Transcription
It's something kind of funny, how the man take your money. He shrewd as he can be in such a way you'll never see.
These lyrics taken from the soundtrack to the enormously popular 1971 blaxploitation film Superfly exemplify the relationship between US corporations and black consumers during the 1970s.
Who's seen the movie Superfly? It's a wild movie, isn't it? The '70s had other wild movies, too, that were also said to exploit blacks, like this one.
Shaft, described as a black James Bond movie, proved to be an economic godsend to MGM, which had posted losses of $43 million for the previous 2 years. Shaft came through at the right time and rescued MGM out of that economic pit.
Costing only $1.8 million to produce, within a year Shaft had reportedly grossed more than $17 million. Predictably, MGM's success with Shaft reverberated throughout the motion picture industry. In fact, by late 1972, nearly 25% of Hollywood's total planned production were black-oriented movies.
You see that? They catch waves and trends and they try to ride them to make profit. That's what happened here with Shaft. It popped off and Hollywood said, "Let's try to do that again."
By contrast, only 3% of Hollywood's 1970 releases were films primarily intended for African-American audiences. So, in 1970, only 3% of Hollywood releases were primarily intended for blacks. But, late in 1972, after Shaft, nearly 25% of Hollywood's planned production was black-oriented movies. So, the numbers revealed that there was real demand. And once Hollywood saw that potential profit, they became like sharks going in to devour the prey.
Although Hollywood, by 1972, had committed itself to actively woo the African-American film-going public, the emphasis appeared to be on quantity, not quality.
How?
In fact, the overwhelming commercial success of the low-budgeted Sweet Sweetback and Shaft apparently convinced Hollywood producers that movies made for African-American consumers did not need large budgets to be successful. This was a major discovery. Films for blacks could be made on a low budget and still become a great success. And that's every entrepreneur's dream, right? Low cost and high profit margins.
Moreover, in the majority of the black-oriented movies of the 1970s, African-American audiences were given extra heavy doses of the film industry's unholy trinity of sex, violence, and crime. Base level sex appetite. Sex, violence, and crime. That's the holy trinity Dr. Weems says black audiences were given in heavy doses. So, on the surface, the films look like black power and black triumph movies. But then underneath the surface, they were feeding the lowest appetites of the people watching.
Thus, the term blaxploitation, while not grammatically correct, does accurately convey the fleecing of African-American moviegoers during this period. Historical and psychological insight helps explain why black consumers were so easily manipulated by the film industry during the early 1970s.
How was it so easily done?
As one contemporary pundit noted,
Right now, there is no question that the black audience, starved for years for films that see the world from a black point of view, is eating up just about anything that is slickly served.
For years, blacks had been starved to see films about them from their own perspective. So, when Hollywood finally gave them something, they ate that thing up, regardless if it was cancerous to the mind. This coils back into the major theme in the book, which was a desire to be recognized. And again, that recognition came at the expense of being conditioned with movies that fed the base-level appetites.
It is no accident that the most successful of the black films, both good and bad, invariably serve up heroes who stick it to the man. The intent of the new black films is not art, but the commercial exploitation of the repressed anger of a relatively powerless community.
So, Hollywood turned that anger into profit. They channeled the repressed anger into a movie. And what this allowed was for blacks to feel like they were sticking it to the man and winning. So, Hollywood gave them fantasy revenge, while blacks gave Hollywood real money. You see that? This all answers why black consumers were so easily manipulated by the film industry during the 1970s. Now, let's keep going.
Significantly, Superfly, which featured a pernicious glorification of cocaine use, represented the brainchild of a consortium of black New York professionals, including the screenwriter Philip Fenty and the director Gordon Parks Jr.
Stop right here. Another reality check. So, we know for sure that white Hollywood had their slithery hands in creating destructive images for blacks, right? That's expected. But, it wasn't just them. Blacks were also involved as well. In fact, it was black screenwriters and directors who created Super Fly with all of the glorification of cocaine use. Think about it. And for sure they understood who was the target audience for this movie. And they for sure understood how images interact with the mind. You don't get that deep in Hollywood without clearly understanding how that works. But, they put Super Fly together anyway because the target was what? Profit. So, they aimed the arrow in the direction most likely to hit the target.
