Talk:Blaxploitation

Don't be a menace in South Central while drinking your juice in the hood

Why on earth isn't this film listed... it's great by the way. 108.2.116.114 (talk) 01:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Don't be a menace to south central while drinking your juice in the hood*, sorry for the typo. 108.2.116.114 (talk) 01:56, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Definition

I propose that "blacksploitation" is not a genre. It is truly only useful as a marketing term since the films themselves varied somewhat in terms of genre. Many were crime films, but there were also many comedies, mysteries, action thrillers, and horror films.

I have to disagree, blacksploitation may not be a genre but Blaxploitaion certainly is and has been considered a genre since the 1970's, and is certainly not a marketing tool. Even those of us who are Black do not see this as a problem and I propose that is your basis for your proposal. Even funnier (at least to me)is the fact you apparently use the term yourself, in the description "Many were crime films but there were also many comedies, mysteries, action thrillers, and horror films." Many what? Many Blaxploitation Films were crime films, comedies, mysteries, action thrillers, and horror films. Go to something like Netflix, look for the genre Blaxploitation and you will find just what you described: crime films, comedies, mysteries, action thrillers, and horror films. It is a universally accepted genre for the very reasons explained in the Wikipedia article. 75.17.202.212 (talk) 15:32, 31 October 2009 (UTC)Joe

I would add that Blaxploitation started before the early 70's. The Black Klansman was released in 1966 and is considered Blaxploitation. Even the Wikipedia list of Blaxploitation films lists a handful of 68 and 69 releases.Jmcachran (talk) 18:52, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

The article does not disagree, "Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the late 1960s". - SummerPhD (talk) 20:44, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

That would be because I edited it.Jmcachran (talk) 03:45, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

My bad. Do we have sources for an early 1970s birth of the genre? The cites I'm looking at credit the creation of the genre to Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) and/or Shaft (1971). The unsourced Blaxploitation#Famous_blaxploitation_films starts with They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! (1970) and Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). - SummerPhD (talk) 04:54, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Pictures

This article definitely needs some images to liven things up. I'll add some images of posters from a few related articles --Do Not Talk About Feitclub (contributions) 12:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, does that violate fair use? --Do Not Talk About Feitclub (contributions) 13:07, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely, but I don't believe so. This is one of the few Wikipedia articles that includes critical commentary about these films, and to use an image like the cover or poster in order to illustrate the work (ie in its own article) or to accompany critical commentary (ie here) appears to be covered by fair use. --Cheeser1 (talk) 17:56, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

site resource tag

which part exactly need to "cite resource". this article seems pretty supported by examples and directed to each specific explanation sources, i think. GSPbeetle ^{complains Vandalisms} 15:14, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

"by, for, and about black people"?

"This film [Sweet Sweetback's] is also noteworthy in that it was written, directed, produced, and funded by Melvin Van Peebles, an African American. This remained the premise of the early blaxploitation films; film by, for, and about black people."

The concluding statement here seems to me wrong. While Sweetback was 'by black people,' the genre it in some ways spawned was for the most part NOT by black people. While the films did star black actors, they were mostly written, produced and directed by white people. And in the few 'blaxploitation' films that attempted to break out of the B movie/exploitation film ghetto to some cross-over success, white actors were cast in lead roles, paired with black actors, as it was felt there was no 'mainstream' audience for a film with only a black lead - see, e.g., 'Across 110th Street."

The quoted statement from the article actually has a citation, but it is only to the homepage for the fan website blaxploitation.com, and this homepage does not contain anything supporting the statement. Even if it did, though, the claim would still be wrong. Zerodeconduite 00:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I changed it. Be bold, guys, don't leave things lying there for 10 months.142.167.163.202 23:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

It seems pretty sketch to me to have Sweet Sweetback’s in here at all, save in discussion about precipitating Blaxploitation. I don't know where the topic stands re original research, but Sweet Sweetback’s is a world apart from the likes of Shaft, Cleopatra Jones, Foxy Brown, etc. ENeville 04:26, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I pulled the Sweet Sweetback’s poster pic because it's misleading to feature a non-representative film so prominently. ENeville 04:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Merging with Jewsploitation?

No way. Two different things entirely. Guroadrunner 03:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I concur. [[User:Cynical

Major reorganization and copyedit

Conducted under GOCE is complete. Those with specific content knowledge please continue to edit, but please also be mindful of the article's improved structure and clarity of presentation, and don't mess with it too much. Thanks! --BenJonson (talk) 03:17, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

The Ladies Man

Would The Ladies Man be considered a post 1970s blaxploitation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.232.241.114 (talk) 19:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

To add a film, we need to cite reliable sources that specifically call it blaxploitation. - SummerPhD (talk) 01:44, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

"Blaxpoitation" (without the 2nd L!) --Feedback requested

   A search shows 4 articles that misspell "Blaxploitation" by omitting the 2nd letter l, plus one user talk page, and 3 (archived) non-article pages. The Web shows over 10% occurrence of that misspelling.
   Such errors may be encouraged by a potentially very authoritative-looking typo: imagesjournal.com seems to be the original publisher of a perhaps frequently cited interview, "Roger Corman on Blair Witch Project and Why Mean Streets Would Have Made a Great Blaxploitation Film"; their own site's "Features" page (the first link in this 'graph) links to it with the L missing. (Note that the interview's title appears on its own page only as a part of a graphic element, ruling out cutting-and-pasting it into the source of the "Features" page.)
   I consider that justification for correcting the 4 articles, and commenting on the user talk page, and i shall undertake those changes.
   On the other hand, i'm undecided about whether this "relatively authoritative" misspelling deserves a sentence or two in the accompanying article-- perhaps as a footnote of the non-references sort. IMO, a 10% omission rate of a letter -- which seems to present no particular problem when the same phoneme-sequence appears in "explain" or "explode" -- is quite a different thing from typical misspellings caused by obvious alternate orthographies or obscure etymology. Thoughts?
--Jerzy•t 21:53, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Explanation of term

