MovieChat Forums > Sparkle (1976) Discussion > Blaxploitation, Really????

Blaxploitation, Really????

posted 18 years ago by Celluloid_Dreamer
7 replies | jump to latest

I'm sorry if I sound uneducated, I'm just slightly ignorant on the subject of blaxploitation films. Now,I'm an 18 year old African-American so I obviuosly wasn't alive when Sparkle came out. Is this really a "blaxploitation" film or is it just lumped into that category because it came out in that time period. When I hear the word blaxploitation I think of films like "Shaft" "Superfly" and all those Pam Greer movies, and of course "Blacula". But "Sparkle", although flawed, seemed like a film that was going against that trend, along with "Claudine" and even "The Wiz". I thought blaxploitation was exploitive, to me those 3 films seem like genuine efforts to offer something other than the mindless exploitation and dumbing down of our culture to the public. Am I wrong? Is the genre of Blaxploitation a much broader genre than I first suspected? I deeply apreciate your responses, thank you.

[–] niteowl_008 18 years ago

I believe it's unfortunately dumped into the blaxploitation category because it was released at the height of the blaxploitation era. The movie doesn't even qualify as a blaxploitation film. It's not even a musical it's just a movie with songs thrown in. It was a great idea but it was poorly written and executed. Curtis Mayfield's score though is top notch and the film's one saving grace.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] whatyoutalkinboutman 17 years ago

It IS a Blaxploitation movie if you follow the criteria that is applied to the movies that you mentioned. Almost 100% of the BLACK movies from this era had WHITE MEN (MOSTLY JEWISH) in the above the line positions. IE; Executive producer (primary investor), producer, writer, cinematographer and director.

These films were called Blaxpoitation films not because of their black content but because of the exploitation of black actors and audiences. These films made truckloads money for the investers certainly. But the Black actors had little to no control of dialogue, character development or story line. The black audiences for the most part didn't understand the inner workings of film making, nor did they care. But the money that blacks spent on these films didn't go back into the Black community. Hence the exploitation moniker.

Black talent such as Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles were the auteurs of the 1960's as far as black film makers were concerned. Sadly, they were few and far between.

[–] andrewwjohnson 16 years ago

....That may have been true to some extent, but by those standards neither "Shaft" or "Supper Fly" could be defined as blaxploitation. Gordon Parks, who wrote the scrips and produced both in the early seventies. He had based the story lines on his experiences as a crime reporter in Harlem during the thirties. When the studio tried to pressure him into casting Frank Sinatra or Robert Redford in the title role in "Shaft", because it make the film popular with white audiences, he refused and insisted on Richard Roundtree. Two thirds of the box office receipts for "Shaft" came from theaters in white areas. Still "Shaft and "Supper Fly" became the very definition of what the media and the NAACP considered exploitation. It didn't help that lesser film makers were attempting to copy his movies and doing a horrible job of it....As for financing Melvin Van Peeples got funding for "Sweet Sweatback" from Bill Cosby of all people.
People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated-Ernestine (Silks) in "The Human Stain"

[–] WarpedRecord 15 years ago

Very good points! I think the type of filmmaking rather than the demographics of the filmmakers are what defines blaxploitation. "Sparkle" does not fall into that category because this is a musical drama without the exploitive (though very entertaining) elements of films like "Shaft" and "Super Fly."

If "Sparkle" gets lumped into the blaxploitation category, it's because in the mid-'70s, there weren't a lot of films with mostly black casts except for blaxploitation, so to many folks, black equaled blaxploitation. About this time, you also had the Bill Cosby/Sydney Poitier films like "Uptown Saturday Night" and musical comedies like "Car Wash," which had largely black casts but were hardly exploitation. They showed working-class black people in a (mostly) positive light and didn't rely on stereotypes about violence, drugs and sexuality. "Sparkle," despite the drug subplot, falls into that same category, in my opinion.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] WarpedRecord 15 years ago

Those are excellent points. Didn't the NAACP coin the phrase "blaxploitation" to refer to films that played on negative stereotypes of African Americans, portraying them as pimps, hookers, killers and drug dealers? I don't think the colors of the producers were really relevant here. "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" (is that enough s's?) was considered one of the first of the genre, and that was from a black director.

I do not consider films like "Sparkle" or or the Bill Cosby/Sidney Poitier comedies blaxploitation because the stories they told were much more middle of the road – working-class people trying to accomplish the dream of stardom in "Sparkle's" case, working families trying to save their lodge in the case of "Let's Do It Again."

The blaxploitation label pretty much vanished by the late '70s, when black artists like Richard Pryor were better integrated into mainstream films.

Today, of course, the debate about "appropriate" images continues in some rap music, with its liberal use of the "n" word, glorification of violence, and demeaning descriptions of woman. I'll leave it to others to debate whether this is progress.