Author: Gerald R. Butters
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826273297
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
Racial politics and capitalism found a way to blend together in 1970s Chicago in the form of movie theaters targeted specifically toward African Americans. In From Sweetback to Super Fly, Gerald Buttersexamines the movie theaters in Chicago’s Loop that became, as he describes them, “black spaces” during the early 1970s with theater managers making an effort to gear their showings toward the African American community by using black-themed and blaxploitation films. Butters covers the wide range of issues that influenced the theaters, from changing racial patterns to the increasingly decrepit state of Chicago’s inner city and the pressure on businesses and politicians alike to breathe life into the dying area. Through his extensive research, Butters provides an in-depth look at this phenomenon, delving into an area that has not previously been explored. His close examination of how black-themed films were marketed and how theaters showing these films tried to draw in crowds sheds light on race issues both from an industrial standpoint on the side of the theaters and movie producers, as well as from a cultural standpoint on the side of the moviegoers and the city of Chicago as a whole. Butters provides a wealth of information on a very interesting yet underexamined part of history, making From Sweetback to Super Fly a supremely enjoyable and informative book.
From SWEETBACK to SUPER FLY
Author: Gerald R. Butters
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826273297
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
Racial politics and capitalism found a way to blend together in 1970s Chicago in the form of movie theaters targeted specifically toward African Americans. In From Sweetback to Super Fly, Gerald Buttersexamines the movie theaters in Chicago’s Loop that became, as he describes them, “black spaces” during the early 1970s with theater managers making an effort to gear their showings toward the African American community by using black-themed and blaxploitation films. Butters covers the wide range of issues that influenced the theaters, from changing racial patterns to the increasingly decrepit state of Chicago’s inner city and the pressure on businesses and politicians alike to breathe life into the dying area. Through his extensive research, Butters provides an in-depth look at this phenomenon, delving into an area that has not previously been explored. His close examination of how black-themed films were marketed and how theaters showing these films tried to draw in crowds sheds light on race issues both from an industrial standpoint on the side of the theaters and movie producers, as well as from a cultural standpoint on the side of the moviegoers and the city of Chicago as a whole. Butters provides a wealth of information on a very interesting yet underexamined part of history, making From Sweetback to Super Fly a supremely enjoyable and informative book.
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826273297
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
Racial politics and capitalism found a way to blend together in 1970s Chicago in the form of movie theaters targeted specifically toward African Americans. In From Sweetback to Super Fly, Gerald Buttersexamines the movie theaters in Chicago’s Loop that became, as he describes them, “black spaces” during the early 1970s with theater managers making an effort to gear their showings toward the African American community by using black-themed and blaxploitation films. Butters covers the wide range of issues that influenced the theaters, from changing racial patterns to the increasingly decrepit state of Chicago’s inner city and the pressure on businesses and politicians alike to breathe life into the dying area. Through his extensive research, Butters provides an in-depth look at this phenomenon, delving into an area that has not previously been explored. His close examination of how black-themed films were marketed and how theaters showing these films tried to draw in crowds sheds light on race issues both from an industrial standpoint on the side of the theaters and movie producers, as well as from a cultural standpoint on the side of the moviegoers and the city of Chicago as a whole. Butters provides a wealth of information on a very interesting yet underexamined part of history, making From Sweetback to Super Fly a supremely enjoyable and informative book.
The Soundtrack Album
Author: Paul N. Reinsch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429833830
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 251
Book Description
The Soundtrack Album: Listening to Media offers the first sustained exploration of the soundtrack album as a distinctive form of media. Soundtrack albums have been part of our media and musical landscape for decades, enduring across formats from vinyl and 8-tracks to streaming playlists. This book makes the case that soundtrack albums are more than promotional tools for films, television shows, or video games— they are complex media texts that reward a detailed analysis. The collection’s contributors explore a diverse range of soundtrack albums, from Super Fly to Stranger Things, revealing how these albums change our understanding of the music and film industries and the audio-visual relationships that drive them. An excellent resource for students of Music, Media Studies, and Film/Screen Media courses, The Soundtrack Album offers interdisciplinary perspectives and opens new areas for exploration in music and media studies.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429833830
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 251
Book Description
The Soundtrack Album: Listening to Media offers the first sustained exploration of the soundtrack album as a distinctive form of media. Soundtrack albums have been part of our media and musical landscape for decades, enduring across formats from vinyl and 8-tracks to streaming playlists. This book makes the case that soundtrack albums are more than promotional tools for films, television shows, or video games— they are complex media texts that reward a detailed analysis. The collection’s contributors explore a diverse range of soundtrack albums, from Super Fly to Stranger Things, revealing how these albums change our understanding of the music and film industries and the audio-visual relationships that drive them. An excellent resource for students of Music, Media Studies, and Film/Screen Media courses, The Soundtrack Album offers interdisciplinary perspectives and opens new areas for exploration in music and media studies.
