Films in the Blaxploitation genre can have unusual or common themes central to their plots. But often, and with the best of them, they usually nod at issues that are traditional elements of African American societies. These are different from usual exploitation films, which tend to be very derogatory about its subjects.
One film could have gotten to a level that would have been a cut above the best of these epics. This was the 1972 movie Trick Baby, based on an eponymous novel by the author Iceberg Slim, then a leading light in black writing. Whereas the novel is an intense tale of the underworld, the film wasted the potential by being, as one critic put it, watered down.
This story revolves around the friendship between two conmen working in the African underground. These are White Folks and Blue Howard, who live and operate in Philadelphia, and Folks is a biracial person who can be mistaken for white. It is the one fact that makes their partnership in crime relatively successful, and they are planning a new one.
The dynamics of race propels this story, but these can be obvious enough because it is based on experiences for Slim, an ex pimp who made it by selling lots of his books about the African underworld. The delineations are made for those the characters, but the actual performance by Folks was very much of a let down for many African males. The intensity was not there, and Folks played white without giving much focus on their being black and why.
White Folks is the product of a black woman who had a baby from a white customer, thus the title. The accident of birth becomes the locus through which both film and book moves, although in the movie the intensity was seen as lacking. Production went ahead to complete a feature that works with subjects easily told through the visual medium.
In this sense, the movie might be forgiven its being unable to really take advantage of the intensely dramatic idea of a biracial conman. However, no conflicts or friction arise from this, especially between Howard and Folks, and their relationship is mostly about the easier time they have of being able to get away with crimes. The cliched theme of black criminality was chosen above everything else.
Films from Hollywood will tend to be dehumanizing, concentrating more on great visuals than focusing on the story elements. This defect is something that is still present, and so whatever films there are that are found meritorious in a story sense will not end up successful, in comparison to those that tend to con people.
The plan hatched by the conspirators is complicated by a former crime that involved a Mafia relative. This final nod to the cliche film ending is something that will turn a critics stomach, and this is perhaps the gamble. Perhaps the real point behind this work is the bid to become an impactful sensation.
Larry Yust, the director, softened the impact of the story so that it could be accepted by most American moviegoers. However, these are people that cry from sensitivity while ignoring the blasphemies they find in their midst. Black culture provides so many telling things about the country, that the movie had to be watered down, maybe.
One film could have gotten to a level that would have been a cut above the best of these epics. This was the 1972 movie Trick Baby, based on an eponymous novel by the author Iceberg Slim, then a leading light in black writing. Whereas the novel is an intense tale of the underworld, the film wasted the potential by being, as one critic put it, watered down.
This story revolves around the friendship between two conmen working in the African underground. These are White Folks and Blue Howard, who live and operate in Philadelphia, and Folks is a biracial person who can be mistaken for white. It is the one fact that makes their partnership in crime relatively successful, and they are planning a new one.
The dynamics of race propels this story, but these can be obvious enough because it is based on experiences for Slim, an ex pimp who made it by selling lots of his books about the African underworld. The delineations are made for those the characters, but the actual performance by Folks was very much of a let down for many African males. The intensity was not there, and Folks played white without giving much focus on their being black and why.
White Folks is the product of a black woman who had a baby from a white customer, thus the title. The accident of birth becomes the locus through which both film and book moves, although in the movie the intensity was seen as lacking. Production went ahead to complete a feature that works with subjects easily told through the visual medium.
In this sense, the movie might be forgiven its being unable to really take advantage of the intensely dramatic idea of a biracial conman. However, no conflicts or friction arise from this, especially between Howard and Folks, and their relationship is mostly about the easier time they have of being able to get away with crimes. The cliched theme of black criminality was chosen above everything else.
Films from Hollywood will tend to be dehumanizing, concentrating more on great visuals than focusing on the story elements. This defect is something that is still present, and so whatever films there are that are found meritorious in a story sense will not end up successful, in comparison to those that tend to con people.
The plan hatched by the conspirators is complicated by a former crime that involved a Mafia relative. This final nod to the cliche film ending is something that will turn a critics stomach, and this is perhaps the gamble. Perhaps the real point behind this work is the bid to become an impactful sensation.
Larry Yust, the director, softened the impact of the story so that it could be accepted by most American moviegoers. However, these are people that cry from sensitivity while ignoring the blasphemies they find in their midst. Black culture provides so many telling things about the country, that the movie had to be watered down, maybe.
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