Blaxploitation and the misrepresentation of liberation

Race & Class

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 1-12

  Robinson, Cedric J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84997884151     PISSN: 03063968     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030639689804000101     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 294, 289ff.
2. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power (New York, Random House, 1967).
3. Gerald Home, Fire This Time (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995), p. 5.
4. Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema (Berkeley, University of California, 1990), ch. 11.
5. Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House (New York, Hawthorn, 1973)
6. Clayton Cramer, ‘An American Coup D'Etat?’, History Today, (November 1995), pp. 42–7.
7. Dan T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1969).
8. Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 98.
9. Robert Stanley, The Celluloid Empire (New York, Hastings House, 1978).
10. Cf. Rhona Berenstein, ‘White heroines and hearts of darkness: race, gender and disguise in 1930s jungle films’, Film History (No. 6, 1994), pp. 314–39;
11. Kevin Dunn, ‘Lights…camera…Africa: images of Africa and Africans in western popular films of the 1930s’, African Studies Review (Vol. 39, no. 1, April 1996), pp. 149–75
12. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1993).
13. Berenstein, Framing Blackness (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1993), p. 335.
14. The figure is from Guerrero, (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1993), p. 19.
15. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks (New York, Continuum, 1995), p. 36.
16. Sam Arkoff, Flying Through Hollywood By the Seat of My Pants (New York, Birch Lane Press, 1992), p. 5.
17. The scene takes place in the neighbourhood vigilantes' headquarters, where on the doors and walls are posters of Kathleen Cleaver and George Jackson, the only instance when the film refers to originals in the actual Black movement. In a long shot of very short duration, at the far end of a second room, a small glimpse is given of a poster of Angela Davis. But the scene is dominated by two shots of Grier in the foreground, positioned between the portraits of Cleaver and Jackson, and then another Jackson poster. The film makers thus deliberately shield their audiences from any direct exposure to what might disturb the imposture, the juxtaposition of Grier with her model. Natalie Morris, one of my students, has determined that there is also a oblique reference to George Jackson as Foxy's speech to the vigilantes appropriates the romance trope embedded in Angela Davis's Autobiography (New York, Random House, 1974).
18. Clyde Taylor, ‘The ironies of palace/subaltern discourse’, in Manthia Diawara, Black American Cinema (New York, Routledge, 1993), p. 186.
19. Gina Dent, in discussion of her paper ‘Legacies’, at ‘Unfinished Liberation’ conference, 6 March 1998.
20. See Ernie Allen, Jr., ‘Making the strong survive: the contours and contradictions of “Message Rap”’, in William Eric Perkins, ed, Droppin' Science: critical essays on Rap music and HipHop culture (Philadelphia, Temple University, 1996), p. 171
21. Chris Rock, ‘Bring the pain’, HBO, 8 March, 1998 (original, 1996).