BaadAsssss Cinema
Independent Film Channel

The Independent Film Channel, with the films and features it shows on television or finances for the theaters (excuse me, cinema), can be painfully arty and self-conscious. So if it's going to show a movie that doesn't have subtitles, angst or a redeeming social message, it had better find a way to introduce one of the three so its effete audience doesn't do a chardonnay spit-take.

For example, IFC this month added to its rotation Foxy Brown, Shaft's Big Score and Superfly. Not only are all three from the much-derided 1970s blaxplotation genre, but they're among the few black-oriented films not directed by Spike Lee that IFC has ever shown. To make the lowbrow highbrow, IFC previewed their run with a documentary, "BaadAsssss Cinema" (you didn't think they would just call them "movies," did you?), which premiered Aug. 14. The title is cribbed, right down to the number of a's and s's, from Melvin Van Peebles' 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, long considered the seminal blaxploitation film. It contained the elements that would eventually be ground down to formula — a strong, black antihero (Van Peebles plays a sex-show worker) fighting The Man (Van Peebles has to go on the run after killing two racist cops) for the benefit of the Community (The Black Panthers made the movie required viewing for their members). It contained plenty of nudity and blood, and had a sense of humor, whether intentional or unintentional. (It's hard not to laugh when, after the leader of a violent motorcycle gang demands a duel with Sweetback, he suggests, defiant and deadpan, "Fuckin'.")

The documentary, directed by Harvard University Afro-American Studies professor Isaac Julien, attempts to put the oft-lampooned tales of pimps, hos, dealers, macks and Blaculas into the context of the aftermath of the 1960s' social upheaval. The films, it is argued, both reflected the spirit of Black Power, with African-Americans creating their own movies and heroes who — in a major upset — were still alive at the end of the film, and reflected the frustrations of the perceived failures of the civil rights movement. As Freddie, the doomed coke dealer in 1972's Superfly, says of his trade: "It's the only game The Man will let us play.

"BaadAsssss Cinema" is not the first time IFC has tried to elevate what was once seen as a dubious genre. In last year's documentary "The American Nightmare," IFC made a persuasive case that the first wave of 1970s slasher films were attempts to deal with the horror and blood shown every night on the news during the Vietnam War, still ongoing when The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was released in 1974. That documentary gave IFC cover to show Chainsaw, as well as 1970s works by such recently sanctified autuers as Wes Craven and George Romero.

Julien also makes a persuasive case, even delving into the rift such films made in the black community itself. The term "blaxploitation" didn't come from a white movie executive; it was first coined as "black exploitative" by the NAACP, which believed the films were vulgar and unbecoming depictions of black life. The documentary includes a 1971 tape of Jesse Jackson leading a rally against "black exploitation" movies.

The actors interviewed — including Fred Williamson, Gloria Hendry and Pam Grier — respond, collectively, "It was work," an answer deemed insufficient by Robert Townsend in his 1987 satire of a struggling black actor, Hollywood Shuffle. By the way, the only "opponent" Julien included in his documentary was poet and writer bell hooks. Inevitably, Quentin Tarantino is there to praise blaxploitation, as is one-time Black Panther Afeni Shakur, who knows a little something about exploitation, given her continued mining of the leftovers from her late son, Tupac. The actors in the blaxploitation movies, which petered out around 1976, blame the NAACP and other black opponents — second to white Hollywood — for killing the genre. But there's a case to be made that "BaadAsssss Cinema" doesn't make: It could be that after five years, people got tired of watching these movies. How many varieties of pimp can you see until you can stand a big hat and a matching cane no more? Julien does acknowledge money as a factor certainly in blaxploitation's rise. (As Van Peebles once bragged, his film made "$5 million before a pair of white eyes saw it.") And struggling studios like MGM suddenly shot back to prominence making millions off low-budget black offerings like Shaft. The point is made that white Hollywood decided to stop making black-oriented movies once they saw that black people went to The Godfather and The Exorcist. But it would seem that blaxploitation might have continued if anyone was still paying to see it.

Although IFC may revel in "B" movies on television, it unfortunately isn't trying to find out if there's a movie-going audience for this kind of "B" movie today. The movies (excuse me, cinema) the channel finances are the same subtitled, earnest "indie" films that clutter up most of its television schedule. Not that IFC needs to remake Black Caesar — the second wave of blaxploitation (hip-hop version), boosted by the success of John Singleton's 1991 drama Boyz n the Hood, seems to have come and gone. But independent film could use a backer who occasionally removes the politically correct stick from its butt, so why not finance the next Russ Meyer, Roger Corman or Gordon Parks? That way, IFC would already have a head start on its next lowbrow-to-highbrow documentary.

— Bob Cook (bobc@flakmag.com)