Obsessive, Compulsive
Is this the dawn of a new era of payback cinema?
April 27, 2009
By Terry Glover
A friend of mine sums up the $28.5 million weekend of Obsessed like this:
“The only surprise is that it didn’t do more. Every Black woman in America had to see a film where a sister beats up a white chick for stealing her man -- the ultimate Black woman’s revenge fantasy.“
While I’m not convinced that’s the only reason it did so well, it does bring to mind the blaxploitation era in movies – that period of 1970’s moviemaking defined by Black anti-heroes and box office bank. Started with Gordon Park’s Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadassss Song, independently financed by Melvin Van Peebles (both made in ’71), the era initially represented the ultimate revenge fantasy for Black folk against rampant racism, discrimination and police brutality experienced in their everyday lives. Wildly popular, the films, made on shoestring budgets, engaged subversive, empowering messages that resonated with mass audiences, if not the Black middle class.
Once Hollywood saw how a $500,000 investment could mushroom into a $1.5 million payday, they took over the genre and started cranking out an average of 15 films a year – titles like Trick Baby, Dolemite, Black Mama, White Mama, Black Caesar and Superfly. But, unlike the films that ushered in the era, the Hollywood variety – written, directed and produced by White filmmakers -- added an element of buffoonery that reinforced stereotypes of Black people as hustlers, pimps, drug dealers and ho’s. The biggest grossing film of the era, The Mack (1973), starring Max Julien, told the story of Goldie, a former drug dealer who becomes a big time pimp after he gets out of prison. Blocking him in his new career path is rival pimp Pretty Tony, corrupt White cops, his brother, a Black nationalist, and a local crime lord.
The revenge fantasy was particularly keen for Black men, which may explain why, once the Hollywood factory took over, the subliminal social commentary was all but lost. Women fared a little better, standing a chance for their characters to come out of circumstances other than nickle and dime hustles on a street corner. In movies like Coffy, Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson kicked plenty of tail, but their characters were nurses (Coffy), government agents (Cleopatra Jones) and circumstantial heroes as in Foxy Brown where Grier isn’t a prostitute but plays one to exact vengence for the death of her undercover agent boyfriend.
With Obsessed, if my friend’s observations are correct, the social commentary is back, a revenge fantasy for every time a Black woman passes a brother on the street in the company of a White woman. The stereotyping here, though, belongs to the hyper-sexual Lisa (Allie Larter), who puts the full-court press on family man Derek. Beyonce’s wronged wife steps in to rectify the situation once it’s clear that Larter’s character means harm to her family, her social structure. The professional setting in which Derek comes into contact with Lisa represents the all too familiar circumstances that put Black men in closer proximity to, presumably, irresistible temptation.
The trailer suggests a good old fashioned catfight ensues which is surely as campy as the dialogue. Will the weekend audience stampede to the increasingly sluggish Cineplex usher in a new wave of high concept, low expectation cinema? We’ll have to wait and see. Or, in the words of Beyonce’s character Sharon, “I’m gonna call you back!”
Terry Glover is Senior Editor for EbonyJet.com. She writes about trends and culture, popular and otherwise.
