Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema

This exuberant debut from Boston Globe film critic Henderson provides commentary on and social context for 1970s Blaxploitation films. Highlighting milestones in the genre, Henderson suggests the vibrant characters in the 1970 comedy Cotton Comes to Harlem offered alternatives to the Black stereotypes that had populated major studio films and helped to make it a box office success. Accounts of how major movies were made are peppered throughout (the idea for 1971’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song came to director Melvin Van Peebles as he masturbated while visiting the Mojave Desert to look for inspiration), but the focus is largely on plot summaries and critical analysis of such films as Blacula, Shaft, and Super Fly, the latter of which Henderson suggests is distinguished by its “shocking amorality.” (Rooting for the cocaine dealer protagonist “is an act of capitalistic complicity; rooting against him is siding with the corrupt system that made his hustle necessary.”) Though the detailed synopses sometimes drag, Henderson fares better when elucidating the era’s cultural debates, as when he covers disagreements between the NAACP, who decried Blaxploitation films as glorifying harmful depictions of Black people, and the artists involved in the films, who insisted on portraying alternatives to the “preachy respectability” that had previously characterized Hollywood depictions of Black characters. The result is a thoughtful and loving ode to the genre. (Jan.)