"Tryin' to Get Over": Super Fly,Black Politics, and Post-CivilRights Film Enterprise

b y EiTHNE Qu iNN

Abstract: Super Fly was a landmark case of African American participation in major-release filmmaking. The film's narrative atx)ut Harlem cocaine dealers dramatized blackbusiness dynamism operating inside white-dominated power structures, and this spokereflexively to the circumstances of the film's making. This essay offers a reappraisal ofSuper F/y and new perspectives on the blaxploitation cycle in ligtit of post-civil rightsopportunities and constraints.

If you would give me the five biggest pimps and pushers in ihis country,the black ones, and I could persuade ihem tor one year to drop their hustleon the corner, if I could say, "Look, for one year I want you to take thatsame push, that same organizational ability, and put it in films"—well,at the end of that one year black folks would take over the whole filmindustry. Ossie Davis, Black Enterprise, 1973'

Super Fly (Gordon Parks Jr., 1972) is the most significant ñhn of the blaxploita- ;:

tiun production trend. It sparked the greatest controversy (outer)' following Sits summer release gave rise to the term "blaxploitadon"), won the lai^est ¿black youth audience, and has proved the most culturally influential.^ How- |

ever, the film has received patchy scholarly attention."* The imbalance between sig- ínificance and scrutiny is partly explained by the film's vilification. Scholars have ^

a1 Lindsay Patterson. "An Interview with Ossie Davis: How Can Blacks Make the Money to Be Made on Black ^

Films?" Black Enterprise, September 1973. 45. »;

2 TTie lerm "blaxploitation" first appeared in the wake of Super Fl/s release, as a Junius Griffin quotation in £

"NAACP Takes Militant Stand on Black Exploitation Films," Hii//jwoDd/?eporrer. August 10, 1972. Sftaff (which ™

earned $7 million) was the only blaxploitation film to retum more than Super Fly{%&A million). Figures from ^

Lawrence Cohn, "AN-Tlme Film Rental Champs," Variety. May 10, 1993. ^

3 Relative to its signtficarjce. Super f/ytends to be treated summarily in scholarly surveys of blaxploitation. The í

one article to date solely on Super Ry concerns its acclaimed sound track: Christopher Slewing, "Si/perSonics: *

Song Score as Counter-Narration in Super Fly," Journal of Popular Music Studies 13 (2001): 7 7 - 9 1 . ^

Etthne Qttiiw teaclir,\ American StuiBe.^ ai Ou Unwer.Hty of MandusUr. UK .'¡he is tkf author of Nuiiiin" bul a "G" -̂Tluiiff Tlic Culture and Comiiierce of Gaiigsta Rap ¡(Alumina Vnwmily Pfess, 2003) and numerous articles 5on Âfrùan American popular mUurt. O

86 Winter 2010 49 ' No. 2 www.cmstudies.org

Cinema Journal 49 I No. 2 I Winter 2010

been reluctant to engage with Super /^—which centers on a heroic black cocainedealer^because it was so strongly (and understandably) condemned by commentatorson its release. As Ed Guerrero summarizes, ''Super Fly came to be the main target of acollective fury and the prime example of degenerate black images on film."" VVTien thefilm is discussed, the dominant interpretive modes, consequently; have been ideologi-cal critique, reception study, and audience eflects, modes that tend to shift focus awayfrom processes of production and a-spect.s of film content.^ Many accounts of Super Fly,and indeed the blaxploitation cycle generally, proceed from the assumption that thesefilms—\vith the exception of Melvin Van Ptebies's radical Swetí Sweetbacks BaadasssssSong in 1971 —were a case of whites financially and thematically exploiting black audi-ences. Commentator Reneé Ward offered an eady, terse expression of this dynamic:"black films, white profits."^

A broad premise of this article is that there has been an underestimation of AfricanAmerican involvement and agency in the making of key blaxpioitation features. Al-though the vast majorit>' of distributors and producers were white, many of the mostinfluential black action films were directed and/or written by African Americans.Moreover, films with black directors tended to generate bchind-the-camera opportu-nities for minority workers. Biaxploitation-era filmmaking took place in the aftermathof the 1964 Civil Rights Act (prohibiting job bias) when intense battles were foughtto dismantle the entrenched culture of black exclusion from desirable work. Filmwas a key site of contest: an industry full of good jobs and high revenues in whichAfrican Americans had long featured as entertainers and consumers. Informed bythe empowerment agenda of the time, the directors of the most successful and proto-typical blaxploitation films—Van Peebles and the junior Parks, and also Ossie Davis[Cotton Comes to Harlem. 1970) and Gordon Parks Sr. [Shaß, 1971)—were among legionsof black people across America who sought to seize new opportunities and convertthe formal promises of civil rights legislation into concrete jobs and infrastructuralreform.^

This article aigues that Super Fly. contrary to conventional interpretation, is a land-mark case in the history of black financing and participation in major-release filmmak-ing. It explores how the production's black enterprise was complemented and com-pounded by the film's narrative about African ^^erican business operations.

4 Ed Guenero, Framing Blackness; The African American Image in Film (PhilatJelpfiia: Temple Univ^sity Press, 1993),

101, On black condemnation at the time, see Francis Ward. "Superf//:The Black Film Ripoff." in The Black Position

2 (1972), 37-42; and "Figdt 'Black ü<ploiEation' in Pix," Daily Variety. August 16, 1972.

5 See for instance Guerrero. Framing Blackness. 95-97, 100-103; and William Lyne's powerfyl critique in "No Acci-

dent: From Black Power to Black Box Ofíte." African Arnerican Review 3i, m. 1 (2000): 42-47. For exceptions, see

Thomas Doherty, "The Black Exploitation Picture: Super Fly ^r\d Black Caesar," Bali State University Forum IZpting

1983): 30-39; and Paula Massood, Black City Cinema; Athcan American Urtian Experiences in Film {Pt]i\3K^\iit\ia:

Temple University Press, 2003). 101-107.

6 ReneéWard. "Black nims, White Profite." S/acfcScfio/ar 7 « (May 1976): 13-24.

7 Cotton Comes to Harlem sparked the blaxploitation production trend and was the first stutTto-made, black-direcled

film to make a significant profit, returning $5.1 million m rentals. Its director and cowiter, Ossie Davis, was a civil

rightsgiant «housed thisfilm success to cofound Third World Cinema Corporation, Van Peebles wrote, directed, and

coproduced Sweetback (returning $4,1 million), which had a multiracial technical crew. Rental figures from Cohn,

"All-Time Film Rental Champs."

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Cinema Joumal 49 I No, 2 ¡ Winter 2010

Fly's focus on black underground wealth generation was ener^zed by its rejection ofthe two classic protest strate.gies of integration and transformation—the film spoke todisillusionment with both racially ameliorative civil rights politics and radical blacknationalism. I argue that in its staging of busitiess dynamism outside of mainstreamwhite structures, the film proved extremely attractive in a hardening sociopolidcal cli-mate. As a production and as a text, Super Fly exposed the tremendous possibilitiesand pleasures of ghettocentric entrepreneuHalism while also revealing the tremendouspolitical, financial, ajid social costs of such entrcpreneurialism. For this reason it standsas a preeminent and revelatory story of the early post-civil rights period.^

Making Super Fly. The blaxploitation cycle of 197Q-I975 encompasses a variedgroup of films, typically with low budgets, black action heroes, and soul sound tracks,aimed at the black youth market.' To grasp the significance of the behind-the-scenesemployment achieved by these blaxploitation films, one needs to consider the indus-tr)''s stark racial inequities in the early 1970s. White people had overwhelming controlof production, distribuiion, and exhibition. There was no senior black executive at amajor studio, and none of tlie seventy or so companies in the Association of MotionPicture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which managed Hollywood labor, wasblack owned or nin.'° Film's craft unions were notoriously white and protective, iLsingan experience roster system that all but excluded minorities. Indeed, some union localsin the prestigious areas of camerawork and sound had no black members.^^ In termsof exhibidon, out of about fourteen thousand movie theaters nationwide, less thantwenty were black owned or operated.'^

Unsurprisingly then, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission heldhearings in Hollywood in 1969, it ibund "clear evidence of a pattern or practice ofdiscriminadon" in hiring, which had as its "foreseeable effect the employment only ofwhites."'^ Following these findings, thejustice Department took the extraordinary stepof preparing lavvsuit.s against practically the entire industry- under Title V'U of the CivilRights Act.^" It ultimately dropped its threatened acdon, settüng instead on a two-yearvoluntary agreement that established a goal of 20 pen:eni minority employment in

8 The "post-civil rights" period started at the end of tfie 1960s, after ttie mass mobilizations and passage of keycivil rights laws. As Howard Winant argues, this period fias been marked by both racial tolerance and backlash.See Winant, Ttje New Politics of Race: Clobalism, Difference, Jusi/ce (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota h'ess,2004), 20-22. 97-100.