The Notorious Phd's Guide to the Super Fly '70s
Author: Todd Boyd
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767921879
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
THIS RICHLY INFORMATIVE JOURNEY INTO THE 1970S CAPTURES THE EXPLOSIVE POWER OF THE BLACK PERFORMERS, MUSICIANS, FILMMAKERS, AND ATHLETES WHO IGNITED A CULTURAL REVOLUTION. WHAT SINGER/SONGWRITER WAS THE FIRST WHITE PERFORMER TO APPEAR ON SOUL TRAIN? WHAT PHILADELPHIA 76ER MADE NBA HISTORY WHEN, AGAINST THE KANSAS CITY KINGS, HIS TWO-HANDED DUNK SHATTERED THE BACKBOARD? WHAT ROCK-AND-ROLL STAR WOULD BEGIN HIS CAREER PLAYING GUITAR FOR ARTISTS LITTLE RICHARD AND THE ISLEY BROTHERS? Whether you’re a ’70s culture aficionado or these questions have you stumped, Todd Boyd’s exciting look at one of the most influential periods in popular culture will be a fun and exciting roller-coaster ride that you won’t want to miss. Dr. Boyd (known as “The Notorious Ph.D.”) delves into the personalities, passions, and politics that swept America and the world in the ’70s and introduced a style and attitude that still reverberates today with the hip hop generation. From movies like Shaft, Super Fly, and Cleopatra Jones to Richard Pryor’s edgy routines on race to the rise of Dr. J and other sports superstars, The Notorious Ph.D.’s Guide to the Super Fly ’70s mixes social insight with an all-out celebration of the contributions of a wide variety of Black icons. Covering every aspect of Black culture from the period and including a quiz that you and your friends will love answering together, Dr. Boyd’s hip writing style will educate while it entertains.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767921879
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
THIS RICHLY INFORMATIVE JOURNEY INTO THE 1970S CAPTURES THE EXPLOSIVE POWER OF THE BLACK PERFORMERS, MUSICIANS, FILMMAKERS, AND ATHLETES WHO IGNITED A CULTURAL REVOLUTION. WHAT SINGER/SONGWRITER WAS THE FIRST WHITE PERFORMER TO APPEAR ON SOUL TRAIN? WHAT PHILADELPHIA 76ER MADE NBA HISTORY WHEN, AGAINST THE KANSAS CITY KINGS, HIS TWO-HANDED DUNK SHATTERED THE BACKBOARD? WHAT ROCK-AND-ROLL STAR WOULD BEGIN HIS CAREER PLAYING GUITAR FOR ARTISTS LITTLE RICHARD AND THE ISLEY BROTHERS? Whether you’re a ’70s culture aficionado or these questions have you stumped, Todd Boyd’s exciting look at one of the most influential periods in popular culture will be a fun and exciting roller-coaster ride that you won’t want to miss. Dr. Boyd (known as “The Notorious Ph.D.”) delves into the personalities, passions, and politics that swept America and the world in the ’70s and introduced a style and attitude that still reverberates today with the hip hop generation. From movies like Shaft, Super Fly, and Cleopatra Jones to Richard Pryor’s edgy routines on race to the rise of Dr. J and other sports superstars, The Notorious Ph.D.’s Guide to the Super Fly ’70s mixes social insight with an all-out celebration of the contributions of a wide variety of Black icons. Covering every aspect of Black culture from the period and including a quiz that you and your friends will love answering together, Dr. Boyd’s hip writing style will educate while it entertains.
