Luke Cage Is Just Blaxploitation Once Again Saving The White-Dominated Film Industry
This is just 1971 all over again. New technology, same old story.
Largely due to white people in newly-purchased homes in suburban communities buying television sets, staying at home and watching a lot of broadcast TV on them, the American film industry saw a 60-plus percent drop in revenue between 1940–1970. Similarly, due to (likely) a lot of white people cutting the cord on cable between 2010–2015, streaming services like Netflix are yet again creating a seismic shift in the film industry. Intriguingly though, just as it was when Melvin Van Peebles released black urban drama Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in 1971, Cheo Hodari Coker and Marvel Comics’ reboot of black urban drama Luke Cage is carrying the load insofar as the film industry steadying itself in the face of an earthquake of change. Impressively, some 45 years later, black people, white people, and hell, all people, turning out to see black heroes is proving to be strong enough to save an industry that doesn’t see black interest (#blacklives?) mattering until it’s almost too late.
The space for blaxploitation’s ascendance in the movie industry is always tied to the film industry changing its rules in order to turn a profit. As noted on http://www.filmsite.org/, the film industry of the 1970s allowed for “[r]estrictions on language, adult content and sexuality, and violence [to be] loosened up, and these elements became more widespread. The hippie movement, the civil rights movement, free love, the growth of rock and roll, changing gender roles and drug use certainly had an impact.” Still though, Sweet Sweetback’s Baaaadassss Song’s tale of a black male prostitute framed for murder and successfully escaping a white police force was still “rated X by an all-white jury.” Intriguingly, it was that rating which indirectly created a hub-bub of excitement in both the black and white communities that allowed the “controversial” film to gross $15,000,000+ at the box office and birth the rise of an era of epic largely all-black and black culture-driven films being pushed at the forefront of the film industry.
Similar to the early 1970s, streaming giant Netflix is an industry leader in an unrestricted film and broadcasting industry, however, they may not be making enough income to comfortably stay in operation. The company now has a user base of 83 million worldwide, and as a company is turning a net income of $40 million with operating expenses totaling $2 billion, and a gross revenue that’s increased nearly 30% in the past year, but is still only $2.105 billion. Even with venture capital investments, running a company with income and expenses literally running neck-to-neck is not a sustainable idea.
However, dissimilar to Sweetback being “rated X by an all-white jury,” there’s a great argument to be made that so much of Netflix’s success and attempt to stay online is based off of the white-and-all-people-welcomed exploitation of not just black people, but amazingly, every niche demographic in every imaginable way possible. Foremost, there’s Indian-American comic Aziz Ansari andempowered white female comic Chelsea Handler. As well, there’s Disney, Korean dramas, the fetishization of cocaine distribution and yes, Marvel Comics, and much more. Thus, there’s literally something for everyone that’s delivered in the most incredible manner possible.
However, it’s in Luke Cage triangulating in the space between modern America’s black angst, comic book nerd-dom and all of America’s aforementioned historical affection towards blaxploitation, that’s impressive. Though Netflix does not release a ton of “ratings” data, Luke Cage being accessed by so many Netflix users was blamed for the site being out of service on Saturday afternoon. Thus, we have Luke Cage and new-era blaxploitation to blame as Netflix continues to thrive and help the world cut the cord and evolve into the digital-first era.
Sweetback begat Shaft, Superfly, Foxy Brown, Coffy, Dolemite, Slaughter, Truck Turner, Friday Foster, Cleopatra Jones and a slew of other black heroes whose films helped resurrect the failing film industry and set the stage for blockbuster white heroes like Rocky, Rambo, The Terminator, and more, something similar could easily happen at Netflix.
Luke Cage is only the beginning. I’d also heavily wager on expecting a continuation of the Black Panther film series as a TV show, as well as Blade, Brother Voodoo, Deathlok, Falcon, and Storm, and that’s just scratching the surface from the Marvel Comics collection of black superheroes alone. Will that set the table for, say, Drax The Destroyer and the so-many white X-Men to blow the doors off the hinges for Netflix and cord-cutting’s takeover-in-full? It’s entirely possible.
Luke Cage is nothing more than at 13 hours long in full, the longest blaxploitation film ever released. For people who have never seen The Mack or Black Caesar, or even their 1991-released doppelganger New Jack City, this all-black movie dealing with all-black issues in an all-black way must be really something else. However, if you’re a student of history, this is what happens when an industry that has historically been run on the backs of white people dealing with white issues in ways that are largely not a part of any other cultural tradition in the world but Caucasian/European-derived desperately needs to turn a buck to stay alive.
If you’re a black person or intrigued by black people, do get ready.
“Don’t mess around with this bad ass, new jack nigger with a plan, that was raised in the streets, and won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. He’s coming back to collect some dues, and save white people from technology.”
New technology, same old story.
