The Construction of Black Male Identity in Black Action Films of the Nineties

Abstract

Film critics have often identified the trends of African American films as appearing in alternating waves of prolific and sudden dearth. Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) marks the beginning of a cornucopia of Blaxploitation films from both black and white filmmakers. A sudden scarcity of black films followed the end of Blaxploitation in the early eighties. Only late in the decade did films by directors such as Spike Lee and Robert Townsend begin to gain attention, leading finally to a boom in the early nineties, when, according to Ed Guerrero in Framing Blackness, black film production in 1990 and 1991 alone easily surpassed the total of all black-focused films released since the retreat of the Blaxploitation wave in the mid-1970s. ' Guerrero attributes the waves of black films to the socioeconomic conditions which affect decision