9 I use the controversial term -blaxploitation" in this essay nonjucfementally to describe these films because they were

so described in industry discourse at the time and since.

10 Collette Wood, "Blast H'Wood 'All-While' Hinng," Hollywood Reporter. March 14, 1969; and Will Tusher, "PUSH

Study Shows Systematic Blackout of Blacks Cotittnues, ' Hollywood Reporter, November 8, 1972,

11 Da//y Variefy. "Statement of EEOC's Steiner." March 14. 1969.

12 Robert Weems. Desegregating the Dalian African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century (Uew '»'ork: New

Ywk University Press, 1998), 88,

13 Daily Variety. "Statement of EEOC's Sterner." See also A, D. Murphy. "Gov't Charges: Pix Discriminate in Jobs."Daily Variety. March 14, 1969.

14 See Dan Knapp, "An Assessment of the Status of Hollywood Blacks," Los Angeles Times, September 28. 1969.

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the industry Though the agreement did create a short-term rise in black employment,lhe dispute was, according to Variety, "resolved in a manner sought by the industry:"^^Thus, when the blaxploitation cycle emei^ed, it was stÜl a white-dominated industrythat moved quickly to capitalize.

Super Fiy was, in several imponant respects, no exception: it was distributed by majorstudio Warner Bros, and made by a white producer, Siglssmund Shore. With rentals of$0.4 million and a break-even figure to be recouped by Warner of S2.5 million, SuperFly generated alx)ut S4 million in clear pn)fit.'^ Shore got the biggest payotf of anyindividual, claiming in a Variety interview that he negotiated himself a 40 percent profitshare." One journalist described him as "[lighting] up like downto\\Ti Las Vegas at themention of Super Fly and immediately [converting] into a veritable human computerspilling out amazing gross figures."'^ But Super Fly'a black creative workers also did well.The film was directed by an Airican American (only three short years after the firstever black director of a studio release! and wa.s also scripted by an African y\nierican,Phillip Fenty.'^ Because there was no advance money to pay actors and makers a sal-aiy, "almost everyone got part of the Super Fly action."^° Reports suggest that lhe blackdirector Parks and star Ron O'.N'eal divided a 10 percent cut of profits—clearly muchless than Shore, though still amounting lo a veiy substantial sum for an independentproduction at the tinie.^^ If we include the massive additional revenue generated by thefilm's sound track, Curtis Mayfidd was by far the best-remunerated African Americanon the project. Earnings from performance rights and royalties fed back to Mayfieldbecause he owned his own publishing company and independent record label, CurtoniRecords, founded in 1963.^^ The hit singles "Super Fly" and "Freddie's Dead" both.sold more than one million copies, and the crossover sound track album went on to shifta colossal twelve millicjn units. Ma\field ultimately earned more than $5 million fbr thissound track music—perhaps surpassing even Shore's profits.^^

But the most striking advances in black industry- panicipation achieved by Super Flyconcerned its funding arrangements and behind-the-camera cmplo\Tiient. The film, asreported by Variety, set two racial precedems in mainstream American filmmaking: thefirst major-distributed film to be financed predominantly by black limited partnerships

15 "Justice Backed Down on 'Race,'" Variety, April 8, 1970; and Oave Kaufman, "More P¡c-TV Jobs tor Minorities."

Da/Vy Var/ety, April 1, 1970.

16 Figure from Addison Verrill, "'Super Fly' a Blachbuster Phertom.; Gross Already Tops $5,000,000 in Limited

Dates," Variety. October 4, 1972.

17 HanhWerba. "'Super Fly'B.O. Bonanza C u « Fast Sequel as Producer, OthöSCashIn." Dai/ylörir in January 19.

1973-

18 Lois Baumoel, "Producer and Star of 'Super Fly' fee interviewed in Cleveland," Boxotfice, October 9,1972.

19 The first black Hollywood director of the sound era was Gordwi Parks Sr. with 77ie¿Bamf/« Tree (1969).

20 Baumoel. "Producer and Star."

21 • Veriill. "'Super Fly" a Blackbuster Phenom."; and Werba. '"Super Ry' B. 0. Bonanza."

22 See Robert Pruter, "Curtom Records." chap, 13 in C/KC^go Sou/(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991).

23 Figures from Chuck Philips, "Cruel Twist to a Comeback Dream," Los Angeles Tïmes. August 26 ,1990; and Werba,

"'Supef Fly' B. 0 . Bonanza."

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Cinema Joumal 49 No. 2 Winter 2010

and the first to have a largely nonwhite technical crew.̂ * The filmmakers went directlyto the Hariem business comnuinity (the milieu of the film's setting) to raise the ¡niuaJproduction costs. Small business investors—led by two black dentists. Connicjenkinsand Ed Alien—supplied a good deal of die front money of approximalely §100,000(estimates \'ary).^^ Gordon Parks Sr., father of the director, also contributed S5,000 ofthese initial costs.^^ Such black sourires of film funding had long been in short supply.With little investment capital, African Americans were war>' of bankrolling film proj-ects, as Ossie Davis explained at the time; "Black capitalists, having no firm capitali.*«base from which to operate, tend to be exceedingly conservative with their money.'"^'

If Supet Fiys funding arrangements were remarkable, they also had importantconsequences. The agenda of the film's bankrollers, none of whom had ever beforeinvested in film, differed sharply from that of conventional industry sources of capi-talization. One of their demands was to press for labor redistribution behind the cam-era.^^ Super Fly was therefore able to push for another filmic precedent of employinga majority black and Puerto Rican crew.̂ ^ As a nonunion production. Super F/v's mak-ers recruited aggressively among New York's minority gnjups, with many techniciaasand apprentices coming from Third World Cinema Corporation, the Hadem-basedcollective that Ossie Davis cofounded in 1971 to increase black and Puerto Rican em-ployment in the media industries.

Furthermore, because the film was independently financed, it was shopped toWarner Bros, only after compledon. By withstanding "attempts by .some of the ma-jors to gel in on the groimd floor,'' Super F/y's makers had a high degree of creativeautonomy, avoiding the external interference of studio representatives whose approvalis normally required at each stage of production.^° From conception down to final cut,then, Parks, Shore, and Fenty were basically free to crait their story about subculturalHarlem life.

The local black investors also enabled an tinusual degree of access for locationshooting. With their business cloul and community ties, they secured what one ]arielytitle described as ''Super M/s Happy Harlem Stay." While S/u^'s Big Score and ComBack Charleston Blue, both financed by major studios, were being forced to re-createUptown elsewhere following security problems, Super Fly "quietly wound eight weeksof almost all-Harlem locadoning with no trouble whatsoever."^' The investors guaran-teed its safe passage, providing the conditions for the film's celebrated scenes of craps

24 Addison Verrill. '"Super Fly's' Happy Haflem Stay,- Crew Black and Hispanic; Financrng, Script, Difector. PR All

Black." Variety, April 12, 1972.