Having produced Super Fly independently on a shoestring budget of $350,000, the film's African-American investors subsequently entered into a mutually lucrative distribution agreement with Warner Brothers.
So, the black producers made it cheap, and Warner Brothers helped spread it wide. So, both came out with what? Profits.
By 1974, Super Fly had grossed more than $12 million. Moreover, the stylish fashions worn by the main character Priest were reproduced and marketed to urban black males seeking to emulate the character's on-screen persona.
So, they paid to watch the fantasy, then they paid again to dress like the fantasy. Right? All of those tokens could have been used to build better infrastructure for their community.
The Mack, which featured a gaudily dressed pimp named Goldie, also became a financial success, grossing a reported $2.5 million in its first few weeks.
Look at all that money spent. And to get what in return?
The Mack exploited the fantasies of some young black males about pimping more skillfully than Goldie handled his female charges in the movie.
More images of pimping. That's the last type of image blacks needed at that time growing in their mind. Because once images grow in the mind, they start trying to direct real-world actions. That's what happened with the Super Fly movie. Where Dr. Weems said black urban males sought to emulate the character's on-screen persona. Right? The image is rooted in the mind and started influencing activity.
Although all of the Buck mania films tended to characterize women, black and white, as little more than sexual playthings, The Mack appeared to be especially demeaning to women.
[clears throat]
In a paper read at the 1974 annual meeting of the National Medical Association, a black psychiatrist discussing the black film boom asserted that African-American women in The Mack came across as being so stupid and naive that the question of retardation has to be raised.
Another type of image that blacks should not have allowed to further continue in their mind.
Ironically, while African-American women were devalued in Buck mania films, they were simultaneously exalted in the super bad super mama movies. Films such as Cleopatra Jones, 1973, Coffee, 1973, and Foxy Brown, 1974, featured black women who were the match of Buck mania stars in terms of wreaking violence and mayhem. In fact, Pam Grier, featured in Coffee and Foxy Brown, emerged as a major box office draw. Yet, in keeping with the bottom line mentality of blaxploitation movie producers, Greer's ample cleavage and athletic body, rather than her acting ability, were spotlighted.
Catering to the base human sexual appetite.
Despite Hollywood's apparent preoccupation with African-American super studs and Amazons in the 1970s, there were some black-oriented films that were both respectable and profitable.
What were those?
Sounder, 1972, Lady Sings the Blues, 1972, and Uptown Saturday Night, 1974, epitomized such movies.
But watch this.
Despite the appeal of films such as Sounder, Lady Sings the Blues, and Uptown Saturday Night, most non-blaxploitation African-American films were box office disasters during this period.
Which implies what? That enough blacks didn't want that. This is the hard reality here. Blacks did want representation in movies, but a specific type of representation is what they paid for the most. See, people can yap all day about wanting positivity and all types of things like that. But when Hollywood made those positive movies, with the exception of a few, most were box office disasters, right? People did not show up and pay. So, the market spoke with money, and not just lip service. Would you keep producing certain types of movies if they continued to be box office disasters? Probably not. But, there is another option, and the other option is to simply not make any more movies at all. Especially if all you're left with is creating more movies that feed the lower appetite of your own community. But the integrity there has to be worth more than making profit. And to a lot of people, it's not. Now, let's see what else.
To many African Americans, especially the young, Buck mania and Super Bad Super Mama films provided a communal cathartic release from everyday problems associated with racism. Although a significant number of African-American consumers eagerly paid to view fictional racial retribution, an increasing number of blacks began to criticize what one scholar called the emotional and economic exploitation of African-American moviegoers.
Here we go. Let's talk about the blacks who stood up against the images.
The Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch of the NAACP, appropriately, emerged as a focal point of African-American discontent with blaxploitation films. At its August 9th, 1972 meeting, which included representatives from the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE, People United to Save Humanity, PUSH, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, and the Black Panther Party, the branch president, Junius Griffin, vociferously lashed out against the genre.
Come on with it.
