Blacula
AIP does it again! That shit is so edgy. 70s cop drama, 70s blacksploitation (are those the same?), and campy vampire horror - is there anything missing? It starts off with an interracial gay couple (with flamboyant lisps), who are interior decorators, shopping for curios in Transylvania. Of course among their purchases is Blacula's coffin. Vampirism runs amuck in Los Angeles...
The funny thing is that COPPOLA totally ripped off this B movie for plot. Blacula is a touching romance about eternal love, an angle that Stoker's original Dracula lacked. Blacula finds his lost bride reincarnated as a 1970s woman, and the center of the story is how he is willing to live and die for her, foregoing even his own monstrosity.
I'm not sure what to make of blacksploitation, of which this is my first exposure. I'm inclined to think the controversy is overrated, just because of the shock of not seeing white people take center stage. I didn't find anything particularly exploitative or offensive about Blacula, except maybe its punny title. Sure, there was that one stereotypical funny black guy, who is comical because his attitude and slang are out of the mainstream, but I think that character is a stock role for any ethnic. Witness Frank Sinatra's Italian smart-talking funny guy in From Here to Eternity.
I will say this, though: there's something weird about the 70s. Something about it looked so...segregated. Perhaps that's a consequence of the film's "exploitative" rendering. But I kind of doubt it. It doesn't stretch my imagination, at all, to think that there was segregation in the 70s.
On the other hand, I also recognize that film and tv are unique spaces imagining society, not so much as a reflection, as as a kind of projection of something, such as a wish. After all, it's a joke and a cliche that tv shows will always include that Token person of color, whose inclusion in a group of Abercrombie white people is hilariously improbable. And yet, without taking that necessary first step - that is, of imagining integration before it even seems plausible - who's to say? perhaps integration couldn't happen as easily. It's for that reason that the alternative to the Token is unacceptable: even more offensive than imagining a fake world where a person of color would hang out with honkies, is imagining a fake world where there's nothing but honkies.
The funny thing is that COPPOLA totally ripped off this B movie for plot. Blacula is a touching romance about eternal love, an angle that Stoker's original Dracula lacked. Blacula finds his lost bride reincarnated as a 1970s woman, and the center of the story is how he is willing to live and die for her, foregoing even his own monstrosity.
I'm not sure what to make of blacksploitation, of which this is my first exposure. I'm inclined to think the controversy is overrated, just because of the shock of not seeing white people take center stage. I didn't find anything particularly exploitative or offensive about Blacula, except maybe its punny title. Sure, there was that one stereotypical funny black guy, who is comical because his attitude and slang are out of the mainstream, but I think that character is a stock role for any ethnic. Witness Frank Sinatra's Italian smart-talking funny guy in From Here to Eternity.
I will say this, though: there's something weird about the 70s. Something about it looked so...segregated. Perhaps that's a consequence of the film's "exploitative" rendering. But I kind of doubt it. It doesn't stretch my imagination, at all, to think that there was segregation in the 70s.
On the other hand, I also recognize that film and tv are unique spaces imagining society, not so much as a reflection, as as a kind of projection of something, such as a wish. After all, it's a joke and a cliche that tv shows will always include that Token person of color, whose inclusion in a group of Abercrombie white people is hilariously improbable. And yet, without taking that necessary first step - that is, of imagining integration before it even seems plausible - who's to say? perhaps integration couldn't happen as easily. It's for that reason that the alternative to the Token is unacceptable: even more offensive than imagining a fake world where a person of color would hang out with honkies, is imagining a fake world where there's nothing but honkies.
posted by Rex at 12:35 AM
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