25 Ibid.; and Archer Wmsten. "Rages and Outrages." New York Post, August 28. 1972.

26 See "One Last Deal: A Retrospective." Super Fly DVD (Wamer Home Video, 2004).

27 Davis quoted in Walter Price Burrell, "Ossie Davis Directs Anti-Drug Movie," Black Stars. June 1973, 68.

28 Ronald Gold. 'Harlem Film Fund 8umpy." Variety. May 24, 1972; and Verrill, "'Super Fly's' Happy Harlem

Stay."

29 One important exception was first-time cinematt^raptier James Signorelli,

30 Verrill. "'Super Fly's' Happy Harlem Stay."

31 Ibid See also Gold, "Harlem Film Fund Bumpy."

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Figure 1. Eddie {Carl Lee) plays craps in one ot Supercelebrated vérité scenes {Warner Bros,. 1972).

games, eateries, and tenementblocks, which, according toTom Doherty; had "never beenrendered on screen with suchmatter-of-fact confidence be-fore."^^ Donald Bogle agrees:""•Super Fly looks authentic: theHariem settings, the streets andalleyways, the bars, and the ten-ements all paint an overridingbleak vision of urban decay,"which was "new terrain for com-mercial cinema" (Figure 1),̂ ^

Fttrnishing further "authen-ticity;" some investors actuallyappeared as characters in the film. Most notably, Harlem street player KC plays apimp, and his ostentadous black Cadillac El Dorado features protTiinendy as the hero'scar {"My El-D atid just me / for all Junkies to see," croons Mayfield on "Pusherman").Nate Adams, who plays a dealer and served as the film's lauded costume designer,owned a Hariem employment agency that recruited personnel for die film. Hariemitestraveled into the diegesis, materializing connections to the local black business com-munity it portrayed. In several important ways, then, the black financing of the filmdirectly facilitated the racial redistribution of labor behind the camera and the contentof the black images in fmnt of it.

However, it would be misleading to construct black creative input as in any simpleway authendc. As with much of the black participadon in blaxploitation films, SuperFly's .\frican American writer and director were not from the places they portrayed.Indeed, ironically, it was only the white producer who hailed from Harlem. Fenty was ahot-shot Cleveland advertising executive before writing Super Fly in his late twenties. Hewas part of the new hip marketing culture of the 1960s that Thomas Frank chroniclesin The Conquest of Cool, which grasped "the va-st popularity of dissidence."" He admitsthat he "knew not much about" the Harlem scene, but had noted the "tremendous cre-ative energy" of this "exciting, interesting subculturc."^^ Parks's professional journeybefore Super Fly encompassed art school in Paris and working w itli documentary makerKerre Gaisseau ("the real influence of [his] life"), who made a film about the natives

32 Doherty, "Black Exploitation Picture," 35.

33 Donald Bogle. Toms. Coons. Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An ínteqxetive History of Blacks in American Films. 3rded. (NewYofk: Continuum, 1997). 239-240. See also Massood. Black City Cinema. 101-107; and Peter Stanfield,"Walking the Streets: Blach Gangsters and the 'Abandoned City' in the 1970s Blaxplcitation Cycle." in Mob Cul-ture: Hidden Histerias ot ttie American Ganger Film. eo. Lee Grieveson. Esther Sonnet, and Peter StanReld (NewBrunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2005), 296-297.

34 Thomas Frank. Tfie Conquest of Cool: Business Culture. Counterculture, ana ttie Rise ot Hip Consumerism (Chi-cago: Univwsity ot Chicago Ress. 1997), 13.

35 Phillip Fenty interview in "One Last Deal."

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Cinema Journal 49 ' No. 2 • Winter 2010

of New Guinea before, according to Parks, "pondering Haricm."^^ Parks had aJso justfinished working as a stills photographer on The God/at/wr (by far the most successfulfilm of 1972), which powerfully mythologized illegal white, ethnic enterprise culture."Growing up in Haríeni and the Bronx, producer Shore was, according to one journal-ist, "familiar and sympathetic with the problems of the ghetto ibreign-born, black andminority groups."^^ He described his own fascination wilh "the way [blacks) got intobeing hustlers on the street." Unlike white hustlers, "it was a competition of style."^^

By combining the advertiser's and dotunientarian's eye—overseen by "WhiteNegro" Shore—Fenty and Parks capitalized on the immense currency of black (andwhite ethnic) urban culture in the eariy 1970s/° This was a period of proliferatingethnographies and press features on "the ghetto."*' The "authentic Negro culture" inthese accounts comprised, as historian Robin Kelley describes wryly, "the young job-less men hanging out on the corner passing the botde. the brothers with the nastiestverbal repertoires, the pimps and hustlers"—^the very t>'pes that came to be furthermythologizcd in blaxploitadon films."*^ White commentators were busy chroniclingand exoticizing urban communities for mainly white and middle-class consumption.The crtîators of Super Fly responded by constructing iheir own less passive version ofghetto masculinity that catered primarily to black appetites, but that also appealed toa receptive secondary white youth audience.

Super Fly thus emerges as an interracial production that was far from an unmcdiatedslice of ghetto life. Shore controlled the film package and Warner controlled the film'sdistribution. Parks Jr. and Fenty were hardly portraying their own life experiences.Furthermore, the film's minority employment was itself indirecdy funded by GreatSociet>^style programs. Third World Cinema, which trained Super Fly technicians, hadreceived a Manpower Career and Development Administration grant [S200,00U) anda Model Cides grant (S400,000) in the year prior to Super Fly's making."

The film's marketing campaign captured both the film's authentically local dimen-sions and its deliberate commodification oi' "ghetto authenticity."' Studios rypicallyhired African .\merican public relations and advertising companies to market btax-ploitation films; in the case of Super Fly. Warner hired James Booker Associates. Priorto the film's release, screenings were held, according to one Booker executive, "notfor the kind of cultural elite usually found on those white 'opinion makers' advance

36 Parks quoted in Winsten, "Rages and Outrages."

37 Or) Tïîe Godtathefs blockbuster success, see Peter Krâmer, The New Hollywood: From Bonnie and Clyde to StarWars (London: Wallflower Press, 2005), 8-37.

38 Baumoel, "Producer and Star of 'Super Fly.'"

39 ShofequotedinDavid Mills, "BlaxploitatFon 101," tVäs/i/ngfcmPcsi, Nuvembef 4, 1990.

40 "White Negro" is Norman Mailer's famous term for wtirte male exoticized attraction fo black coot, in tiis Advertise-ments iwWyse/f (New York: Putnam, 1959),

41 See for instance Ulf Hannerz. Soulside-. Inquines into Ghetto Culture and Community Wen fotk: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 1969).

42 Robin Kelley. Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon F^ss, 1997),20.

43 Figur« from Patterson. "Interview witti Ossie Davis," 44; and James Monaco. American Film Now: The People, 0>ePower, the Money, the Movies (New Yorki Oxford tjniweisity Press. 1979), 194.

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Cinema Journal 49 j No. 2 i Winter 2010

screening lists at the majors, but for Harlem bartenders, hairdressers, barbers andstreet people who have immediate impact within the black community." This strategyproved very effective. Ibr it took just eight weeks for the film's gross to exceed $! mil-lion in two New York theaters alone." Since the film was unusually embedded in theurban enclave it represented, the employment of black marketers and recourse to loealopinion makers is consistent with its production principles—preferable to the alterna-tive of relying on white outsiders. At the same time, however, such a selling strategyenhanced the film's image of ghetto realness, which helped maximize interest amongits youth audience of both blacb and whites.

