Super Fly's focus on black underground wealth generation was energized by its rejection of the two classic protest strategies of integration and transformation-the film spoke to disillusionment with both racially ameliorative civil rights politics and radical black nationalism. It explores how the production's black enterprise was complemented and compounded by the film's narrative about African American business operations. This article argues that Super Fly, contrary to conventional interpretation, is a landmark case in the history of black financing and participation in major-release filmmaking. ( Shaft, 1971)-were among legions of black people across America who sought to seize new opportunities and convert the formal promises of civil rights legislation into concrete jobs and infrastructural reform. Informed by the empowerment agenda of the time, the directors of the most successful and prototypical blaxploitation films-Van Peebles and the junior Parks, and also Ossie Davis ( Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1970) and Gordon Parks Sr. Film was a key site of contest: an industry full of good jobs and high revenues in which African Americans had long featured as entertainers and consumers. ![]() Blaxploitation-era filmmaking took place in the aftermath of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (prohibiting job bias) when intense battles were fought to dismantle the entrenched culture of black exclusion from desirable work. Moreover, films with black directors tended to generate behind-the-camera opportunities for minority workers. ![]() Although the vast majority of distributors and producers were white, many of the most influential black action films were directed and/or written by African Americans. Commentator Reneé Ward offered an early, terse expression of this dynamic: "black films, white profits." 6Ī broad premise of this article is that there has been an underestimation of African American involvement and agency in the making of key blaxploitation features. 5 Many accounts of Super Fly, and indeed the blaxploitation cycle generally, proceed from the assumption that these films-with the exception of Melvin Van Peebles's radical Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971-were a case of whites financially and thematically exploiting black audiences. ![]() As Ed Guerrero summarizes, " Super Fly came to be the main target of a collective fury and the prime example of degenerate black images on film." 4 When the film is discussed, the dominant interpretive modes, consequently, have been ideological critique, reception study, and audience effects, modes that tend to shift focus away from processes of production and aspects of film content. Scholars have been reluctant to engage with Super Fly-which centers on a heroic black cocaine dealer-because it was so strongly (and understandably) condemned by commentators on its release. 3 The imbalance between significance and scrutiny is partly explained by the film's vilification. 2 However, the film has received patchy scholarly attention. It sparked the greatest controversy (outcry following its summer release gave rise to the term "blaxploitation"), won the largest black youth audience, and has proved the most culturally influential. ![]() S uper Fly (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972) is the most significant film of the blaxploitation production trend.
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