Colors

Blaxploitation

How It's Used

“Julien's early work reveals two main areas of investigation: homoeroticism and black culture. A cluster of four works from the late 1980s, for example, explores the imaginary world of a black museum attendant, a white male museum visitor (his S&M partner), and a black female curator. Julien's 'Looking for Langston' (1989) is a homage to Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. His documentary 'The Darker Side of Black' (1994) is a critique of the homophobia and misogyny of black popular music. And 'Baadasss Cinema', from 2002, investigates the blaxploitation film industry of the seventies. (Julien was teaching a course at Harvard on the subject at the time.) It was the research for this documentary that provided the basis for his three-screen cinematic work 'Baltimore' (2003), the second of Julien's works included in the Montreal show. Merging, figuratively, the rarefied all-white world of Renaissance art at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, with the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum (yes, there is such a place), Julien created an homage to blaxploitation filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, who appears in the film encountering his own wax effigy in the museum while a pistol-packing Cleopatra Jones-style cyborg roams the halls, and the mean streets of Baltimore beyond.”

“A year later, Mr. Hayes, his torso draped in gold chains, performed his 'Theme from Shaft' at the Academy Awards ceremony. He returned to the podium soon after, this time draped in blue ermine, to accept the Oscar for Best Original Film Score. The song and score also won two Grammys. Mr. Hayes left Stax in 1974 and declared bankruptcy two years later. The Internal Revenue Service auctioned his Memphis estate, gold-plated limousine and designer furs. He turned to acting in the 1980s. He had parts in the blaxploitation parody 'I'm Gonna Git You Sucka' (1988), 'It Could Happen to You' (1994) with Nicolas Cage and 'Reindeer Games' (2003) with Ben Affleck. In the 2005 hit 'Hustle and Flow,' he played the owner of a South Memphis bar.”

“Our seven favourite made-up Tracy Jordan blaxploitation films of the year from '30 Rock' are: 'A Blaffair To Rememblack,' 'Honky Grandma Be Trippin',' 'President Homeboy,' 'Samurai I Amurai,' 'Black Cop/White Cop' ('One does the duty, the other gets the booty'), 'Black Caveman' ('So simple, a black caveman can do it!'), 'Fat Bitch' ('She's off the leash!').”

“Yet it's a long way from the early 1970s, when the Black Panthers endorsed 'Sweetback,' and The New York Times called Mr. Van Peebles 'the first black man in show business to beat the white man at his own game.' A black man is now president. And the blaxploitation genre that briefly flowered after 'Sweetback' ('Shaft,' 'Cleopatra Jones,' etc.) rendered many of Mr. Van Peebles's innovations ripe for parody: a jive-talking outlaw hero, declarations of war against 'the man.'"

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