Blaxploitation

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Blaxploitation
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Black Stereotypes in classic Hollywood cinema

• Toms
• Coons
• Bucks
• Mammies
• Mulattoes

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Toms

• Faithful
• Submissive
• Loyal
• Wide-Eyed
• Dark-Skinned
• Eager to serve
• Dependable

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Coons

• Lazy
• Easily frightened
• Childish
• Shiftless
• Stupid

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Bucks (Brutes)

• Savage
• Animalistic
• Destructive
• Criminal

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Mammies

• Obese
• Coarse
• Maternal
• Faithful

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Mulattos

• Pure heart
• Perfect Manners
• Polished Language
• Beautiful
• Negro Blood

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The Rise of Blaxploitation

• Increasing black self confidence in the 1960s.
• The wish to see black people represented properly
  on the screen.
• The strife for the Abolishment of Black
  Stereotypes.

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Blaxploitation Features

• Dominated by black actors
• Simple plot
• Potent Protagonists
• Crime Stories
• Setting in Black Quarters
• Mostly Low-Budget
• Morally questionable

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Characters in the Novel and in the Movie

• Grave Digger Jones
• Coffin Ed Johnson
• Reverend Deke OMalley
• Iris
• Uncle Bud

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Grave Digger Jones

• Violent
• Self-confident
• Power
• On equal terms with the Whites
• Opposite of the Tom and Coon-Figure

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Coffin Ed Johnson

• Quite equal to Grave Digger Jones
• Psychologically fragile
• Goes much too far, much too fast
• Almost killed Iris
• Opposite of Tom and Coon

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Iris

• hard-bodied high-yellow woman with a perfect
  figure
• Strong
• Adorable
• Sexy
• Opposite of the Mammy-Figure

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Deke OMalley

• Cheats his Brothers, the black people
• Con Man
• In collaboration with the Whites

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Uncle Bud

• Representative of the Tom and Coon-Figure
• Sufferer
• In the end masterplan, most successful in the
  story, gains high status
• Reversal of roles

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White Police Man

• Sexuality is turned against him
• Reversal in roles representative of typical
  Coon-Figure
• Laughing stock

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The importance of the Novel for the
Blaxploitation Genre

• Reversal of classical stereotypes
• Black self-confidence