Film scholars have tended tu stress white involvement and control in blaxploitadonfilms like Super Fly. Mark Reid has infiuentially argued thai early 1970s black actionfilms created a false image of racial self-determination. Behind the "mythology- ofblack control," prnjected in film narratives aiid marketing campaigns, were the whiteexecutives and entrepreneurs pulling the strings."^ Robert Weems concurs, ai^uingthat, by using black PR outfits [like James BookerJ, the majors (like Warner) could gaincloser access to the communit>; maximize profits, and forward a rhetoric of racialautonomy/'' The.se scholars take issue not just with studio films like Shaß, but alsoindependently made films with major distribution like Super Fiji As Reid explains, "ablack filmmaker may alter his script to aim for distnbuùon by major studios" in orderto achieve a wide release.'^ Even though the smdio had no direct involvement in thescripting, shooting, or editing of Super Fly. its commercial expectadons were alreadybuilt into the narrative through the filmmakers' preconceptions.

Reid's and Weems's arguments are persuasive and well supported. However, thedanger is that, within this interpretive frame, the va.st majority of black-made andblack-themed films are interpreted as disempowering, compromised by market exigen-cies. The power of this critique has curtailed consideration of concrete opportunitiescreated during the blaxploitation production trend. This critical tendency is symp-tomatic of a broader trend in civil rights and black power historiography that NancyMacLean has identified. The focus on "climactic confrontations has drawn attentionaway from quieter struggles on other fronts—above all, from the fight to secure accessto good jobs,'"^ In blaxploitation scholarship, this focus has led to an emphasis on thepolemical reception of the films rather than on pragmatic struggles over black partici-pation behind the camera.

Some scholars of black film have proposed more flexible frameworits for studyingrace relations in the film industry Thomas Cripps argues that, historically, practically

44 Booker executive quoted in and figure from Verrill, ""Supef Fly' a Biackbuster Phenom," Sea also B. J. Mason, "The

New Films: Culture or Con Game?" Ebony. December 1972, 62,

45 Mark Reid, "The Black Action Film: The End of tHe Patiently Enduring Black Hero." nimHistafy2.no. 1 (1988):

35-36, Reid does note employment "opportunities" created by black action films, but does not elaborate (23,

34). See also tiis "Black Action Film," chap, 4 in Redefining Black Film (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1993).

46 Weems, DesegregaUng the Dollar, chap, 5.

47 Reid, "Black Action Film.- 30.

48 Nancy MacUan, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American H4YÎÇP/3CB (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 2006), 5.

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all black films relied in some measure on "wliitc .sources of capital, distributors, book-ers, and exhibitors." This recognition requires a "broadened view of black cinema"that reilects both the complexity of this capital-intensive industry and of racial inter-action in the United States.*' In a similar vein. Tommy Lott contends that scholarslike Reid present "too rigid a dichotomy between independent and studio films." Inpost-civil rights black filmmaking, there is, he ariques, "less disparity between the filmpractices of black independents and black filmmaking in Hollywood."^"

However, even Cripps and Ixnt rebufV Super Fly. In passing, Lott describes the filmas one of a "deluge of formuJaic studio productions," and Cripps has called it Sweet-back^ "Hollywood epigone."^' Given the black dimensions of its making, it seems curi-ous that the film should be so described. But a look next at the brand of black businessculture in its narrative helps to explain the critical diffidence.

Representing Black Enterprise. In the "message movies" of the postwar years, thetheme ol race préjudice was frequently dramatized through stories of black exclusionfrom, and attempts to enter, the economic mainstream." The liberal reformism offilms like M Way Out [Josejih Manldewicz, 1950), A Raisin in the Sun (Daniel Pétrie,19Ö4), and Nothing but a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964) focused on the social and psycho-logical burden on black men caused by occupying subservient positions in employmentand/or the economy. Following civil rights victories, Sidney Poitier's hugely influentiallate-sixties protagonists were consummate professionals: a doctor {Guess Who's Comingto Dinner, Stanley Kramer, 1967), homicide detective [In the Heat of the JúghL NormanJewison, 1967), and teacher [To Sir, with ¿oir, James Clavell, 1967), outshining and oftencommanding higher salaries than their white counterparts. These stories of profes-sional integration privileged the newfound status of an isolated "racial exception,"precariou.sly positioned in a white-dominated world of work. .Although they mobilizedthemes of employment and status, none of these liberal-era films dealt .seriously withblack busijiess culturc.^^ Nor indeed did \)ve~Super Fly blaxploitation. In Gotton Comesto Harlem, the beset black detectives work hard for their modest public sector sala-ries, while the hustling preacher's attempts at underground wealth creation ultimatelyamount to cowardly extortion. Sweetback's currency is sex, not money. Shaft docshave his own detective agency, but narrative emphasis rests on his individualist sleuth-ing (he has no staff) at least one step removed from the black community.

There is an obvious reflectionist explanation for the filmic underrepresentation ofAfrican American business: the historic, real-worid lack of black entrepreneurs and

49 Thomas Cripps, Black Film as Genre lB\oom\ng[on: Indiana Univefsity Press, 1978), 6-7.

50 Tommy Lott, "Hollywood and Independent Black Cinema." in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Steve Neale

and Murray Smrtti (London: Routiedge, 1999], 2 1 1 .

51 Ibid., 214; Thomas Cripps, "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Songand the Changing Politics of Genre," in Cose

Viewings: An Anthology of New Film Criticism, ed. Peter Lehman (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press,

1990), 241 .

52 See Thomas Cnpps. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era

(New York; Orfofd University Press, 1993).

53 Ralph Cooper's "race fi lm" Dark Manhattan (1937) is the closest progenitor to öiaxpicitation's subcultural entrepre-

neurialism. See Jonathan Munby, "The tJnderworld Films of Oscar Micheaun and Ralph Cooper: Toward a Genealogy

of the Black Screen Gangster," in Grieveson, Sonnet, and Stanfield, Mob Culture. 263-280,

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managers. In their influential investigation of racial inequality; sociologists MelvinOliver and Thomas Shapiro explore the shortage of self-employment and wealthgeneration opportunities in black America." They argue that the wealth gap (ratherthan more frequently studied income düTerendais) is the deepest indicator of materialinequality. Sociologists Lawrence Bobo and Ryan Smith concur; "The gaping dispar-ity in accumulated wealth is the real inequality in standard of living pmduced hy threehundred plus years of systematic and perviLsivc racial discrimination."^^

In pop-cultural terms. Super Fly engages this crucial terrain—albeit through thesocially harmful drug trade. It narrati\azes barriers to and adaptive chances for blackenterprise, portraying die predicaments and mindsets of black underground work-ers through its four main drug-dealing protagonists: Youngblood Priest (Ron O'Neal),Eddie (Carl Lee), Scatter (Julius Harris), and Freddie iCharles McGregor). The nar-rative centers on Priest in his attempt to pull ofV a huge $\ million drug deal so thathe can "get out" of the business. He and business partner Eddie started from nothingand have expanded their operadon impressively. As commentators James Parish andGeoi^e Hill summarize, Priest aiid Eddie have "fifty men out on die New York Citystreet all pushing dope {mosdy to white people)."^^ Through these stylish and adeptblack entrepreneurs, the film stages the circumvention of historic restricdons on Af-rican American economic agency- As Oliver and Shapiro explore, white consumerprejudice, combined with discriminatory state and local policies, wrought a "devas-tating impact on the ability of blacks to build and maintain successful enterprises."^Super Fly dramaticall)' flips this racial script.

In a striking sequence partway through the film, a three-minute montage of split-screen stills depicts the distribution, sale, and ( onsumption of cocaine, propelled by thebackbeat of Mayfield's "Pusherman." it is markedly multiracial, showing the interac-tion of blacks, whites, and Asians; but generally blacks are selling to whites from allwalks of life [business executives, construction workers, etc.). Cocaine is constructed asa hip, prestige product (in implicit contrast to heroin), enhancing the dealer's image.As historian William Van Deburg explains, blaxploitation's "heroic hustlers . . . tookconsiderable pride in the corporate structures and complex distribution networks theycreated, and fought vigorously to maintain their share of a very .specialized market."^The high-stakes entrepreneurialism of Priest-^who penetrates white markets, gener-ates minority jobs, and operates abo\'e the law—constituted a highly pleasurable, ifdangerous, signifier of black pride and success.

