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Blaxploitation In African American Movies Research Paper

1543 Words7 Pages

Within African American cinema, Blaxploitation has left one of the biggest impacts in the film industry. Following the 1970’s many filmmakers took elements from Blaxploitation to use in their own films. Many of these elements and narratives have been parodied and imitated by filmmakers in the 1980’s, 1990’s, 2000’s and even today. Filmmakers such as Spike Lee, John Singleton, Mario Van Peebles, etc. owe a debt to this very influential genre. Blaxploitation can span many film genres. The genre can be an action film such as Shaft (1971), a comedy picture like Uptown Saturday Night (1974), a horror movie such as Blacula (1972) or a drama film like Black Caesar (1973). There are certain themes and elements which make a Blaxploitation picture. These elements include being released in the 1970’s, having an African American leading actor or actress, a predominantly African American cast, focus on themes and elements prevalent in the African American community and showing …show more content…

The most notable films would be I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), Shaft (2000), The Wash (2001), and Undercover Brother (2002). Each of these films treat the Blaxploitation genre in different way. The first film, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) parodies the genre. It mostly parodies the films Shaft (1971), The Mack (1973) and Three the Hard Way (1974) by taking the “pimp”, “martial artist” and “bad negro” characters from each film and making it funny. The second film Shaft (2000) is a pseudo remake of Shaft (1971) where this film follows the story of John Shaft’s nephew while keeping the spirit of the original. The third film The Wash (2001) is a remake of Car Wash (1976), where they slightly tweaked the plot and set it in present day. The final film, Undercover Brother (2002) is another parody of the genre, where the characters are taken from typical action Blaxploitation films such as a Black Belt Jones (1974) and Slaughter

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