6. Blaxploitation
Mainstream Hollywood woefully under represented ethnic minorities for decades - it was very hard to be a black actor or actress and find regular work. In the 1970s, significant social changes and cinematic trends in America led to the development of what was termed Blaxploitation. Blaxploitation kicked off in 1971 with the release of Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song and Shaft. The use of funk and soul music as a backdrop to Exploitation flicks became a trademark of the genre and many excellent soundtracks resulted - my personal favourite is Curtis Mayfield's score to Super Fly, but they were all uniformly excellent. Blaxploitation gleefully used the words 'honky' and 'cracker' to describe white people. Fred Williamson was a regular in many blaxploitation films and the sub genre covered lots of different types of film such as comedy, horror, crime, gangster and Westerns. A fierce debate raged as to whether blaxploitation was a force for good or bad in the portrayal of African Americans. Did it just feed into white people's fears and stereotypes of black people? A union of conservative forces, including the highly influential National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) effectively ended the cycle of films in the late 1970s. Some of the most famous blaxploitation movies include Black Caesar - an entertaining caper in which the inimitable Fred Williamson plays a street smart young man who works his way up to being a mob boss, Cleopatra Jones - starring Tamara Dobson as a karate chopping government agent and Dolemite where Rudy Ray Moore plays his persona, a fly ladykiller who must do battle with the wicked Willie Green. Although the cycle of blaxploitation films did not last very long, their cultural legacy has been rather profound - particularly in the world of hip hop where the soundtracks to blaxploitation flicks have been sampled to death. There is also the issue of pimping which was a fond topic for many directors of blaxploitation. Many rappers gloat about being pimps and they rap about their souped up cars (another motif from blaxploitation). Quentin Tarantino frequently pays homage to blaxploitation. His film Jackie Brown can be seen as an homage to the ladies of blaxploitation - Cleopatra Jones, Coffy and Foxy Brown. Blaxploitation has been parodied and referenced pretty heavily in US culture making it one of the coolest sub genres.