Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: From Sweetback to Superfly
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1961
WEBSITE: http://www.gerald-butters.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.aurora.edu/academics/undergraduate/history/gerald-butters.html#.WLodxTvytPY * http://www.citylitbooks.com/event/gerald-butters-author-sweetback-super-fly-race-and-film-audiences-chicago%E2%80%99s-loop * http://www.gerald-butters.com/about/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2002025255
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2002025255
HEADING: Butters, Gerald R., 1961-
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370 __ |c United States |2 naf
372 __ |a History |2 lcsh
373 __ |a Aurora University |2 naf
374 __ |a College teachers |a Authors |2 lcsh
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Black manhood on the silent screen, c2002: |b t.p. (Gerald R. Butters, Jr.) CIP data sheet (b. 7/7/61)
670 __ |a From Sweetback to Super Fly, 2015: |b t.p. (Gerald R. Butters, Jr.) flap of back cover (professor of History at Aurora University; his research and publications examine the intersection of race and gender in American popular culture)
953 __ |a lg02
PERSONAL
Born July 7, 1961.
EDUCATION:Washburn University, B.A.; University of Missouri-Kansas City, M.A.; University of Kansas, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Aurora University, Aurora, IL, began as assistant professor, became professor of history. Northwestern University, faculty member; lecturer throughout Europe, including Luxembourg, France, and England.
AVOCATIONS:Running, travel, movies.
MEMBER:Society for Cinema and Media Studies (cochair of African American caucus, 2009-11).
AWARDS:Timuel D. Black fellow, Carter G. Woodson Library, 2010; Fulbright award for Romania, 2011; Freeman Institute fellow, Tokai University, 2012.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Cercles, Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Film and History, Film/Literature Quarterly, Flow, and Reviews in American History. Editor of premier issue, Screening Noir: Blaxpoitation Revisited, fall-winter, 2005.
SIDELIGHTS
Historian Gerald R. Butters spent his college and university years in Kansas. He worked or studied in Hawaii and Romania and in Chicago at the Carter G. Woodson Regional Library, home to the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature. By 2002 Butters was teaching history at Aurora University in Illinois, but his early writings seem to be rooted in the shade of the Sunflower State.
Banned in Kansas
Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966 is the story of the Kansas Board of Review, which for fifty years told citizens of Kansas what movies they could and could not watch. The censorship of public morality extended to dialogue, especially after the advent of “talking pictures”; to scenes of violence; and to representations of sexuality in dress and behavior. Kansas was one of a handful of states that imposed film censorship, but Butters had access to the records of the Kansas agency. He is able to reveal the specific details of content deemed unfit for Kansan audiences. Remediation ranged from scenes to be “edited out” of special Kansas versions of certain films to prohibition of entire movies. The book includes black-and-white photographs of examples that ended up on the cutting room floor.
Butters covers the political and other factors that led to the creation of the censorship board, which incidentally occurred in the same year as the release of the controversial D. W. Griffith film The Birth of a Nation. He also discusses the increasing challenges faced by the board as public opinion mellowed into the 1950s. Politicians and film studios joined the fight in the 1960s, until finally Kansans could watch the same films that were showing across the rest of America.
The Black Image on the Silver Screen
Banned in Kansas is not Butters’s first book. That place is occupied by exploration of a theme that recurs through much of his successive work. Black Manhood on the Silent Screen offers a look at a side of film history rarely reflected through the prism of race. Butters presents an overview of the early years—prior to 1915—when African American males were typically portrayed as lazy, ignorant ne’er-do-wells, or chicken thieves, or rapacious savages. To make matters worse, they were depicted in caricature, often by white actors in blackface makeup. Not only were these portrayals demeaning; Butters argues that they also actively fostered white hostility toward the black population. Matters reached a peak in 1915, when Griffith released the classic The Birth of a Nation. This Civil War story, which pits North against South from a southern point of view, exploits exceedingly derogatory racial stereotypes and has even been credited with fostering the ascent of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.
At this point, a number of black filmmakers began a counteroffensive to balance the myth against the reality of African American manhood. Notable among them was Oscar Micheaux, a director, writer, and producer generally acknowledged as the first African American to produce a feature film (in 1919) and the first to produce a feature film with sound (in 1931). Working out of Chicago, Micheaux operated his own studio for years, with a mainly novice, minority crew on a budgetary shoestring. Despite a lack of technical sophistication, Micheaux’s films became classics of the emerging African American film industry.
