In the 1970s, African-American filmmakers cranked up the black action movie by adding elements of such genres as the western, kung fu, and horror, as well as soundtracks by the likes of Curtis Mayfield. Isaac Julien, a visiting professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard University and a filmmaker who is renowned in experimental-film circles for his explorations of racial and sexual politics, gauges the cultural significance of “blaxploitation” films in his documentary film BaadAsssss Cinema (Independent Film Channel/Docurama).
Q. The films are action-packed, raunchy, violent, fashion-shaping ... but are they political?
A. If you’re looking for a ... certain political correctitude, you’re not going to find it in these films. They espouse a certain aggressiveness, which I see as an aftermath of the black civil-rights movement. They’re political in a dissident sense. A film like Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback [1971] was controversial because of its portrayals of women, but it had a black man who was able to beat the system -- the institution of the police -- which was revolutionary at the time. These films have a political-transgression aesthetic at their core, and they’re entertaining and amusing, in some parts hilarious.
Q. What do you make of the argument of Jesse Jackson and others that the films had inappropriate heroes -- drug dealers and so forth?
A. The problem with the positive-images debate is that some of the positive images are just boring, to be quite honest. Black politicians don’t really understand the role of art. They’re not particularly interested in black artists except if they become really successful and make lots of money, and then the whole spokesperson issue comes into play. They’re very interested in telling black artists about the kinds of films they should make.
Q. Do blaxploitation films live on?
A. The residues of blaxploitation live on. It has been alive and well in hip-hop. In fact, it lives on in white popular culture, too, because obviously Eminem and the various, if you like, identities which he sings, they all belong to this era, I would argue. So there’s been a sort of translation across race.
Q. Why are the films worth studying?
A. I’m not arguing that blaxploitation cinema is an art form, as such. I’m not even arguing, in this documentary, that these films are aesthetically important cultural products, although of course they are. I’m merely trying to portray a history, one that has been neglected and shunned. There’s something about the dark side or even the ugly side of American cinema which I find fascinating. Certainly it says something quite profound about the ambivalence of race and gender within American society, which I’m afraid has not completely escaped us.
http://chronicle.com Section: Research & Publishing Volume 49, Issue 22, Page A10