Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: What is blaxploitation?
Blaxploitation is a mix of the words black and exploitation. It makes a point to enforce stereotypes that have been afflicted on African Americans by the so-called white media. The first movie to be considered blaxploitation was "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" (1971). Melvin Van Peebles directed, produced, and took the lead role of this hyper sexual film. It is about a male prostitute who is out to fight "[the man]" (white oppression). It spanned a new type of film genre that evolved all the way to what is now the urban blaxploitation horror films of the 21st century.
The first major stars of calypso started crossing over to new audiences worldwide in the late 1930s. Attila the Hun, Roaring Lion and Lord Invader were first, followed by Lord Kitchener, one of the longest-lasting calypso stars in history—he continued to release hit records until his death in 2000. 1944's "Rum and Coca-Cola" by the Andrews Sisters, a cover version of a Lord Invader song, became an American hit despite the song being a very critical commentary on the explosion of prostitution, inflation and other negative influences accompanying the American military bases in Trinidad at the time. Perhaps the most straightforward way to describe the focus of calypso is that it articulated itself as a form of protest against the authoritarian colonial culture which existed at the time.
Teaming up with producer Steven Spielberg, Bluth's next project was "An American Tail" (1986), which at the time of its release became the highest grossing non-Disney animated film of all time, grossing $45 million in the United States and over $84 million worldwide. The second Spielberg-Bluth collaboration "The Land Before Time" (1988) did even better in theaters and both found a successful life on home video. The main character in "An American Tail" (Fievel Mouskewitz) became the mascot for Amblimation while "The Land Before Time" was followed by thirteen direct-to-video sequels.
In 2012, she released "Heartland: A Portrait of Survival." The film documents the effects of the 2011 Joplin tornado which destroyed a quarter of the city and caused about $2.8 billion worth of damage. Tremblay, who was living in Los Angeles at the time but had previously lived in Joplin, had relatives still living in her hometown. She traveled to the town with a film crew and documented the aftermath for a four-week period. The film, which features several stories like the Joplin Found Photos project, was shown at the Omaha Film Festival, and at St. Louis International Film Festival.
In the comics, the county is presented as a stereotypical American midwestern small town. The small town setting was frequently contrasted with the increasing globalization taking place in the rest of the world; though Bloom County contained the likes of farmers and wilderness creatures by default, it was frequented by Hare Krishnas, feminists, and rock stars.
This area was developed by European-American settlers and their African-American enslaved workers for cotton plantations. Agriculture was critical to the economy into the 20th century. The Cohelee Creek Bridge in the county is the southernmost covered bridge still standing. One of the last wooden flagpoles from the American Civil War era is located at the historic courthouse in downtown Blakely.
The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
Calypso music enjoyed a brief period of popularity in other parts in the world during the 1950s. Trinidadian expatriate Lord Kitchener had helped popularize calypso in England, and Sparrow also found some success there. In the United States, interest in calypso was sparked largely by Harry Belafonte's 1956 album "Calypso", the first LP to sell over one million copies. In January 1958, Sparrow, along with longtime rival Lord Melody, travelled to New York City seeking access to the American music audience. Sparrow had already been recording with Balisier and Cook Records, and with Belafonte's help he also began to record for RCA Victor. He did not achieve the success he had hoped for; he said in a 2001 interview, "When nothing happened for me, I went back to England and continued on with my career."
Though the strip's various compilations do not do them justice, the original cast of characters in "Bloom County" were Milo, Bess, and Major Bloom, along with a basset hound named "Rabies" whose thoughts could be read à la Snoopy; the first year of strips are mysteriously omitted from all compilations save the "Bloom Library", although a selection did find publication in a 1986 anthology collection "Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness". Most of the strip's most memorable characters debuted later on, with Milo being the only key character to appear for the duration of the strip's run.
Alphonso Ali was the first significant African American character in "Bloom County". An ardent admirer of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, Alphonso was first introduced as Binkley's opponent in the boxing ring. Later, Alphonso would make appearances as a friend of Binkley and Milo, as well as everyone else in the meadow, and fought in the Great Snake Massacre. He disappeared in 1983, and was replaced by Oliver Wendell Jones later that year.
Bloom County is an American comic strip by Berkeley Breathed which originally ran from December 8, 1980, until August 6, 1989. It examined events in politics and culture through the viewpoint of a fanciful small town in Middle America, where children often have adult personalities and vocabularies and where animals can talk.
The beginning of the sound era itself is ambiguously defined. To some, it began with "The Jazz Singer", which was released in 1927 and increased box-office profits for films, as sound was introduced to feature films. To others, the era began in 1929, when the silent age had definitively ended. Most Hollywood pictures from the late 1920s to 1960s adhered closely to a genre—Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, and biopic (biographical picture)—and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films; Alfred Newman worked at Twentieth Century Fox for twenty years; Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount Pictures; and director Henry King's films were mostly made for Twentieth Century Fox. Similarly, actors were mostly contract players. Film historians and critics note that it took about a decade for films to adapt to sound and return to the level of artistic quality of the silents, which it did in the late 1930s.