Griffin described blaxploitation movies as a cancer that ate away at the moral fiber of the black community.
Spreading through the community like cancer. Those images didn't just stay on the screen. They transferred into the mind. They transferred into thoughts. They transferred into the imagination. Right? And they began to take over other images that may threaten their ability to survive in the mind. And eventually what they could do is manifest themselves as patterns of behavior.
Moreover, he told a standing room only audience,
"These films continue taking our money while feeding black people a forced diet of violence, murder, drugs, and rape. Yet we go on paying millions of dollars for our own cultural genocide at the box offices of white folks movie houses."
He hits both parts here. The filmmakers created the cancerous product, but they don't strap people down to chairs and make them watch the cancer. Right? That's only half of the deal. The other half is people paying millions to participate in their own cultural genocide. Do you see that? Now, if you remove any one of these halves, then the deal itself disappears. If the movie's not made, then there is nothing to watch at all. And if the people don't pay to watch the cancer, then the cancer cannot spread because the thing needs attention to do so. Right? So, it's the mind that's in the pit that only blames the producer. The free mind looks at the whole deal and understands, yes, they made the cancer, but it's still my choice to choose whether to consume it or not to.
Griffin's appeal resulted in the establishment of the Committee Against Black Exploitation, CAB. This group primarily sought to raise the consciousness of both black consumers and the motion picture industry regarding film depictions of African Americans.
Targeting both halves of the deal.
CAB, among other things, demanded the right to preview scripts of future black films, and urged Hollywood to hire more African Americans throughout the film industry.
Now, watch this.
Besides internal problems, the Committee Against Black Exploitation came under attack from white studio executives and some of the black actors and actresses associated with the black exploitation genre.
Uh-oh, blacks and whites teaming up together to defend the cancer.
Samuel Z. Arkoff, head of American International Pictures, reacted to CAB by asserting,
"I rather resent, and I think blacks resent, the implication of this organization that black audiences are somehow not able to recognize something that is degrading to themselves."
Y'all basically think blacks are too dumb to think for themselves, and they can't tell the difference if something is degrading or not. He's saying, "Don't blame the producer." Like the black audiences are just helpless, and they can't decide on their own if they want to participate in the deal. Right? That was his defense. Now, look who else popped their head in this.
Similarly, Ron O'Neal, the star of the controversial film Superfly, declared,
"They're saying that they know better than the black people themselves what they should look at. That they're going to be the moral interpreters for the destiny of black people. I'm so tired of handkerchief-headed Negroes moralizing on the poor black man."
You see that? He flips the frame to make it about trying to control blacks. This is in the '70s. So, extreme individualism was already taking shape at that time. And going after someone's freedom created controversy because it touched on something that mainstream America highly valued. So, Mr. O'Neal here is saying, "Let blacks do their own thing and let them decide for themselves, right? They don't need a moral interpreter to decide their own destiny."
Many African-American actors, actresses, and screenwriters, Ronald O'Neal notwithstanding, were sensitive to issues related to black screen depictions.
Talk about it.
On July 23rd, 1972, Lonnie Elder III, the screenwriter of the acclaimed film Sounder, organized a panel discussion in Los Angeles centered around the theme, "The current rash of new black films, a blessing or a curse?" The audience at the well-attended meeting, made up primarily of blacks in the motion picture industry, resulted in a public repudiation of the films that many on the panel and in the audience had been involved in.
They recognized their counterproductive deeds, which is the first step to change in behavior. So, they do get props for that.
Shortly thereafter, these individuals, among them such notables as Ossie Davis, Cicely Tyson, and Denise Nichols, established an organization known as the Black Artists Alliance, BAA. In an open letter that appeared in the August 18th, 1972 issue of Variety, the group declared,
"We will no longer tolerate the cheap movies about us, cheap in terms of the range of human emotions expressed, and cheap in their one-dimensional investigations of human problems. We will no longer tolerate the visual images of black people that are paraded across the screen as little more than reincarnations of racist stereotypes, which demean our women and make ludicrous caricatures of our men."
Now, I don't know for sure if they did or did not completely change their involvement in these types of movies, but I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume that they did based on the strong stance that they took here.
