"Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films

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Black Studies / Film “With trenchant intellect and sassiness that is only matched by the larger-than-life characters she examines throughout “Baad Bitches” and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films, Stephane Dunn and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films, Stephane Dunn and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films provides a fresh perspective on intersections of gender and sexuality within blaxploitation-era black film. This is a very important addition to scholarship in African American cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, and American studies.” – Mark Anthony Neal, author of New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity This lively study explores the sexualized, subordinate positioning of women in low-budget blaxploitation action films as well as more seriously radical films like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and The Spook Who Sat by the Door, in which black women are typically portrayed as trifling “bitches” compared to the supermacho black male heroes. The terms “baad bitches” and “sassy supermamas” signal the reversal of this positioning with the emergence of supermama heroines in the few black action films in the early 1970s that featured self-assured, empowered, and tough (or “baad”) black women as protagonists: Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, and Foxy Brown. Stephane Dunn offers close examination of a distinct moment in the history of African American representation in popular cinema, tracing its emergence out of a radical political era, influenced especially by the Black Power movement and feminism. She also engages blaxploitation’s impact in contemporary hip-hop culture as suggested by its disturbing gender politics and the “baad bitch daughters” of Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, rappers Foxy Brown and Lil’ Kim. A volume in The New Black Studies Series, edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Dwight A. McBride Stephane Dunn is an assistant professor of English at Morehouse College. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS URBANA AND CHICAGO www.press.uillinois.edu Cover design by Jeff Merrick Author photo by Alethea Bradley Wharton “Baad Bitches” & Sassy Supermamas ILLINOIS Black Power Action Films Dunn ISBN: 978-0-252-07548-3 Black Power Action Films Stephane Dunn ...