Along with interracial trade. Super Fly offered a window into black intergenera-tional investment. Priest turns to his mentor and father-figure Scatter for help to pull

54 Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro. Black Wealtti/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality Wtw York:

Routledge. 1997).

55 Lawrence Bobo and Ryan Smith, "From Jim Crow Ractsm to Laissez-Faire Racism: The Transformation of Racial

Altitudes," m Beyvpd Pluralism: The Conception of Groups and Identities in America, ed, Wendy Katkin, Ned

Landsman, and Andrea Tyree (Urbana: University o! Illinois Press, 1998), 183.

56 James Parish and (kiorge Hill, Black Action Films (Jefferson, NC: McFarland. 1989), 290.

57 Oliver and Shapiro. Black Weatttj, 4.

58 William Van Deburg, Black Camelot: African American Culture Herotë in Their Tirrtes, i96í?-Í9S0(Cfiicag0: Uni-

versity cf Chicago Press, 1997). 140.

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Cinema Joumal 49 No. 2 Winter 2010

oíf his big score. Scatter is a former drug distributor who had got Priest started in thebusiness. Now a legitimate small businessman, Scatter reltictantly agrees to help. Heis willing to risk evervihing for his protege because he understands the crucial impor-tance of passing on resources to the next generation. As Eddie remarks incredulouslyto Priest, "Vbu want that man to give up the litde dnie he got left and lay it on theline for you. And you know he wanted to do it for you!" Scatter has a hard-won ap-preciation of the fact that "family assets expand choices, horizons, and opportuni-des for children/' which can counteract what Oliver and Shapiro call the "sociallylayered accumulation of disadvantages."^^ Scatter describes Priest's underv\'orld ap-prendceship as an alternative schooling: "I gave you one scholarship, Youngblood.No one ever gave me notiiing." Facing death near the film's end, with his propertyand capital now of no tise to him, he switches to third person: "All the monev' Scatterdone made." Racial oppression deepens the family tnelodrama, with real pathos inScatter's sacrifice for his "son."

Much of the film's narrative tension rests on the different idenddes and perspectivesof business partners Priest and Eddie (Tigure 2). Priest sees tlie underground economyas a route to mainstream success, expressing an individualist desire for freedom. Asked

what he would do afterwards: "It'snot so much what I'd do as hav-ing the choice. Not being forcedinto a thing because that's the wayit is." He rejects the menial jobsavailable: "working some ji\'e jobfor chump change, day after day.If that's all I'm supposed to dothen they're gon' have to kill me,'cause that ain't enough." Priest'sclimactic speech, in which he tri-umphs financially and rhetoricallyover the white drug kingpin / policecommissioner, is an exhilaratingrap, beginning, "You don't own

me, pig!" Priest emerçes as a hip rendering of the American individualist hero, readyto seize post-civil rights opportunity. His crossover bootstrap charisma certainly ex-dted white film crides at the dme. For the Mw Tork Times\ Vincent Canby, Priest"succeeds in his last big deal, rather gloriously"; another reviewer described him as"downright glamorous"; and a third—more problematically—admired his "smolder-ing, virile presence."^°

By contrast, ghettocentric Eddie views the underground economy as an end in itselfTension arises because he sees no rea.son to terminate their drug-dealing of>eration.

59 Oliver and Shapiro, Black Wealth. 6-7.

60 Vincent Canby, "All but "Super Fly' Fall Down. " New York rimes, November 12, 1972; Review of "Super Fly,"

Motion Picture Herald. September Î972. in Super F/y clippings file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion

Picture Arts and Sciences; and Kevin Thomas, "Dope Dealer Who's in a Fix," Los Angeles Tinges. September 20,

1972.

Figure 2. Busmess partners Priest (Ron O'Neal) and Eddie

(Carl Lee) clash over wwldviews (Warner Bros., 1972).

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Eddie's limited horizons express a sell-conscious internalizad on of racial inequality:"That honky's using me," he says of their white driig wholesaler "So what? You know,I'm glad he's using me. . . . People been using me all my life." Eddie's vernacular in-sight into exploitative dynamics shows a keen awareness of oppressive social relations.VVIicn Eddie finally betrays his partner, it may appear to be a simple act of treacherousshortsightedness. (Mayfield's chastising track title is "Eddie You Should Know Better.")But the vicious circle of social constraint and low expectation mires Eddie in ways thathave more salience than the clear-sighted aspiration of Priest. With his grittier intona-tion, he provides a more credible version of the black hustling hero.

In the film's most quoted speech, E^die describes the good life they have achieved:"You're gonna give all this up? Eight-track stereo, color TV in every room, and cansnort half a piece of dope ever\' day That's the .'Xnierican dream, nigga! Well, ain't it?"Explaining the subcultural logic of blacJi hustlers, Robin Kelley sheds light on Eddie'soutlook: "Possessing capital was not the ultimate goal; rather, money was primarilya means by which hustlers could avoid wage work and negotiate status through thepurchase of prestigious commodities."^' Eddie's consumer desire does not amount tothe long-term accumulation of mainstream mores. His speech provides insights intothe structural determination of his worldview, at the same time as it re\eals, throughhis possessions, language, and activities, the resistive styles and seductive pleasures of"the life."

Super /7j's pronounced entrepreneurial imagination imites a reexaminadon of therole of Curds Mayticld's sound track. This hugely popular score was, according toleading music critic Nelson George, "arguably, the single greatest black pop effon ofthe decade." With ÍLS KTÍcal complexity, vocal sincerity; and instrumental dynamismof guitars, horns, and Hutes, it is usually read as "at odds" with the film il supports.^^This interpretation was first proposed in the film's pressbook ("a counter balance") andmost famously elaborated by Greil Marcus ("not background, but cridcisni").^^ Thesubtitle of Christopher Sieving's article oUers a recent, scholarly iteration of the idea:"Song Score as Counter-Narration in Super Fly" In this detailed account, Sieving does,however, suggest that Mayfield's KTÍCS partly work to justify tbe indi\'idualist acdonsof Priest.^'' Extending Sieving's suggesdon, I would argue that textual and extratextualevidence strongly indicate tbat Mayfield's music enhanced the fUm's entrepreneurialenergies, and that this was in many ways intendonal on the musician's part.

Mayfield wrote the music as he spent dme on the set. "Pusherman,"' which accord-ing to one commentator was "blasting from every radio and sound system in blackAmerica in 1972," is performed within the film by the Curds Mayfield Experience

61 Kelley, Yo'Mama's Disfunktional! 20.

62 Nelson George, Blacktace: R^lectlons m African Americans and tfie Movies (Hew yor\i: HarperCollins, 1994]. 34.

54.

63 Super Fly Pressbcwk (Warner Bros., 1972); Greil Marcus, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock'n'Roll Music

(New York; Omnibus Press, 1977}, 97, Mayfield's consistent critique ot drug use in his Super Fly lyrics (and

interviews) has encouraged commentators to conclude Itiat he is simply antidrug. But such conclusions overlook

the crucial distinction between drug use and drug dealing m Mayffflld's subtle and ranging elaborations of ttie drug

t n : ^ .