Along with such organizations as the Committee Against Black Exploitation and the Black Artists Alliance, the black psychologist Dr. Alvin J. Poussaint emerged as a leading critic of the black exploitation movie genre. In his widely discussed February 1974 Psychology Today article titled "Black Exploitation Movies: Cheap Thrills That Degrade Blacks", Poussaint assessed the psychological impact of black exploitation films on the African-American community. He sadly noted,
"Black youth in Brooklyn dramatically increased their use of cocaine after the movie Super Fly glamorized the narcotic."
You hear that? The idea got in the vehicle and took over the driver's seat. I told you that these images don't just stay on the screen. They enter the mind, they touch the imagination, and they start directing real-world behavior. Now, here's some more.
"On the other side of the continent, practically the entire student body of a high school in Los Angeles is wearing the gold coke spoon necklace after a showing of the same movie."
Pay attention.
"The fluffed natural hairdo has undergone a dramatic change into the slick conk style as urban youth copy the hairstyles of film characters."
As they copy the hairstyle of the film characters. The images on the screen now have a real body to manifest through. The image is no longer trapped in the film. It has entered the person and started wearing the body.
"They mimic the stars' hip, violent personalities that suggest that success comes with a cool rap, flashy clothes, big expensive cars, and a gun."
The media is a powerful vehicle for all types of image entities to spread themselves into the home of the human mind. And even more powerful is that most people aren't aware that those entities are in there. So, with that the question becomes how many of these entities are you unaware of in your own inner world? Have you taken inventory? Are they all accounted for? Or do they have you mimicking things unknowingly as well? Think about that. Now, let's continue.
Poussaint concluded his essay by calling for a nationwide African-American boycott of movies to force Hollywood to produce more positive forms of entertainment. In addition to objecting to blaxploitation movies' psychological manipulation of African-American consumers, critics of the genre also decried the profits these films generated primarily for white businessmen. White theater owners especially benefited from the black films of the early 1970s. Out of the approximately 14,000 motion picture theaters in the United States during this period, fewer than 20 were owned and operated by African-Americans.
Dr. Claude Anderson already told us that after the civil rights in the '60s that blacks didn't want to go to the black movie theater anymore. They wanted to go to the white one. So, it's no surprise here in the '70s that fewer than 20 were owned and operated by blacks.
The mostly white producers of blaxploitation movies also received significant returns for minimal investment. A widespread technique used to minimize above-the-line costs, such as salary for cast and directors, was the utilization of unknown talent for low wages. The case of Richard Roundtree, the star of MGM's mega-hit Shaft, epitomized this phenomenon. Although Shaft reportedly grossed more than $17 million from a $1.8 million investment, Roundtree received compensation of only $12,500.
He received only a couple dollars. This stuff is wild.
Had it not been for the vehement protestation of Shaft's black director Gordon Parks, MGM would have paid Roundtree a salary of only $25,000 for Shaft's 1972 sequel, Shaft's Big Score.
But what did he get?
Roundtree did, after intense negotiations, ultimately receive $50,000 for this reprise role.
Again, a couple dollars.
Yet his experiences demonstrated that the term blaxploitation referred to the exploitation of black actors and actresses, as well as black consumers. A survey of the film credits of 53 black-oriented films made between January 1973 and August 1974 further documents white control of the production and profits of blaxploitation films. Only six, or 11% of these films, were produced by African-Americans. While whites apparently received a lion's share of the profits associated with the black-oriented movies of the 1970s, some African-Americans did materially benefit from this phenomenon.
Like who?
Besides Melvin Van Peebles' stunning success with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, two African-American musician songwriters, Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield, achieved far-reaching success during this period.
Here we go.
Part of the formula associated with attracting black consumers to blaxploitation movies was the utilization of popular African-American recording artists to develop film scores.
That's part of the formula to open up the treasure chest. Get the entertainers on board, pay them a couple dollars, and whether it's the black vote or the black dollar, it is attractive. It's a weak spot that has been known for many decades. And anyone studying the black community from the zoomed out eagles view like we're doing here, could see the coiling pattern throughout history. Now, here we go.