I wish that the lead section contained a better explanation of the word "blaxploitation". To me, the term strongly sounds as if the films exploit black people, but the linked article exploitation film says that "exploitation" refers to the exploitation of a trend or niche genre for quick profit. Because of the great potential for confusion, I don't feel that this link is sufficient. I think that this article should explicitly state in the lead section who or what is being "exploited", and should specifically exclude the interpretation that black people are exploited by the films if that is not the intention. 86.169.185.33 (talk) 04:04, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed

Three years later, your point is still valid. After reading the article, I was still confused by the term "blaxploitation," because it seemed that on balance, the genre empowered rather than exploited black people. Please, add a better explanation of the term. 174.24.0.143 (talk) 14:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

I also agree. This definition belies the spirit of Blaxploitation as a genre. Not to say that white Hollywood hasn’t always exploited black artists for their own gain, but Blaxploitation as a genre seems to be about empowerment, especially since it coincides with other momentous events of the time, like the Black power movement and the formation of the Black Panthers. Flobotnik (talk) 02:24, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Annie? Seriously?

Just because a film has black actors in the leads, doesn't make it blaxploitation. It's ridiculous that the Annie remake is mentioned here, and Passenger 57 doesn't really belong either — it's an action movie with a black lead, but Wesley Snipes' character could have just as easily been played by a white actor. You can't say the same thing about Black Caesar or Sweet Sweetback. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.109.151.202 (talk) 03:31, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

ill be honest wit u, I added black annie to this list before I ever saw it, I thought it was blaxploitation because it starred the guy from jango unchained, but now i know its mostly singing and stuff.

Haitian STEVE (talk) 19:05, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Cultural references section

It has been my understanding that Quentin Tarentino is greatly influenced and inspired by blaxploitation, but I see no mention of him here. PurpleChez (talk) 19:25, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

IMO, there is likely a good reason for that. This article is about blaxploitation, not Tarentino. While the film genre may have had an impact on him, I'm not sure he has had much of an impact on Tarentino.

Consider, for example, Abraham Lincoln. There are likely tens of thousands of topics he had an impact on: every president after him, various coins, funerary customs, hairstyles, federal holidays, the Secret Service, thousands of books, plays, films, songs, etc. The "tour" Lincoln's body was sent on had a very definite impact on the popularity of embalming, so mentioning Lincoln in Embalming makes sense. However, you would need a book-length article about Lincoln before embalming would merit much discussion at Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is a meaningful part of embalming, but embalming is not a meaningful part of Lincoln. - SummerPhD^v2.0 16:13, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Dubious list

Many of the modern firms are dubious, with one source or one RS. The Last Dragon has one low quality source on the main article. Shaft (2000 film) has no sources. Are many in this modern list like this? Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:17, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

New section

@AleatoryPonderings: you created a whole section on a term "slaveplotation" (pardon if i got the spelling wrong) that I could not find in any of your sources. When I google it I google doesnt even seem to know the word. Please explain what you are trying to add here. If this is a WP:FRINGE concept we do do that. Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:09, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: Apologies for jumping the gun. I'm somewhat puzzled as to why you're unable to find the concept listed in my sources, however. The correct spelling is "slavesploitation". All sources are listed on the draft section in my userspace. Sources that aren't paywalled—or are paywalled, but include the term "slavesploitation" in the unpaywalled section—include: this, this, this, this, and this. A search for "slavesploitation" in any of those works—all WP:RS by my reckoning—should turn up the backup you're looking for. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 20:18, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Maybe as I was mispelling it. I see here [1]. I suppose I was expecting more mainstream sources. Feel free to revert my delete and re-add it. Thanks for explaining! Maybe reduce the size of the section a bit, so it is WP:DUE weight, as the article is pretty small currently. Maybe other editors will also comment here. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:39, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: Yup, had to do a bit of digging to find coverage, but it's there—mainly in academic film commentary. I trimmed the section a bit per your note; feel free to cut some more if you think it's still too big. In case you were wondering why I was so interested in this topic, btw: Robert Tralins, who wrote a bunch of slavesploitation novels in the '60s, is up for deletion. I saw his name mentioned in a few lists of slavesploitation books while I was researching Tralins to expand the article on him, and was interested to learn more. AleatoryPonderings (talk) 20:48, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

Confusing sentence in first paragraph

The first paragraph contains the following sentence:

The genre does rank among the first after the race films in the 1940s and 1960s in which black characters and communities are the protagonists and subjects of film and television, rather than sidekicks, antagonists or victims of brutality.

What does this even mean? "Among the first" of what? Where do "race films" come into this? Why in the '40s and '60s, but not the '50s? Why use "does rank" instead of "ranks"? (Very confusing...) -- Dan Griscom (talk) 02:22, 25 October 2023 (UTC)