MACK #42: Blaxploitation

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Hiya friends!

Today’s episode is all about Blaxploitation films.

Here’s wikipedia’s definition of Blaxploitation:

Blaxploitation or blacksploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s. The films, though receiving backlash for stereotypical characters, are among the first in which black characters and communities are the heroes and subjects of film and television, rather than sidekicks or villains or victims of brutality.^[1]

Personally I love a shitty movie. For me, they are fun to watch and make fun of and give the home grown MST3K treatment to. Dave doesn’t agree so much about bad movies. If they are bad he kind of gets angry and makes faces.

Anyhoo, we had started recording this episode a few days ago and it was originally intended to be a Watchalong! We were watching another blaxploitation film, Bad Mother, when my computer decided it had had enough and stopped recording. Instead of rewatching that movie, we decided we’d do an entire episode on the subject of blaxploitation.

We did manage to watch Ralph Bakshi’s entry into the genre, even though it is thought to be more of a parody instead of an actual entry. His movie, Coonskin, can be currently watched on youtube. I’ve embedded it below:

Although we both enjoy some of Bakshi’s other work, this one is kind of out there, though it is always great to see Scatman Crothers. The best part of the movie for me was Scatman singing the opening song, which we do play for you as well.

We move on from Coonskin and go over the history of blaxploitation as well as some other entries in the genre [some more famous than others]. We also take the time to go over some of their trailers as well.

I get Dave to reveal his favorite Blaxploitation film.

And in the end we both agree that if we had to recommend one Blaxploitation movie, it would have to be Superfly.

Other than all of this, I also mention the new browser extension made available by the good folks at gab.com. It’s called dissenter and it allows you to comment on any page on the internet anywhere. Yes, this one too if you want. Head on over to Dissenter.com to find out more.