Isaac Hayes' soundtrack album to the 1971 film Shaft both earned him an Academy Award and generated several million dollars in sales. Likewise, Curtis Mayfield's 1972 soundtrack album for Superfly went to platinum with more than a million sold. Other notable blaxploitation soundtracks that successfully encouraged African-American consumers to make two purchases, movie ticket and album, included Marvin Gaye's Trouble Man, 1972, Willie Hutch's The Mack, 1973, and James Brown's Black Caesar, 1973. Despite the profits associated with the blaxploitation film genre, by the mid-1970s, a number of factors had contributed to its demise.
Uh-oh, like what?
First, as the sheer novelty of black-oriented films began to wear off, African-American consumers became more discerning. This was crucial in terms of profits because few whites patronized these films. In fact, the relatively disappointing box office receipts of two 1973 sequels, Shaft in Africa and Superfly T.N.T., alerted Hollywood producers that blaxploitation films most profitable days were probably behind them.
So, at first, blacks were excited to see themselves on the screen. But then after seeing the same pimps, players, hustlers, uh sex and crime, then the black viewers became more selective and they were less willing to support just anything that Hollywood threw out there and called a black movie.
Another factor that contributed to the decline of the blaxploitation film genre was Hollywood's discovery that it could reach the African-American consumer market through quality mainstream movies. For instance, market surveys revealed that black moviegoers represented nearly 35% of the audience for such mega hits as The Godfather, 1972, and The Exorcist, 1973.
So, they discovered that blacks would still open up that treasure chest if the movie was mainstream. And especially if it had this.
Perhaps the final death blow to the blaxploitation film genre was Hollywood's realization that African-American consumers would enthusiastically support mainstream films with blacks in prominent supporting roles.
So, blacks didn't need to be the main character. Just as long as they had a strong supportive role, that was good enough. Here's an example.
Two 1976 films, Rocky, which featured Carl Weathers, and Silver Streak, which featured the inimitable Richard Pryor, attracted large numbers of both black and white filmgoers. In fact, in the late 1970s, Hollywood, sensing yet another profitable trend, subsequently created a number of crossover films to spotlight the multi-talented Pryor.
You see that? They looked for the trends that would pop. And the idea was to get there first and profit from it. And then once the trend dies, they look for the next one. In this instance, Richard Pryor was part of that next.
On the surface, the blaxploitation film genre appeared to have been just another Hollywood craze. Yet black-oriented movies made between 1971 and 1974 seem to have had a profound subliminal effect on the African-American psyche.
How so?
First, the sense of racial unity generated by the civil rights movement gave way to the rugged individualism of such movie characters as Priest, Goldie, and Shaft. Furthermore, the film stimulated conspicuous consumption as young black males sought to emulate the lifestyles of these dubious film icons.
Civil rights promoted unity. Then afterwards, the image shifted towards the individual self. I get mine. I look fly. I drive the car. I get the girl. And I become the man all by myself. And Dr. Weems is saying that movies helped promote that shift by creating these images that young black males sought to emulate. And what this is all showing is the breaking apart of the black community as a collective unit. The '50s and the '60s were its peak. That's the highest as far as a collective. And afterwards, as a collective, it turned fast into a sinking ship. Right? Going all the way down, further and further under the weight of rugged individualism.
In sum, the 1970s blaxploitation film genre represented an extremely effective means to more fully incorporate blacks as American consumers. Hindsight suggests that the millions of dollars blacks spent visiting a fantasy world of African-American triumph and achievement might have been better spent trying to affect changes in the real world.
That's a hard reality, isn't it? But guess what? As a unit, you can only affect change in the real world when you have the right people with the right mind who are willing to do the right things. Other than that, you spend dollars visiting the fantasy world while others build in the real.
Although Hollywood may have denigrated the role of African-American women during the 1970s, other sectors of the US economy, especially the personal care products industry, took black female consumers very seriously.
Now, be on the lookout for that because we're going to stop here and commence with this in the next commentary. I thank you for your time and attention. My name is Brooklyn Saint Michael and I'll see you in the free world.