A Piece of the Action
Author: Eithne Quinn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551010
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Hollywood is often thought of—and certainly by Hollywood itself—as a progressive haven. However, in the decade after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the film industry grew deeply conservative when it came to conflicts over racial justice. Amid black self-assertion and white backlash, many of the most heated struggles in film were fought over employment. In A Piece of the Action, Eithne Quinn reveals how Hollywood catalyzed wider racial politics, through representation on screen as well as in battles over jobs and resources behind the scenes. Based on extensive archival research and detailed discussions of films like In the Heat of the Night, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Super Fly, Claudine, and Blue Collar, this volume considers how issues of race and labor played out on the screen during the tumultuous early years of affirmative action. Quinn charts how black actors leveraged their performance capital to force meaningful changes to employment and film content. She examines the emergence of Sidney Poitier and other African Americans as A-list stars; the careers of black filmmakers such as Melvin Van Peebles and Ossie Davis; and attempts by the federal government and black advocacy groups to integrate cinema. Quinn also highlights the limits of Hollywood’s liberalism, showing how predominantly white filmmakers, executives, and unions hid the persistence of racism behind feel-good stories and public-relations avowals of tolerance. A rigorous analysis of the deeply rooted patterns of racial exclusion in American cinema, A Piece of the Action sheds light on why conservative and corporate responses to antiracist and labor activism remain pervasive in today’s Hollywood.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551010
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Hollywood is often thought of—and certainly by Hollywood itself—as a progressive haven. However, in the decade after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the film industry grew deeply conservative when it came to conflicts over racial justice. Amid black self-assertion and white backlash, many of the most heated struggles in film were fought over employment. In A Piece of the Action, Eithne Quinn reveals how Hollywood catalyzed wider racial politics, through representation on screen as well as in battles over jobs and resources behind the scenes. Based on extensive archival research and detailed discussions of films like In the Heat of the Night, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Super Fly, Claudine, and Blue Collar, this volume considers how issues of race and labor played out on the screen during the tumultuous early years of affirmative action. Quinn charts how black actors leveraged their performance capital to force meaningful changes to employment and film content. She examines the emergence of Sidney Poitier and other African Americans as A-list stars; the careers of black filmmakers such as Melvin Van Peebles and Ossie Davis; and attempts by the federal government and black advocacy groups to integrate cinema. Quinn also highlights the limits of Hollywood’s liberalism, showing how predominantly white filmmakers, executives, and unions hid the persistence of racism behind feel-good stories and public-relations avowals of tolerance. A rigorous analysis of the deeply rooted patterns of racial exclusion in American cinema, A Piece of the Action sheds light on why conservative and corporate responses to antiracist and labor activism remain pervasive in today’s Hollywood.
"Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas
Author: Stephane Dunn
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252091043
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
Blaxploitation action narratives as well as politically radical films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song typically portrayed black women as trifling "bitches" compared to the supermacho black male heroes. But starting in 1973, the emergence of "baad bitches" and "sassy supermamas" reversed the trend as self-assured, empowered, and tough black women took the lead in the films Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, and Foxy Brown. Stephane Dunn unpacks the intersecting racial, sexual, and gender politics underlying the representations of racialized bodies, masculinities, and femininities in early 1970s black action films, with particular focus on the representation of black femininity. Recognizing a distinct moment in the history of African American representation in popular cinema, Dunn analyzes how it emerged from a radical political era influenced by the Black Power movement and feminism. Dunn also engages blaxploitation's legacy in contemporary hip-hop culture, as suggested by the music’s disturbing gender politics and the "baad bitch daughters" of Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim.
