4 million dollars in primarily black-community theaters. It could have been even more successful, but the MPAA slapped Sweetback with the dreaded ‘X’ rating. Van Peebles exploited this on the movie poster, “Rated ‘X’ by an all white jury.”

  • Shaft (1971), Tag line: Hotter than Bond, Cooler than Bullitt.Director: Gordon Parks, Writer: Ernest Tidyman

    Shaft Shaft was a $7 million dollar blockbuster that crossed-over and reached mainstream audiences. Isaac Hayes Oscar winning ‘Theme From Shaft’ is charged with portraying the black, male as oversexed and dangerous. The lyrics include “the black private dick that’s a sex-machine for all the chicks…”

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