Black Dynamite

For students of both race and film studies, the faux-blaxploitation film Black Dynamite (2009) serves as a truly fascinating case of comedic reflexivity, reclamation, and ridicule.

Aesthetically, the film is spot on in its immaculate recreation of the cheap production techniques that 1970s blaxploitation films are notorious for. Filmed on old 16mm Kodak film stock and recorded using old, over-compressed microphones, Black Dynamite has numerous references to the rough and ready style of production - sound booms dropping into shot, an overuse of crash zooms, poor editing, and sound pops and crackles.

Added to this is a ridiculous plot, an abundance of drugs, guns, breasts, and swearing.

This aesthetic precision and accurate plot imitation lays the foundation for what is truly interesting – the film’s utility as a ridiculing reclamation of Black stereotypes portrayed by blaxploitation films.

While there is much debate over whether blaxploitation films were harmful or empowering for Black Americans, I tend to agree with the view the NAACP took (which correlates with Sarina Pearson's concept of polysemic bimodality) - that while these films may have provided a fantastical escape for an oppressed Black audience, their perpetuation of negative stereotypes was ultimately harmful. Indeed, even though blaxploitation films had Black heroes, and many of the villains were the White 'Man', Blacks were still portrayed as being an inherently problematic race - particularly in their 'need' for narcotics and their hand in the drug underworld.

It is the overblown stereotypes surrounding these 'problem' issues (the pimps, dealers and pushermen) that Black Dynamite allows us to see through a comedic lens of hindsight - revealing to a modern audience how ridiculous they are. Indeed, while Black Dynamite is clearly identifiable as a comedy, most early blaxploitation was merely action-pantomime. Black Dynamite therefore could be seen as a reclamation of these derogatory and misinformed stereotypes, in much the same way hip-hop and rap reclaimed the derogatory and misinformed word 'nigger'.