Coffy Film Analysis

Firstly, a brief background of Early Black cinema is important to note. In 1915 The Plantation Genre (form of genre) came about with the release of Birth of a Nation an overtly anti-black film, which included three main mythic stereotypes. These included the “unlawful slave” who represented black slaves as unpredictable, cunning and violent; this representation was used as reasoning for whites sustaining control. The “subordinate slave” stereotype, which represented blacks as dependable, loving and accepting of their position; this allowed white audiences to displace any guilt about slavery. Additionally, there’s also what is known as the “clown entertainer” which included characteristics of innate humor and the

Often in many films that undermine African Americans, they are depicted as thief's, murders, or unintelligent. These images are used to show that African Americans are unlike their white counterparts. According to Friedman, "This formulation undermines the racially and sexually based violence toward African Americans, wiping out the memory of rape, castration, and lynching of slaves that occurred in the past" (Friedman). The development of African American films, or films that truly put African Americans in any type of positive light did not really start to occur until the 1970's or 1980's. Before then films were often negative in spirit. Paula Massood describes the Hollywood depictions of African Americans in the previous era as, "failing to recognize the sociopolitical changes in the American landscape. African American characters most often appeared within a southern setting, largely ignoring the black city space and culture that figured in the lives and the imaginations of a vast majority of African Americans" (Massood). However, in the following years the development and progression of African American films was able to be seen.

The history of African Americans in early Hollywood films originated with blacks representing preconceived stereotypes. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, stirred many controversial issues within the black community. The fact that Griffith used white actors in blackface to portray black people showed how little he knew about African Americans. Bosley Crowther’s article “The Birth of Birth of a Nation” emphasizes that the film was a “highly pro-South drama of the American Civil War and the Period of Reconstruction, and it glorified the role of the Ku Klux Klan” (76). While viewing this film, one would assert that the Ku Klux Klan members are heroic forces that rescue white women from sexually abusive black men. Griffith

According to Tukachinsky, Mastro, and Yarchi, prior to 1930, the role of Blacks on screen were seen involving mostly in criminality and idleness (540). That role still persists until the present, with Blacks usually have to withstand to “longstanding and unfavorable media stereotypes including sexually provocative females and aggressive male thugs” (Tukachinsky 540). 1970’s movies such as The Mack, Black Caesar and Coffy have reinforced this stereotypic image of the black community. The

My film analysis is about the film Love & Basketball. This film includes some examples of what we have talked about in class. Controlling images and black masculinity are two topics that come to mind when I watched this film. Controlling images are images in which hold black women into four categories: “mammies, matriarchs, welfare recipients, and hot mommas”. In the Black masculinity case, Mark Anthony Neal’s “New Black Man” brings up Black Masculinity when he talks about the “strong black man.”

The Black community has been oppressed since colonial times through various social constructs, and even though the shackles of slavery are gone the shackles of oppression within our communities, media and racial ideologies continue to feed racism today. According to Collins “Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism”, racism has evolved over the years in different forms producing the “New Racism”, Straight Outta Compton and To Kill a Mockingbird are two mainstream films that demonstrate the evolution of racism and illustrates the oppression of the black community through social class, gender and sexuality.

The film, Black Snake Moan, portrays a very Blaxploitation-style, which summed up is a film featuring African American characters, who have lead roles, and are stereotypical and glorify violence. The setting takes place in South of Tennessee and gives the audience two main characters that exploit the meaning behind the film. In the opening scene we see a very shocking, and sexual provocative scene, where we are introduced to the first main character, Rae Doole. Her character represents a young woman, who is highly addicted to sex and drugs, and is stereotyped as a ‘white trash tramp.’