The advance publicity booklet on the film when it was entitled "Africa Sings", touted it as showing "what the white man achieved for himself" and "what he has done for he natives." "Africa Sings" was one of the first documentary films from South Africa to take a look at the lives of South Africans of all races. There are images of location life, schools and colleges, and a cross-section of occupations, from mine-workers to road-gangs, school-teachers to house- servants, waiters to cane-cutters. Mainstream reviewers gave the documentary a tepid response; the London Daily Worker thought it was too bland to serve a staunch liberationist purpose.
A Place Called Chiapas is a 1998 Canadian documentary film of first-hand accounts of the "Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional" (EZLN) the (Zapatista Army of National Liberation or Zapatistas) and the lives of its soldiers and the people for whom they fight. Director Nettie Wild takes the viewer to rebel territory in the southwestern Mexican state of Chiapas, where the EZLN live and evade the Mexican Army.
"Bloom County" originated from a comic strip known as "The Academia Waltz", which Breathed produced for "The Daily Texan", the student newspaper of the University of Texas. The comic strip attracted the notice of the editors of "The Washington Post", who recruited him to do a nationally syndicated strip. On December 8, 1980, "Bloom County", syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group, made its debut and featured some of the characters from "Academia Waltz," including former frat-boy Steve Dallas and the paraplegic Vietnam war veteran Cutter John.
Blasco began his career in 1926 when he joined Acero de Olabeaga. Two years later he signed for Athletic Bilbao where his first match was a friendly against Swansea City. During his time with Athletic Bilbao he won the Ricardo Zamora Trophy three times, and also played 5 times for the Spanish national team. He played with Athletic Bilbao until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when all national competitions in Spain were put on hold. In 1937, in the midst of the civil war, he was selected for the Basque Country national football team which was sent abroad to raise funds for refugees fleeing the conflict. In 1938 that team integrated into the Mexican league under the name Club Deportivo Euzkadi. After one season the team dissolved and Blasco joined Real Club España. In 1941 he joined River Plate in Argentina, before returning to Mexico a year later to rejoin Club España. He stayed there until 1947 when he joined rival team Atlante. He was one of the first goalkeepers to use goalkeeping gloves.
Apart from being a footballer he also had a business selling construction materials.
Following independence in 1966, Barbadian calypso became more popular, especially the band The Merrymen, known for songs like "Brudda Neddy" and "Millie Gone to Brazil". Jackie Opel, a Barbadian singer, also arose, playing a blend of calypso and reggae that evolved into spouge music. Spouge was immensely popular in Barbados from about 1969 to 1973. In 1974, the Crop Over Festival was revived, featuring calypso competitions; as a result, calypso's popularity grew, rapidly overshadowing spouge and other genres, with only dub music achieving equal stature.
In early 2013, the company launched the documentary short “Bob the Baker,” the first film in what would become the company's. Once Films would go on to produce 5 more films in the series in 2014 while growing its rolodex of clients and hiring several full-time staffers. By the end of 2015, Once Films had completed nearly 200 films for projects in the St. Louis area and across the country.
Bluth broke with Spielberg before his next film, "All Dogs Go to Heaven" (1989). (Bluth was not involved with the Spielberg-produced "", released in 1991, nor with any of the numerous subsequent sequels to his other films.) Although "All Dogs Go To Heaven" only had moderate theatrical success, it was highly successful in its release to home video. Like "The Land Before Time", "The Secret of NIMH," and "An American Tail", "All Dogs Go to Heaven" was followed by related projects, none of which involved Bluth and his studio. He also directed films, such as "Rock-a-Doodle" (1992), "Thumbelina" (1994), "A Troll in Central Park" (1994) and "The Pebble and the Penguin" (1995), which were critical and box office failures.
Both Jim Uttley of "Indian Life Newspaper" and Pastor Jamie Bagley of "The News of Cumberland County" called "Nefarious" "hard-hitting". Uttley further asserted that "Nefarious" "is not an easy film to watch because it deals with a subject that most of us would rather ignore", and he went on to highly recommend the film. Jimmy Stewart of "Charisma" reported that the film gives a human face to trafficking statistics and instils a desire in the viewer to put an end to such criminal activity. Ted Baehr of "Movieguide", a Christian magazine, called the film "a powerful, compelling and transformational documentary about human trafficking and sex slavery" and wrote that it was amazing that the film covered an inherently sexual topic both honestly and without nudity. Baehr praised the cinematography, editing, and filmmaking, but criticized some portions of the film as being repetitive and uncompelling. The "Movieguide" review ends by comparing the film's opposition to modern slavery to the death of Saint Telemachus, which put an end to gladiatorial games in ancient Rome. Erica Yunghans of "Star News Daily" called the film "controversial".
