Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre

During the early years of the motion picture industry, black performers were often depicted as shuckin’ and jivin’ caricatures. Specifically, black males were portrayed as toms, coons and bucks, while the mammy and tragic mulatto archetypes circumscribed black femininity. This misrepresentation began to change in the 1950s and 1960s when performers such as Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier were cast in more positive roles. These performers paved the way for the black exploitation or blax...