Blaxplotation films essays

Blaxplotation films essays Scene 1: Outside a ticket box office in a suburban movie theater in 1967. About a dozen white couples patiently wait in line to purchase tickets to the progressive new film, Guess Whos Coming to Dinner by Stanley Kramer. Camera then focuses on a movie poster, which portrays Sidney Poitier amongst an all white cast smiling contently. As the decade of the 1960s came to a close, America was in the midst of a radical social, political, and artistic movement. Students were rising, women were fighting for equality, and for the first time in history, the voice of the countrys African-American community was beginning to be heard. The Black Nationalist Movement delivered empowering messages of a need for black power, unity and representation. An artistic response to this political and social uprising emerged in the form of black popular musical acts, and soon spread to the world of cinema. The Blaxploitation film had arrived. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was supposed to end institutional racism in American society and allow the African American community to obtain social, economic, and political equality, yet; the majority of the black community was still trapped in inner-city ghettos which offered few employment opportunities and crowded living conditions. These ghettos harbored one of the fastest growing populations in the country, which were becoming more and more discontent with the pace at which the supposed progress of the Civil Rights Movement was making. Out of the unrest that was brewing in these urban ghettos arose a new wave of racial consciousness called Black Power. Black Power represented both a conclusion to the decades Civil Rights Movement and a reaction against the racism that had persisted despite the efforts of the black activists during the 60s. Political leaders such as the Malcolm X, adapted the term as a repr...