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252091043
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
Blaxploitation action narratives as well as politically radical films like Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song typically portrayed black women as trifling "bitches" compared to the supermacho black male heroes. But starting in 1973, the emergence of "baad bitches" and "sassy supermamas" reversed the trend as self-assured, empowered, and tough black women took the lead in the films Cleopatra Jones, Coffy, and Foxy Brown. Stephane Dunn unpacks the intersecting racial, sexual, and gender politics underlying the representations of racialized bodies, masculinities, and femininities in early 1970s black action films, with particular focus on the representation of black femininity. Recognizing a distinct moment in the history of African American representation in popular cinema, Dunn analyzes how it emerged from a radical political era influenced by the Black Power movement and feminism. Dunn also engages blaxploitation's legacy in contemporary hip-hop culture, as suggested by the music’s disturbing gender politics and the "baad bitch daughters" of Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim.
The Taking of New York City
Author: Andrew Rausch
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493078720
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
For a time in the 1970s, New York City seemed to many to be genuinely on the cusp of collapse. Plagued by rampant crime, graft, catastrophic finances, and crumbling infrastructure, it served as a symbol for the plight of American cities after the convulsions of the 1960s. This tale of urban blight was reinforced wherever one looked—whether in the news media (memorably captured in the infamous New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead”) or the countless movies that evoked the era’s uniquely gritty sense of dread. The Taking of New York City is a history of both New York and some of the decade’s most definitive films, including The French Connection (1971), the first two Godfather movies (1972 & 1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and many more. It was also an era in which the city wrestled with the racial tensions still threatening the tear the nation apart, never more so than in “Blaxploitation” classics such as Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972). These films depicted the city that never sleeps as a grim, violent place overridden with muggers, pimps, and killers. Projected at drive-ins and inside their local movie houses, rural America saw New York as a nightmare: a vile dystopia where the innocent couldn't rely on the local law enforcement, who were seemingly all on the take. If one took Hollywood's word for it, the only way a person was able to find justice in 1970s New York City was by grabbing a gun and meting it out themselves. Author Andrew Rausch meticulously separates fact and fiction in this illuminating book. Attentive to the ways that New York’s problems were exaggerated or misrepresented, it also gives an unvarnished look at just how bad things could get in the “Rotten Apple”—and how movies told that story to the country and the world.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493078720
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
For a time in the 1970s, New York City seemed to many to be genuinely on the cusp of collapse. Plagued by rampant crime, graft, catastrophic finances, and crumbling infrastructure, it served as a symbol for the plight of American cities after the convulsions of the 1960s. This tale of urban blight was reinforced wherever one looked—whether in the news media (memorably captured in the infamous New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead”) or the countless movies that evoked the era’s uniquely gritty sense of dread. The Taking of New York City is a history of both New York and some of the decade’s most definitive films, including The French Connection (1971), the first two Godfather movies (1972 & 1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and many more. It was also an era in which the city wrestled with the racial tensions still threatening the tear the nation apart, never more so than in “Blaxploitation” classics such as Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1972). These films depicted the city that never sleeps as a grim, violent place overridden with muggers, pimps, and killers. Projected at drive-ins and inside their local movie houses, rural America saw New York as a nightmare: a vile dystopia where the innocent couldn't rely on the local law enforcement, who were seemingly all on the take. If one took Hollywood's word for it, the only way a person was able to find justice in 1970s New York City was by grabbing a gun and meting it out themselves. Author Andrew Rausch meticulously separates fact and fiction in this illuminating book. Attentive to the ways that New York’s problems were exaggerated or misrepresented, it also gives an unvarnished look at just how bad things could get in the “Rotten Apple”—and how movies told that story to the country and the world.