The U.S. Hispanic media and the Latin American media are over represented by White Hispanic and Latino Americans and White Latin Americans, very often blond and blue-eyed, or green-eyed, particularly in "telenovelas" (soap operas). There tends to be an under-representation of non-white Hispanic and Latino Americans and non-white Latin Americans, amid claims that telenovelas, in particular, do not fully reflect the racial diversity of Hispanic and Latino Americans. For example, in the 2005 U.S. Hispanic telenovela "Olvidarte Jamas", white, blond, and blue-eyed Venezuelan American actress Sonya Smith portrayed Luisa Dominguez who is a poor mestiza woman; the actress had to wear a black wig to hide her obvious Caucasian appearance. Sonya Smith, however, was the first Hispanic actor to portray a Hispanic without stereotypical perception (portrayed as blond and blue-eyed Hispanic, not a Hispanic mestiza nor mulatta nor Mediterranean-looking Hispanic) in a Hollywood film "Hunted by Night", an English-language movie with an all-Hispanic cast.
Lucian popular music can be traced back to the 1940s, when calypso became a part of the island's musical culture. Calypso is a lyrical Trinidadian genre, related to several styles found through the Antillean music area. Music scholar Jocelyne Guilbault has called calypso the primary way modern Lucians "express social commentary". Along with calypso, Lucia has also imported the Trinidadian steelband and soca traditions.
John Singleton's "Shaft" (2000), starring Samuel L. Jackson, is a modern-day interpretation of a classic blaxploitation film. The 1997 film "Hoodlum" starring Laurence Fishburne portrays a fictional account of black mobster Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson and recasts gangster blaxploitation with a 1930s twist. In 2004, Mario Van Peebles released "Baadasssss!", about the making of his father's movie (Mario plays his father). 2007's "American Gangster", based on the true story of heroin dealer Frank Lucas, takes place in the early 1970s in Harlem and has many elements similar in style to blaxploitation films, specifically its prominent featuring of the song "Across 110th Street".
Source:Blaxploitation horror films are a way for African Americans to maintain a cultural identity that the white media has been trying to take away from them. Harry M. Benshoff, a professor of film at the University of North Texas, describes blaxploitation horror films as, "address[ing] the specific fantasy needs of the black social imaginary." In other words, these films are helping to portray what the African American community wants to see in their community. These films were meant to be a form of identification and empowerment to the black community and to help overcome racial bias. Many of the monsters portrayed in these films can be seen as representations of black power and black pride. They also tend to push the boundaries of human sexuality. Much of the plot tends to be driven by sex. These films are also more open and accepting of homosexuals and these horror films tend to draw large homosexual audiences. It is believed that the homosexual community is drawn to these films because they can relate to the oppression that the African American community has and is feeling to this day. Characters that are seen as stereotypically "normal" are often rejected by the audience because they are not as easy to relate to. These characters would include the authority figure (mentioned above) and heterosexual couples. While these characters are often able to be related to in mainstream media, oppressed people tended to see them as a representation of their oppressors.
When set in the Northeast or West Coast, blaxploitation films are mainly set in poor urban neighborhoods. Pejorative terms for white characters, such as "cracker" and "honky," are commonly used. Blaxploitation films set in the South often deal with slavery and miscegenation. Blaxploitation films are often bold in their statements and rely on violence, sex, drug trade, and other shock-value characteristics to provoke the audience. The films usually portray black protagonists overcoming "The Man" or emblems of the white majority that had oppressed the black community in the preceding decades.
Blaxploitation films, regardless of subgenre, spanned from race movies. These were films that started appearing in the 1930s–1940s. They were meant to segregate films featuring an all black class from mainstream Hollywood movies. Many of these films already had the element of horror integrated into them. Over time these films transcended into their own subgenre of film, blaxploitation horror films. In the 1950s to 1960s Hollywood started to integrate films produced and starring African Americans into mainstream media. There was backlash by several African American directors and actors that did not want to be integrated into mainstream media. They wanted to stay independent which caused them to create more of what were originally known as race movies. This happened during the 1960s–70s which was during the time of the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans were in fury at ongoing white oppression and wanted something that they could call their own. They began creating films that were directed, starring, and produced by African Americans. In an effort to maintain their cultural identity they made it a point to emphasize the stereotypes the white media was portraying them as. They called this genre blaxploitation. Many blaxploitation films has a mix of comedy and horror. However, director William Crain to the aspect of horror in these films one step further and created the first blaxploitation horror film, "Blacula". As a result, a new subgenre of blaxploitation was created, dedicated solely to horror.