Black Urban Action Films and Mainstream Images
The creative, pioneering efforts of Van Peebles, Parks, Davis, and Poitier were not just transitory occurrences that had no impact on the Hollywood scene. It wasn't that Hollywood was contritely endeavoring to make reparations for its legacy of African American screen images, nor was there a particular era of egalitarianism that white studio bosses were opening up for black filmmakers. By the early 1970s, it became a clear business strategy that black screen images offered a means for tapping into a large paying audience who found something compelling in those black images. The ''good Negro'' images may have played well in the previous decade, which saw the civil rights movement reach its height, but the political, economic, and cultural changes under way in America by the early '70s called for something new. The cultural images offered in black urban action films resonated with the times.
The black urban action film—deemed ''Blaxploitation'' at the time—became its own genre, and the genre proffered popular images of black men and women through traits of extraordinary cool, sexuality, and violence.
Black directors who obtained work in Hollywood at this time achieved varying degrees of success. Some made only one or two films, while others continued to work long into the 1980s and 1990s. Some worked only in films, while others directed projects for stage and television as well.
Gordon Parks Jr. was the outstanding black director of the seventies black urban action genre, fashioning movies that held a discernible political edge. With a black director such as Fred Williamson, the black action hero became a recognizable icon who, for better or worse, could be interchangeable with his/her white counterparts. At the same time, directors such as Ivan Dixon, Hugh A. Robertson, Ron O'Neal, Gilbert Moses, and Raymond St. Jacques all made a name for themselves in other creative areas before turning to directing films.
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