64 Sieving, "Super Sanies." 82-84.

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{Figure 3).̂ ^ When Mayfield's pusherman intones, "Feed me money for style / andm let you trip for a while," he seems to be invoking the "hustle" of the black filmic /musical experience itself. The lyrics of this track tend to emphasize structure overagency, mitigating ihe drug dealer's role: he is "a victim of ghetto demands." While"Pusherman" is an ambivalent track that works both to parody and legitimate black{sub)cultural enterprise, the hit singk- "Super Fly" contains little irony. Inslcad,it readily mystifies husthng miisculinity: "Haid to understand, what a hell of aman / This eat of the slum, had a mind, wasn't dumb." More often overlooked is the"triumphant optimism," as one music journalist put il, of the chorus lo "No Thing

on Me (Cocaine Song)"—admit-tedly an antidrug track.̂ ^ Heard¡lisi after Scatter has agreed to¡iclp Priest, Ma>-tield sings, "I'mI) glad I've got my own, so glad

I hat I can see / My life's a naturalhigh, the man can't put no thingon me." In his voice-over com-mentary on the Super Fly DVD,black him scholar Todd Boyd de-scribes the exhilarating resonanceof this music-dominated film se-quence, reciring these lines ni fulland twice oven For Boyd, theyexpress the idea that "the system

can't control me because I have my own." thus encapsulating the film's advocacy of"self-determination and independence.'"^'

In a 1971 interview, Mayfield himself drew parallels between hustling enterpriseand his own music production. Reflecting on his celebrated record label Clurtom inthe year before he wrote the Super Fly score, he said, "As an independent companyI think we will be just as strong if not stronger than a great many of the big com-panies simply because through an independent company you tend to get more truehustle." Why is black independent music production a "hustle"? "Simply because,well, that's my only bread, so I've got to push and go all the way with it, or loseout completely.'"^ The longstanding scarcity of resources ("bread"] feeds into theintensity of .\frican American business practice and creative energy. This idea cameto inform the film's ghettocentric themes and grassroots production. Describing hisown publishing company; Mayfield also prefigured his refrain, "I'm so glad 1 got myown": "It just had to happen . . . that we'd end up owning as much of ourselves aspossible." As black culture scholar Mark Anthony Neal states in regard lo this sound

65 Nathan McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler. A Young Black Man in America (New York: Vintage, 1995), 102.

66 David Mills, "Curtis MayfieW, Back with a 'Super Fly' Sound." Washinffon Post. Septembef 23.1990-

67 Soyd's comments cast doubt on Sieving's description of these lines as "relatively obscure," tn "Si/per Sonics,"

84.

68 Mayfield quoted in Richard Robinson. "Curtis Mayfield," in International tJictionary of Black Comptssers. vol. 2, ed.

Samuel Floyd Jr. (CnicagO! Fitzroy Dearborn, 19991, 1104.

Figure 3, Director Gordon Parks Jr. and performer/com-

poser Curtis Mayfield on the set of Super Fly (Warner Bros.,

1972).

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Cinema Journal 49 No-2 I Winter 2010

track, Mayfield "clearly represents the praxis of Black Power in both his music andhis business dealings."^^ Post-release, despite intense criticism of the fiim and his owngnnving misgivings about its glamorization of drug use. Mavfidd still maintained that""Super Fly did have its positive side. It was the first movie where a black dude actu-ally got over."'" By using lhe language of his famous "Super Fly" refrain ("tryin' toget over"), this politically conscious artist refused to sidestep parallels between blackentrepreneurialism in the film narrative, sound track lyrics, and the circumstances ofthe music's production.

Through sound and vision, ihen. Super Fly mythologized tlie outlook and practicesof aspirational, working-class black men. The film reworked action genre conven-tions to speak to black interests and expectations/' staging the injuries of the radalwealth gap and the turn lo alternative opportunity structures to gain status and cash.According to Lindsay Patterson, one of the lew black film critics to praise Super Ry onits release, "the movie presented an important message about the failure of Americansociety to freely provide legitimate opportunities for its bright but impoverished youngblack men."'^

By dramatizitig barriers to legitimate advancement, however, the pusherman's ex-ploitational trade is rendered morally conscionable and even admirable. The socialcritique mounted through the film's realist images of urban povert>' and disinvestment,Mayfield's lyrics [above all, "little Child Runnin' Wild"), and the insights of Eddie,Scatter, and Priest does nol prompt collectivist solutions. Instead., the film sanctionsand enhances the hustler's individualism. Its most enduring contribution may wellbe its mitigation and mystification of the black entrepreneurial husiler figure. Onceagain, ghetto philosopher Eddie crystallizes this position: "I know it'.s a rotten game,but it's the only one the man left us to play" Beneath the seeming straightforwardnessof this justification of drug dealing are complex political currents premised on therejection and rearticulation of both civil rights and black power mobilization.

Super Fly's Post-Civil Rights Politics. As a pop-cultural site for the production andcirculation of black píjütical identities, Super Fly mu.st be taken very seriously indeed.Of all the blaxploitation films viewed avidly by black youth, Super Fly elicited tlie mostkeen identification, enjoying extremely high levels of repeat business/^ It was a run-away hit in black theaters and grossed more than SI 2 million,^^ The title of" a Decem-ber 1972 Je/ magazine cover story asked how Super Fly wa& changing the "behavior ofblacks."'^ Ethnographer Mary Pattillo-McCoy found that the film "consumed" black

69 Mark Anthony Neal, What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Puttie Culture [New York: Routiedge,

1999), 53,

70 Mayfield quoted in Philips. "Cruel Twist."

71 Hany Benshoff has productively explored such genre rearticulation, in "Blaitploitation Horror Films: Generic Reap-

propriatton or Reinscription?" Cinema Journal 2'i, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 31-50.

72 Lindsay Patterson, ed.. Black Films and Film-makees (New York: Dodd, Mead. 1975), K.

73 Verrill. '"Super Fly' a Blackbuster Phenom."

74 Figure from Bob Johnson, "Black Films Papular in Chicago's Loop." Boxoffke. April 14, 1975,

75 William Berry, "Hrnv'Super Fly" Film Is Chanpng Behavior of Blacks," Jei, December 28, 1972, 1, 54-58.

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youth. "I grew up with Super Fïy," recalls interviewee Lauren Grant. "That picturehad a profound effect on my hfe."'^ In his autobiography, blat k journalist NathanMcCall agrees, asserting that the film "influenced the st\'le, thinking, and choices thata lot of young black men began making around thai time. I know it deeply affectedme."" Nelson George found it '"mesmerizing": "Super Fly's cocaine dealer was a . . .romantic, conflicted figure whose slang and clothes cut deeper than Skaß into the blackcommunity's psyche."'^ Black filmmaker VVarrington Hiicüin remembers his fii-st view-ing in East St. Louis: "At the d i m a x . . . the entire theater, incJuding m>'seir. leapt to ourfeet and stood, and screamed, and applauded, and stamped our feet . . . . It connectedpsychically with a people at a certain place and time."'^

The film connected in terms of both realism and iantasy, drawing on competingcodes of recognition from cinematic genres, media representation, black subcultures,and social experience.^ Many black fans, new to cinematic representations of theircommunities, spoke of the film's authenticity: "Super Fly is what's happening righthere on the street," commented one girl In Washington, DC. "That's the way it is." Atthe same time, many identified with the film as an enticing fantasy, with another viewerdeclaring, "Priest is super fine and super bad."^' Given the intensity of ¡LS audienceappeal in a period of racial and political flux, Super Fly was striking in ¡ts potential toinfluence black youth altitudes.

The film narrative assuredly presented a rebuke to traditional racial integrationism.Classic ci\il rights mobilization had been built, as Nancy MacLean describes it, on"the belief that those who worked hard at honest callings, whatever their origins, couldbetter themselves and lift their children's prospects."^^ Popular culture was seen to playa vita! n)Ie in this quest for black inclusion through the projection of progressive storiesabout black life and race relations. By romanticizing black criminal occupations andalternative lifestyles, Super Fly was seen as extremely detrimental to such a project. Itrisked reinforcing some of the very negative stereotvpes that had long been imposedon African Americans, and that were gaining new ground with the mighty rise of"culture of poverty" discourses from the late 1960s onwards.^

But from Super Fly^s more pessimistic post-civil rights perspective, promises ofdecent jobs for black people ready to work at "honest callings'" were not being kept.The pervasive liberal discourses of rights and opportunities proved empty and evendetrimental for many poor and working-class blacks uith rising expectations in a

76 Mary Pattillo-McCoy. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class [Chicago: University ofChicho Press, 1999). 125.

