The Modern Women

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Recommended: How are women depicted in the media essay

Common misrepresentations of women are said to be that they are weak and inferior to men in which American society continuously place women in these roles within domestic, political, economic, and social settings. The public rarely pays tribute to the feminine heroine because she is unrecognized and unseen in American culture. However, during the 1960s to 1970s, African-American female representation has changed the way we define femininity and the modern woman through the genre known as Blaxploitation. Blaxploitation was a genre created for the black and urban audiences which highlighted black unity and empowerment. With this, the “ideal” black woman has changed. Through the workings of Edward Guerrero, Eithne Quinn, and Yvonne Sims, I am going to explain the key origins and definitions of Blaxploitation in which Guerrero takes a socioeconomic standpoint and Quinn and Sims value a more social view. With Quinn’s and Sims’s point-of-views, I will argue that Blaxploitation have altered the ideas of African-American female representation in which characters like Foxy Brown have assumed masculine traits, thus, making her a stronger female. Lastly, I will discuss what Guerrero is missing in relation to the black female representation compared the real world.

According to Edward Guerrero, the origins of Blaxploitation occurred during the Civil Rights Movement as a film strategy for the deteriorating film industry. During 1960, profits from the box office decreased from $60 million to $15 million; however, in 1967, one-third of the black population added to the box office gross and Hollywood used this fact towards making a profit .The large African-American population within the movie industry was due to their desire to spectate black...

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...tion and is only limited to his socioeconomic argument.

Although authors like Guerrero, Quinn, and Sims have different observations of their origins and definitions of Blaxploitation, they can all agree the notion of how it was popular among African-American audiences. Guerrero argues that Blaxploitation was a mockery of Black Nationalism and was created for the sole-purpose of profit of Hollywood. Also, Quinn believes that Blaxploitation was created after the Civil Rights movement to highlight individualism and needs of the powerful black male in which these traits portrays the male as violent and sexual; and lastly, Sims adheres to the idea that female characters later embodied these traits to illustrate the important of women in film. Unlike Quinn and Sims, Guerrero does not see the important of the gender dynamics of the black heroine within Blaxploitation.

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