The Presumption
Author: D. Marvin Jones
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
This powerful book on racism in the United States argues that a threatening narrative originating in slavery continues to link Black people to inferiority, dangerousness, and crime, causing them to be presumed guilty by society and U.S. legal systems. Why are Black people stopped, arrested, and shot by police at such a high rate? Why are they portrayed in the media as gangbangers and urban thugs? D. Marvin Jones writes that the problem of race lies in the way Blackness has been inextricably knotted together in our culture with presumptions. In the era of segregation this was a presumption of inferiority, but in our era, it is primarily a presumption of dangerousness or criminality. In chapters on slavery, urban spaces, the drug war, media portrayals, and white spaces, he shows how the presumption of guilt continues to shape the treatment of Black people in the United States. Arguing that this presumption is not simply a matter of hate on the part of individuals, but instead a social process linked to a widely shared racial ideology, The Presumption points out the continuation of racial caste in the United States as a crisis for democracy and provides a blueprint for a kind of second Reconstruction.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 291
Book Description
This powerful book on racism in the United States argues that a threatening narrative originating in slavery continues to link Black people to inferiority, dangerousness, and crime, causing them to be presumed guilty by society and U.S. legal systems. Why are Black people stopped, arrested, and shot by police at such a high rate? Why are they portrayed in the media as gangbangers and urban thugs? D. Marvin Jones writes that the problem of race lies in the way Blackness has been inextricably knotted together in our culture with presumptions. In the era of segregation this was a presumption of inferiority, but in our era, it is primarily a presumption of dangerousness or criminality. In chapters on slavery, urban spaces, the drug war, media portrayals, and white spaces, he shows how the presumption of guilt continues to shape the treatment of Black people in the United States. Arguing that this presumption is not simply a matter of hate on the part of individuals, but instead a social process linked to a widely shared racial ideology, The Presumption points out the continuation of racial caste in the United States as a crisis for democracy and provides a blueprint for a kind of second Reconstruction.
Melodrama Unbound
Author: Christine Gledhill
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543190
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 761
Book Description
For too long melodrama has been associated with outdated and morally simplistic stereotypes of the Victorian stage; for too long film studies has construed it as a singular domestic genre of familial and emotional crises, either subversively excessive or narrowly focused on the dilemmas of women. Drawing on new scholarship in transnational theatrical, film, and cultural histories, this collection demonstrates that melodrama is a transgeneric mode that has long spoken to fundamental aspects of modern life and feeling. Pointing to melodrama’s roots in the ancient Greek combination of melos and drama, and to medieval Christian iconography focused on the pathos of Christ as suffering human body, the volume highlights the importance to modernity of melodrama as a mode of emotional dramaturgy, the social and aesthetic conditions for which emerged long before the French Revolution. Contributors articulate new ways of thinking about melodrama that underscore its pervasiveness across national cultures and in a variety of genres. They examine how melodrama has traveled to and been transformed in India, China, Japan, and South America, whether through colonial circuits or later, globalization; how melodrama mixes with other modes such as romance, comedy, and realism; and finally how melodrama has modernized the dramatic functions of gender, class, and race by orchestrating vital aesthetic and emotional experiences for diverse audiences.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543190
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 761
Book Description
For too long melodrama has been associated with outdated and morally simplistic stereotypes of the Victorian stage; for too long film studies has construed it as a singular domestic genre of familial and emotional crises, either subversively excessive or narrowly focused on the dilemmas of women. Drawing on new scholarship in transnational theatrical, film, and cultural histories, this collection demonstrates that melodrama is a transgeneric mode that has long spoken to fundamental aspects of modern life and feeling. Pointing to melodrama’s roots in the ancient Greek combination of melos and drama, and to medieval Christian iconography focused on the pathos of Christ as suffering human body, the volume highlights the importance to modernity of melodrama as a mode of emotional dramaturgy, the social and aesthetic conditions for which emerged long before the French Revolution. Contributors articulate new ways of thinking about melodrama that underscore its pervasiveness across national cultures and in a variety of genres. They examine how melodrama has traveled to and been transformed in India, China, Japan, and South America, whether through colonial circuits or later, globalization; how melodrama mixes with other modes such as romance, comedy, and realism; and finally how melodrama has modernized the dramatic functions of gender, class, and race by orchestrating vital aesthetic and emotional experiences for diverse audiences.
Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s
Author: Novotny Lawrence
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135900361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
This book examines a number of blaxploitation films – including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Blacula (1972), and The Mack (1973) – and illustrates the manner in which 'blaxploitation' came to be understood as a separate genre.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135900361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146
Book Description
This book examines a number of blaxploitation films – including Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970), Blacula (1972), and The Mack (1973) – and illustrates the manner in which 'blaxploitation' came to be understood as a separate genre.
To find an image: Black films from Uncle Tom to Super Fly
Author: James P. Murray
Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill Company
ISBN: 9780672517457
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill Company
ISBN: 9780672517457
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description