The culture framework must be acknowledged. Black culture can be mistaken for the culture of the poor (Winter, 1971). Value system deviates from every social economic class. An argument could be made for economic class disparity and not Black Masculinity. Black Masculinity could be race-baiting. Race-baiting is an “unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people” (.merriam-webster.com). The important of the materials selected is to provide a deep understanding of cultural perception of black masculinity. The incorporation of more materials would increase the value of the study. A more diverse category of material selected such as popular black movies and popular white movies

Representation of African American Race in Movies Short Paper Two Natarsha Bassett Arth 204   Representation of African American Race in Movies Being an African American requires one to understand the concept of self-esteem and self-identification. The history of mistreatment of blacks created a platform for me to stand and express myself without fear of the whites. Notably, self-belief and knowledge are important factors in establishing one’s foundation in the society. As a young child, my parents inculcated values such as courage, hard work and self-realization and therefore understood that I had different skin and hair than my white neighbors. This however did not mean that whites were superior and more intelligent than blacks were.

All of the violent blaxploitation movies were made with limited budget, the plot was always set somewhere on the streets of the criminal world, full of villains, prostitutes, drug dealers, and gangsters. This kind of creations did not help to change the attitude of the whites toward blacks.

Both The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles, 1984) and Juice (Ernest Dickerson, 1992) share the similar purpose of Blaxploitation which redefine the critical perspective about the stereotypical good and evil ideologies of the African Americans and reveal the blacks’ position in American society. However, by mobilizing close textual analysis on both films Brother and Juice, as well as the articles from Janani Subramanian and Kenneth Chan, I want to argue that the diversities of the films genres endow distinctive approaches to address the issue. In the Brother, the science fiction genre serves as a mask which provides the chance to dodge the seriousness of facing the racial issue directly by disguising the black identity under an alienated character, yet endows the possibilities to embrace the topic underneath it. Whereas the action genre in Juice can presents more radically about the conflicts between the African American youths with the society and themselves on the daily life base because the violence element is granted and expected in an action movie. By comparing and analyzing the social and political position of blacks in American society in two films, we can come to a better understand how the allowance towards alienation and violence elements reflects distinctively on science fiction and action movie genres.

Blaxploitation movies in American society were at an all time high in the 1970’s. They gained popularity during and after the civil rights movement due to the influence African Americans were having on society. The movie Coffy, directed by Jack Hill and release in 1973, is a great example of how Blaxploitation movies reinforced the stereotypes that already exist about black men and women. Young African American filmmakers, made lots of these types of movies in order to appeal to the young African American crowd. In the article “Baadasss Gangstas: The Parallel Influences, Characteristics and Criticisms of the Blaxploitation Cinema and Gangsta Rap”, by Dustin Engels, it says, “African American artists began using their mediums to appeal directly to black audiences in an attempt to spawn cultural movements that would display and bring to the forefront the cultural, social and economic struggles of the African American experience.” The African American that was originally making these films had a positive purpose and wanted to spread social consciousness in the best way they could.

Coffy uses her sexuality to take her revenge – even pretending to be drugged up and looking for some action – as she lures unsuspecting scum to their deserving demise. There's plenty of sex mixed in with some great action via Coffy’s shotgun, but Coffy as a film is still played straight, opting to concentrate as much on the exploitation elements as it does the characters and story. This is a true testament to the respect Hill had for the movie he was making.

For the African American community, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, their representations in film were often negative stereotypes and the wants of black audiences were almost completely ignored during this time period. While there was an extreme increase in the number of films being made featuring black casts, they were not well made films. The LA Rebellion’s aim was to create cinema that accurately portrayed the black life and combat these negative portrayals. On such way was by “redefining the relationship of history to the structure of the family.” (Clark) And while “blaxploitation” came to an end, filmmakers did not abandon the goal of the LA

For people of African descent, both in America and abroad, the questions and facts of enslavement in the New World carry heavy questions of blame, assessment, wonder, and humiliation. For contemporary citizens of the Americas, those diasporic questions are borne of race, morality, disenfranchisement, and economic enforcement, raising larger questions centered in shared cultural experience. Conspicuously, if film, as art, is to be looked at as a cultural artifact, then black independent film and the recounting of black lived experiences can be seen as artistic markers of racial progress, evidenced identity, and the claim to self-definition, leading to questions centered on the ways in which meaning is made of cultural experience as it is represented and shared.