77 McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler. 102.

78 George, Blackface, 30. 54-

79 Hudlin interview in "One Last Deal."

80 Super Fiys powerful combination of realism and fantasy was noted on its release in, for instance. "Catholic Office•C on WB's 'Super Fly."' Variety. August 23. 1972, See also D o t i ^ . "Black Exploitation Picture," 35; and Mas-sood. Black City Cirtema. 105-107.

81 As quoted in Charles Michener, "Black Movies," Newsweek, Octot)er 23. 1972.

82 MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough. 6.

83 On the "culture of poverty," see Stephen Steintierg, Turning Back: Tbe Retreat tram Racial Justice in AmericanThought and Policy [Bosttm: Beacon Press, 1995), 5-10, 119-123.

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dwindling job market. It is a painful irony that by the time Johnson's War on Povertygol underway, recession and economic restructuring had begun to eliminate entry-level job opportunities, all but rendering obsolete the new training and suppon onolïer. The Kerner Commission, set up lo investigate the causes of the explosive unrestof the 196ÜS, found that a key cau.se was joblessness.^ Super Fly's profane glamor-ization of black lÄihonest callings dramatized widespread feelings of cynicism andanger.

More suiprisingly. Super Fly also rebuked black power acti\ism. In a pivotal scene,three "black militants" approach Priest and Eddie and challenge them to give some-thing back to the community: "We're out here trying to build a new nation for blackpeople. It's time for you to start pacing some dues!" Priest's response comes off as farmore virile, eloquent, and even militant, as he ofien his allegiance only when they start"killing whitey": '"until you can do that, go sing your marching songs somewhere else."Bcgnidgingly impressed, the militants retreat. This scene has been lambasted. ScholarWilliam Lyne, for example, laments that, "as they leave with their tails between theirlegs, the 'militants' have not only bowed to Priest's superior masculinity, they havealso relinquished any claims on effective resistance."®^ Film critic Pauline Kael de-nounced Priest's exultant disniissal, "calculated to crush the finky, cowardly pair."®^Alter Super Fly s release, Black Panther leader Huey Ncwion complained that blackaction films "leave revolution out or, if it's in, they make it look stupid and naive."^''The classic black nationalist mission was to mobilize the hustler, to convert cynicisminto radicalism. Newton describes the Black Panther mandate: "to transform many ofthe so-called criminal activities going on in the street into something political."^ SuperRy reverses this transformationist narrative by channeling political enemies towardhustling individualism. By constructing ihe militants a.>i just another interest group onthe lake, the film is deeply undermining of black power politics.

This scene is partly legible in terms of the early 1970s ebbing of the black national-ist lide. Widespread grassroots radicalism came up against an intractable and increas-ingly resentful white America that had no appetite to deliver de facto racial equaJity.As sociologist Howard Winant summariz.cs, "The result was that the movement's rela-tively manageable demands were incorporated within the status quo, while it.s radicaldemands for social justice and black power—with their disruptive, participatory, andredistributive content—were systematically rejected."®^ The discrepancy between themilitants' far-reaching vision and their shrinking constituency begins to explain thecontext of Priest's narrowly economic nodon of self-determination.

But the question remains, why would the filmmakers choose to promote these cur-rents of backlash, especially given the production's substantially black-dettrniined en-terprise? After all, nationalist politics, though increasingly fragmented, were still vital

64 Kemer Commission, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disi^dêfslHeti 'íotW. Bantam, 1968),

85 Lyne, "No Accident," 43.

85 Pauline Kad, "Notes on Black Mowies," New Verter. December 1972, reprinted ¡n Paterson, Black Films, 263.

87 Newton quoted in Michener, "'Black Movies."

88 Huey Newton, ffewtfufwiaiy Su/ci'tie (New Yorkr Sallantine, 1973). 141.

89 Howard Winant. TTie Wx'IdlsaGhetki: Race and Democracy Since Morid Hör//(New York; Basic aooks, 2001), 302.

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in urban neighborhoods in 1972. Furthermore, Sweetback, Shaft, and especially TheMack (Michael Campus, 1973) all opted to show a degree of collaboration betweenblack individuals and activists. The answer that suggests itself is not pressure fromHollywood or white interests. Instead, it probably came down to competing Hadembusiness and political agendas. During shooting, Super Ryh makers were approachedby local political groups who demanded funding, jobs, and politically conscious im-agen' in exchange for access and protection.^" Street gangs, according to actor JuliusHarris, also "wanted their taste." The makers refused to "cough up. We were streetcats too. We said no. no."^' Fenty and Farks incorporated these disputes into theirflexible script, conflating activists and gangs in its figuring of "militants." Priest andEUidie thus emerge as stand-ins for the black investors and filmmakers dramaticallyrefusing to pay their dues, politically and monetarily, in Harlem. The regrettable ironyis that the only major-release film to come anywhere near the ambitious goal of "95%black crews on pictures made in the black community-" demanded by Harlem acdvistsshould at the same time come to lampoon them.'^

Because of its flagrant repudiation of both incremental and transformative politi-cal agendas of the dme, it is very hard to disagree with the widely held view that SuperFly was, in many ways, demobilizing. In terms of value frameworks, the film's celebra-tion of black entrepreneurial individualism served to undermine communal action.Through its transmission of hip fashions, it encouraged consumerism among blackyouth audiences nationuide—including, most troublingly, drug constimption.'^ Thefilm also influenced occupational choices. Evidence suggests that it enticed black youthinto drug dealing. Along with Nathan McCall, Lauren Grant identifies the film as akey factor in her turn to dealing, when she "decided to stop mimicking the costumesand mannerisms of the movie characters in Super Fly, and instead started reproducingthe behaviors of the actual drug dealers in her own environment. "'^ Coupled with thepush factors of unemployment and pciverty; the fUm's glamorization ol' ghetto entre-preneurs pulled young people toward tlie drug busbiess—the "black urban answer tocapitalism," as McCaU describes it.̂ ^

Nonetheless, in several important ways, the film's groundbreaking depiction ofblack enterprise remains intensely political, resonating, in particular, with realigningdiscourses of economic self-determination. If there was "a black capitalism to fit al-most any ideological predisposition" in the early 1970s, as Van Deburg puts it, allvarieties of black capitalism stressed building up the black economic base, particti]arl>'

90 VerTiH. '•'Super Fly's' Happy Harlem Stay."

91 Hams interview in "One Last Deal."

92 Gold, "Harlem Film Fund Bumpy."

93 On Super f/y and drug consumption, which is beyond the remit of this article, see Alvin Poussaint, "Cheap Thrills

That Degrade Blacks," Psychology Today! (f^^bruari 1974}: 22-26; and Wtll Tustier, "CurrEnt Slack Films Scored

fof Free Dope Advertising," Hollywood Reporter. September 20, 1972. On Super Fl/s consumerist fashions, see

Van Deburg, Black Camelot, 139, 141: Weems, Desegregating the Dollar. 84; and Stella Bruzzi, Undressing Cin-

ema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies (London: Routledge, 1997), 98-102.

94 Pattillo-McCoji, Black Picket Fences. 126,

95 McCall, Makes Me Wanna Holler. 102.

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through the control of urban businesses.^ This drive for entrepreneurialism had deeproots in the black strudle, notably Booker T. Washington's belief in business as an aidto community empowerniient. In the early 1970s, and particularly in the second halfof 1972, these political discourses traveled powerfully into the film industry.

