From 1972 to 1976, Hollywood made an unprecedented number of films targeted at black audiences. But following this era known as “blaxploitation," the momentum suddenly reversed for black filmmakers, ...and a large void separates the end of blaxploitation from the black film explosion that followed the arrival of Spike Lee’s She's Gotta Have It in 1986. Illuminating an overlooked era in African American film history, Trying to Get Over is the first in-depth study of black directors working during the decade between 1977 and 1986. Keith Corson provides a fresh definition of blaxploitation, lays out a concrete reason for its end, and explains the major gap in African American representation during the years that followed. He focuses primarily on the work of eight directors—Michael Schultz, Sidney Poitier, Jamaa Fanaka, Fred Williamson, Gilbert Moses, Stan Lathan, Richard Pryor, and Prince—who were the only black directors making commercially distributed films in the decade following the blaxploitation cycle. Using the careers of each director and the twenty-four films they produced during this time to tell a larger story about Hollywood and the shifting dialogue about race, power, and access, Corson shows how these directors are a key part of the continuum of African American cinema and how they have shaped popular culture over the past quarter century.
Scholarship regarding the intersections between the city of Paris and African American culture tend to focus on French fascination with blackness and/or the lives of black expatriate artists. Often ...overlooked are the lived experiences of black communities within France, comprised largely of immigrants from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean, and the ways in which they engage with African American culture. Black Parisians, often living in les banlieues (suburbs), partly define themselves through American films, music, and sports to both foster diasporic unity and outwardly resist assimilating into French and European culture. Looking at the ways in which black youth culture in France has been influenced by and aligned with both hip-hop and basketball since the 1980s, this essay explores the racial dimensions of basketball's rising popularity in France since the 1980s. Premised on the impact of imported media, the international reach of American images work in unison to couple basketball and hip-hop as supposedly authentic sites of black masculine performance. The combined influence of rap videos, sneaker commercials, and home videos produced by NBA Entertainment not only helped shape a narrow definition of black male identity, but also provide an alternative to French and European culture that can be worn and performed. Through the transformation of the French national basketball team (Les Bleus), the popularization of street ball, and the intersections between the sport and hip-hop within France, the connection between basketball and African American identity has created both a commodified and politically resistant site of cultural expression.
Scholarship regarding the intersections between the city of Paris and African American culture tend to focus on French fascination with blackness and/or the lives of black expatriate artists. Often ...overlooked are the lived experiences of black communities within France, comprised largely of immigrants from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean, and the ways in which they engage with African American culture. Black Parisians, often living in les banlieues (suburbs), partly define themselves through American films, music, and sports to both foster diasporic unity and outwardly resist assimilating into French and European culture. Looking at the ways in which black youth culture in France has been influenced by and aligned with both hip-hop and basketball since the 1980s, this essay explores the racial dimensions of basketball's rising popularity in France since the 1980s. Premised on the impact of imported media, the international reach of American images work in unison to couple basketball and hip-hop as supposedly authentic sites of black masculine performance. The combined influence of rap videos, sneaker commercials, and home videos produced by NBA Entertainment not only helped shape a narrow definition of black male identity, but also provide an alternative to French and European culture that can be worn and performed. Through the transformation of the French national basketball team (Les Bleus), the popularization of street ball, and the intersections between the sport and hip-hop within France, the connection between basketball and African American identity has created both a commodified and politically resistant site of cultural expression.
Outside of Society Corson, Keith
Trying to Get Over,
03/2016
Book Chapter
In march 2010 at the annual conference of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in Los Angeles, a panel of black independent filmmakers convened to talk about their work for an audience of ...scholars. The special session, featuring filmmakers who had come out of the University of California at Los Angeles over the span of two decades—including Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Billy Woodberry, Barbara McCullough, Zeinabu Davis, and Cauleen Smith—focused on the tradition and legacy of the loose collective that has come to be known as the “LA Rebellion.” The panelists shared stories about their time at
Dreams Deferred Corson, Keith
Trying to Get Over,
03/2016
Book Chapter
The year 1984 witnessed two debuts that would come to shape popular representations of African Americans in the following decades. In March, Run-DMC released its first album on Profile Records, a ...little-known label. The eponymously titled Run-DMC became the first rap album to be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of American and placed the group at the center of hip-hop’s worldwide rise to popularity. In October, Michael Jordan made his professional debut for the Chicago Bulls, scoring 16 points against the Washington Bullets at Chicago Stadium. Over the next few seasons he would become the National Basketball Association’s
Film history is littered with actors using their celebrity status to gain access to the director’s chair, ranging from Charles Laughton and his one-off Night of the Hunter (1955) to a string of ...actors with long and fruitful careers behind the camera, including Charlie Chaplin, Gene Kelly, Jerry Lewis, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, and Sidney Poitier. Learning the trade firsthand on set, film stars benefit from the impression that they have earned their chance to direct and can often leverage their power to convince studios to support new endeavors. Richard Pryor’s ascension in Hollywood followed an established path: his transition
Bill gunn’s 1981 novel rhinestone sharecropping provides a rare glimpse into the life of a black screen artist at the end of the blaxploitation cycle. Loosely autobiographical—the names have been ...changed to protect the innocent—the novel recounts the end of Gunn’s tumultuous decade working as a director and writer in Hollywood, giving voice to African Americans marginalized within mainstream cinema.
Hollywood first reached out to Gunn based on his reputation in New York theater, hiring him to write the adapted screenplay for The Landlord (1970, Hal Ashby).¹ The producers were looking for a black writer to help retain
When walter gordon went to a los angeles movie theater in the summer of 1975 to see Cooley High, he was at once deeply moved and confused. To him, the film captured the essence of what it was like to ...grow up in the inner city, negotiating friendship and ambition with the constant presence of poverty and violence. Gordon had seen scores of blaxploitation films in the preceding years, but Cooley High was an epiphany for him. It moved beyond a fantasy of black heroism to truly capture the emotional reality of life in the ghetto. But Gordon paused when
No blaxploitation-era star made as many films or helped shape the cycle more than Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. Crafting his own unique hypermasculine screen persona, Williamson was able to flex his ...muscles playing gangsters, detectives, and cowboys. With his ever-present thin cigar, bulging biceps, and phallic firearms, the Hammer became the archetype of male power in a cinematic era that was primarily based around reclaiming black masculinity. Never graced with the singularly transcendent roles afforded Richard Roundtree or Ron O’Neal, Williamson was nevertheless the biggest star of the era.
From 1972 to 1976, no other black actor made more films,
