Resumen

MULLER, Sara. El camino de las heroínas negras: Blaxploitation. Cuad. Cent. Estud. Diseñ. Comun., Ensayos [online]. 2023, n.117, pp.53-72.  Epub 01-Mar-2023. ISSN 1853-3523.  http://dx.doi.org/10.18682/cdc.vi117.4275.

In the United States feminism did not originate from the women that were more directly victims of the sexist oppression; mentally, physically and spiritually beaten daily; women without the necessary strength to change their life conditions” (Hooks, 2004, p.33). Feminist activists were white and wealthy class even as black women were a silent majority. Although many women were part of Black Power, the movement was defined and assembled in the media, the pop culture and the arts by men. These groups maintained a patriarchal organization; structures constituted by male leadership. They “realized of the nature of the male domination when participating in anti-classist and anti-racist spaces with men who spoke to the world about the importance of freedom despite subordinating the women among their own ranks” (Hooks, 2017, p.22). There was neither a place destined for black women amongst white feminists nor the Black Power of men.

“As a group, black women are in an unusual position in this society, because not only we are at the bottom of the occupational pyramid as a collective, but also our social status is lower than any other group. Being in this position, we endure the hardest of sexist, racist and classist oppression. […] Black men can be victims of racism, but sexism allows them to act as exploiters and oppressors of women. White women can be victims of sexism, but racism allows them to act as oppressors of black people” (Hooks, 2004, p.49).

In the late 60’s, and from this socio-political context, Blaxploitation emerges in the American´s cinemas that would replace old stereotypes of submission by new ones hyper-sexualized, violent, anti-social living in a fictionalized lawless communities controlled by corruption and vice, like a caricaturized version of Black Power that has been criticized in almost all its aspects as counterrevolutionary and antithetical to the liberation of the Afro-American community (Terry, 2012). But even the harshest critics vindicate the place of the black heroines among the violence and the stereotypes of Blaxploitation.

In the dawn of Blaxploitation, women were again left out. However, Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson, Teresa Graves y Jeannie Bell paved the way for new heroines and redefined the female role on the screen. The contribution of these actresses to pop culture and movies in general is monumental, walking away from classic roles as Mammy (slave in the Southern plantations performed household tasks as a maid or as a cook, fat and sexless) or as Sapphire (verbally combative, pointing at her husband with a finger and holding hip with the other hand), among many others (Sims, 2006).

During Blaxploitation, the action heroines was the everyday woman, until this moment that female role was absent in films, a valuable background which would be picked up by mainstream in the Ellen Ripley of Alien (1979), the Sarah Connor of Terminator (1984), Thelma y Louis (1991) (Sims, 2006).

We want to think films as a valuable point of analysis of history, historical record, a cultural artifact. Movies have the power to shape, reaffirm or simply deconstruct the perceptions on ethnicities, genres, classes and sexualities. As one of the most powerful communicative transmitters, movies played and still play an important part in cultural myths about the feminine.

Palabras clave : Feminists movements; Black Power; Blaxploitation; black heroines; stereotypes; cultural myths..

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