By the year of Super Fly's release and Nixon's landslide reelection victory, the seriousdrive to integrate Hollywood was being thwarted by political backpedaling. The expi-ration of the industry's two-year Justice Department agreement on minorit)' employ-ment targets st>'mied the black struggle ibr inclusion. Ftuiher, the expiration was ac-companied by a discursive onslaught by Hollywood management against the black filmprotests that followed Super Fiys release. In an influential oflicial statement in Septem-ber 1972,Jadi Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America» reducedthe claims of blacks seeking film jobs to unfair demands for a handout. He advocatedinstead a laissez-faire approach to industry jobs. The title of a Hollywood Reporter coverstory proclaimed, "Valenti Calls Blacks' BlufT; Rejects 'Special' Treatment.""

With dissipating racial le\x'rage, black film activists seized on business .solutions. Tnlate 1972, blaxploitation star Jim Brown, who founded the Black Economic Union, as-serted that "[t]he one approach thai will work is to ^proach movies as an industry, asa business. Black people must stop crying 'black' and start crying 'btisiness.'"'^ Shortlyafter the Super Fly shoot, Roy Innis, the HaHem-based director of the Congress of Ra-cial Equality and a key black capitalist proponent, ttirned his attention to film. He andOssie Davis (an unlikely alliance, given Innis's support for NLxon's campaign) set upan oi^anization to provide a voice '"for people in Harlem to talk to the film industry."Their first priority was "to train more blacks for jobs."^^ When questioned about thedanger of industry- backlash, he responded, "They can't do it becau.se we're 40 percentof the dollar. This is money. Those are capitalists. You can always deal with a capitalistwith money" ̂ "̂ In a trade article titled "Black Capitalism Big Factor in PUSH Driveon Hollywood," Jesse Jackson declared that black independent filmmaking was "stron-ger than a picket line." He promulgated a vision of "civil economics," '"to cash in oncivil rights at the cash register."'"' This required combining any preferential treatmentstill available with the aggressive pursuit of black business interests.

In terms of ñkn production alone, the primary reference point for these men wasprobably Van Peebles's independent hit Sweetbact But, in terms of combined pro-duction and narrative, Stiptr Fly must surely have energized their business-orientedrhetoric. Indeed, in tlie Da\is quotation that opens this article, it is hard lo imagine

96 William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Pow&-Movement and American Culture, J965 - Í 975 (Chi-

cago: University ol Chicago Press, 3992), 117.

97 Will Tusher, "Valenti Calls Blacks' Bluff; Rejects 'Special' Treatment," Hollywood Reports. September 29,

1972.

98 Brcwn Statement in Aiew »tort 7îmes, "Black Movie Boom—Good or Bad?" December 17, 1972. See also James

Murray, "The Subject Is Money," in Patterson, Black Films. 247-257.

99 Gold, "Harlem Film Fund Bumpy. '

100 Innis quoted in Mason. "New Films."

101 Will Tusher, "Black Capitalism Big Factor in PUSH Orive on Hollywood." Hollywood Reporter. Septemtier 18,

1972.

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that the proposal to channel the "organizational ability" of "pimps and pushers" intofilm enteqïrise does not allude to this film. Youngblood Priest's view that his own blackentrepreneurialism was more effective than "marching songs" resonates with Jackson'sdeclaration that black film business was "stronger than a picket line.'' Both commentsreflect and reinforce a tactical capitulation to capitalism.

Of course, Super Fly's narrative of dnig dealing stands as a most damaging formof black capitalism. Innis himself, along with so many others, castigated Super Fly, stat-ing, "I object to the justification of dope-pushing. . . . These movies are anti-struggle,anti-revolutionary [so-called Black revolutionaries are usually portrayed as bungHngidiots), iuid anti-direct involvemenl."'"^ However, once we have taken account of thebackstory of the fihn's making, the historic barriers to black entrepreneurial opportu-nity, the film's subversion of business norms, and the increasingly pessimistic course ofblack/white reladons in the early 1970s, Super Fly emei^es as a problematic but deeplyresonant enunciadon of business aspiration.

Indeed, as this article has argued, the film narrati\'e serves as an allegory' for blackpop-cultural production itself. A compelling parallel emerges between partners Priestand Eddie and their fifty-strong foot soldiers in front of the camera and the film's blackmakers Parks and Fenty and their Third World apprentices—behind the camera. Nei-ther side of the filmmaking equation had been represented quite like this before. Iffather figure and drug dealer Scatter invested in Priest, likewise actual father Parks Sr.and underground businesspeople invested in Super Fly This constituted a literal showof nepotism and alternative finance arrangements that stood as a tactical response toHollywood's entrenched white opjjortunity structures. Black husders like KC play-ing themselves on-screen revealed the immense potentiiJ for pleasiyable and lucra-tive conversion of black subctiltural behaviors into film product. I he film's narrativerevolves around significant black economic activity operating inside intractable white-dominated power and profit structures, which is also die story of the liim's making.Priest's and Eddie's aggressive business dealingn resonated with the black capitalism ofthe likes of Jesse Jackson and Jim Brown, as they vied with a retrenching film industry.In sum, Super Fly becomes a multilayered materialization of the black business prideand wealth aspiration that had been so deeply desired and long denied in the filmarena and beyond.

The reflexive linkages between making Super Fly and "making it" in Super Fly aremost powerfully captured in Eddie's apologia for the "rotten game . . . the man lefius to play," drug dealing and, by extension, blaxploitation filmmaking. Eddie's state-ment—seductively positioning such costly acti\'ities as the only options available—neatly captures Super Fh^s powerful role as both precedent and precursor. The film setsignificant racial precedents in its thematic content and industrial relations, bringinginto the cinematic spotlight ihe subcultural generation of wealth that had evolvedover a long history of economic marginalization. Equally, as post-civil rights precur-sor, its romanticized ghetto entrepreneurs captured tJie emei^ence of the flexible andaggressively pro-business advancement strategies that would become central to blackcommercial culture, not to mention neoliberal society; thereafter. When culture critic

102 Innis statement in New York Times. "Slack Mowie Boofn."

104

Cinenna Joum3l49 No. 2 , Winter 2010

Darius James contends that Super Fly and The Mack are the "two defining films ofihe 1970s blaxploitation cycle"—"the two films mentioned most frequently" by blackpeople—he highlights the continuing resonance of those films that chronicled andm>thologized black subcultural business practices and status simctures.^°^ As jobs dis-appeared, black cultural industry became even more important as an expanding routeto advancement for young post-civil rights blacks. TTiese films stand as blueprints forgangsta rap, hip-hop moguls, 199ÜS ghetto action films, and recently American Gütig-ster (Ridley Scott, 2007), which was based on a magazine story called "The Returnof Superfly."''" It is hard to come to terms with a film lhat so powerfully catalyzedpost-civil rights attitudes of slick indi\idualism. But the film demands recognition, forit is full of black agency and enterprise, as well as exploitative dynamics. *

103 Darius James, TTiat's Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss Tude (New York: St. Matin's Griffin. 1995). 8 1 .

On black enterprise in The Mack, see Eithre Quinn, "'Pimpin' Ain't Easy': Work, Leisure and '(.iíestyíiíation' of

tlie Pimp Figure m Early 1970s Blact« America,*' in Media. Culture, and tlie Modem Atrican American Freedom

Struggle, eá. Brian Ward (Gainesville: Uniwersity Press of Florida, 2001), 211-232.

104 Mark Jacobson, "Tbe Retum of Supertly," New York Magazine, August 7. 2000.

/ wou/it like In thank the I^whuitne Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Counát, fiter Kräriter, Brian Hard, Sieve Xeait,

Mark Jtmcoviih, (WCineniaJournaiiantfffprwi" readfrs.

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