Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre (review)

Scholar Mark Reid lamented that “little attention has been given to the filmic representation of race in film genre criticism” in 2003.¹ Hence, Novotny Lawrence’s Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre begins to fill this particular scholarly void. Instead of considering blaxploitation films based solely on the period of their release and/or simply placing them in a nondescript black movie category, Lawrence argues that race complicates and expands genre through his examination of specific films: Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Blacula (1972), The Mack (1973), and Cleopatra Jones (1973). His book employs social and political histories to comprehend the ways blackness has been represented on the silver screen.

After observing that from the inception of film blacks have been presented “in a manner that reflects their sociopolitical status in America” (p. 1), Lawrence maps a brief history of African American movie images in order to expose how labels can both define and limit black representation. For example, race films² were made specifically for African American audiences and spanned a variety of topics and genres, while Hollywood’s initial “all-black productions,” Hearts in Dixie (1929) and Hallelujah (1929), were stories with weak plots that were “merely an excuse for the singing, dancing, and comedic episodes” (p. 7). In addition to perpetuating such stereotypes as the mammy, coon, and buck, Hollywood films continued to depict blacks as the Other; the characters in these movies inhabited all-black worlds from a distant past and exhibited values that were often alien to European American audiences.

With the collapse of the race film industry by the close of the 1930s, the dearth of complicated black images continues. Moreover, Hollywood all-black productions do not perform well at the box office and the industry desists creating them. Thus, African American characters are not usually protagonists in films until the late 1940s. Social problem films initially examine the challenges of white ethnics in the United States and later turn to what Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal would call the Negro problem. ³ While these films focused on the trials of being black in America, ironically the actors who played characters in the first films released were often European American.⁴ Lawrence contends that the changing social, political, and economic climate of events from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War prompted African Americans to demand that Hollywood move away from caricatures and set the stage for the arrival of blaxploitation films.

Lawrence demarcates the parameters for this study in his description of blaxploitation films. His research shows that blaxploitation movies made between 1970 and 1975 and directed by either African American or European American directors presented blacks as multifaceted individuals. Heroes or heroines in these films are “socially and politically conscious” whether they are police detectives or pimps (p. 18). The supporting cast is also of African descent and functions in a variety of roles including creating an environment where the protagonists are not viewed as tokens or exceptional black people. Before turning to his examination of specific films, Lawrence posits that by adding blackness to existing genres these movies create a unique cycle of films. He also notes the problematic marginalization of blaxploitation films because they are understood in contrast to whiteness yet not included in genre categories.

Though generic films, like most Hollywood films, do not include a “significant” minority presence, Lawrence deems them useful templates for investigating the films mentioned previously. He further grounds his inquiry by citing classic or definitive films within particular genres. In the case of Cotton Comes to Harlem, he compares the film to others within the detective genre ranging from The Thin Man series (1934–1936) to The Maltese Falcon (1946). It is here Lawrence makes his most significant contribution through more complex readings of these films as well as adding a racial dimension to genre studies. He postulates that the detective team of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones in Cotton functions differently than traditional detectives because they are African...