Why a Brilliant New Doc Will Make You Radically Rethink “Blaxploitation”

Elvis Mitchell, the celebrated film critic and longtime radio host, has a problem with the term “blaxploitation,” the de rigueur umbrella label for Black cinema of the 1970s. “Whenever you talk about movies in this period, you immediately hear the word blaxploitation, which is a way they reduce it,” Mitchell tells Vanity Fair over Zoom. “That becomes a way to dismiss this period. And any period that has Symbiopsychotaxiplasm and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Lady Sings the Blues and Claudine and Killer of Sheep cannot be reduced to a single genre.” Mitchell could expertly riff on this topic for… Read Full Article