In Black Manhood on the Silent Screen Butters compares and contrasts films produced and directed by black artists as well as white productions of so-called all-black films. He also sets these films against the background of contemporaneous developments in American history and culture. Library Journal contributor Roy Liebman commended Butters for his “impressive” research, during which he “managed to discover some very obscure movies.”
From Sweetback to Super Fly
The legacy of Oscar Micheaux lingered in the city of Chicago long after his death in 1951. The film industry in general had languished with the decline of the Hollywood studio system. The late 1960s and 1970s were turbulent times, especially in the inner cities of urban America. The grand old movie theaters in the heart of Chicago’s Loop District were dead or dying as racial unrest intensified and white audiences fled to the suburbs. In From Sweetback to Super Fly: Race and Film Audiences in Chicago’s Loop Butters reveals how traditionally white theater operators redefined their offerings to attract the business of African American viewers moving into the spaces left behind by white flight.
One early box office success of the 1970s was Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a controversial film written, directed, produced by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles. The story of a male prostitute (Van Peebles) who retaliates against white police officers who assault a handcuffed young Black Panther and then becomes the subject of a cross-country police chase would never have made it into a Kansas movie theater. It was a blockbuster hit in Chicago, however, especially after viewers learned that Sweetback survives to fight another day.
A series of black-themed adventures filled theater seats in the years to come, along with increasingly explicit “adult movies” and martial arts films. Black-themed films like Shaft and Super Fly were often grouped into a “blaxploitation” genre, loosely defined as black action films presumed to have little or no artistic value. These films often glorified violence, crime, drugs, and corruption, but Butters emphasizes that features starring African American heroes and leading ladies were “vital to a growing sense of black pride,” as reported by Bill Savage in his online Chicago Tribune review. They also helped to revive the dilapidated entertainment district known as the Loop and save some architectural gems from the bulldozers of urban renewal, at least temporarily.
Despite some editorial lapses, reviewers found much to admire in From Sweetback to Super Fly. A contributor to Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries called the volume “a compelling history of the interplay of film exhibition, low-budget filmmaking, and the making of a new audience.” Savage reported that Butters “adds a vital new point of view to Chicago’s ongoing conversation about race and how people interact in shared spaces like movie theaters.” He called the author “a graceful writer, with a sharp wit, able to turn a vivid phrase and fluent in the jazzy slang of show-biz speak.” Savage concluded: “Butters’ examination of the politics of racial identity both within these films, and in the critical discourse around them, is outstanding.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 2016, review of From Sweetback to Super Fly: Race and Film Audiences in Chicago’s Loop, p. 1481.
Library Journal, November 1, 2002, Roy Liebman, review of Black Manhood on the Silent Screen, p. 92.
ONLINE
Aurora University Web site, http://www.aurora.edu/ (April 25, 2017), author profile.
Chicago Tribune Online, http://www.chicagotribune.com/ (March 31, 2016), review of From Sweetback to Super Fly.
Gerald Butters Home Page, http://www.gerald-butters.com (April 25, 2017).
NewCity Lit, https://lit.newcity.com/ (November 29, 2015), Bill Savage, review of From Sweetback to Super Fly.
Gerald Butters, PhD
Share5
Gerald ButtersProfessor of History
Office Location: Dunham Hall, Room 217
Telephone: 630-844-5615
Fax: 630-844-7820
Email Address: gbutters@aurora.edu
Aurora University is all about the connections between faculty members and students. As a first generation college student, I was not aware of the opportunities and challenges that a university education would present. I attempt to get to know each of my students personally and I frequently ask them what their career plans are, so that I can hopefully assist them in achieving their goals.
Education
PhD (History) - University of Kansas
MA (History) - University of Missouri-Kansas City
BA (History and Political Science) - Washburn University
Areas of Specialization
Film History
U.S. Social and Cultural History
Gender and Race
Courses Taught
The African American Experience
U.S. History I and II
American Urban History
Highlights of Publications, Honors and Professional Contributions
Freeman Institute Fellowship, Tokai University, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2012
Fulbright Award, Romania, Spring 2011
Co-Chair, African/African American Caucus - Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2009-2011
Timuel D. Black Fellowship, Carter G. Woodson Library, 2010
Book - "Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966," (Columbia: University Press of Missouri, 2007).
Book - "Black Manhood on the Silent Screen," (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002)
Editor - "Screening Noir: Blaxploitation Revisited," vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 2005) Center for Black Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Highlights of Campus Involvement
Meritorious Faculty Award, 2012
Advisor, Alpha Phi Alpha (2006-)
Student Advocate of the Year Award, 2005
Outstanding Supporter Award, Black Student Association
Other Interests
Running with my colleagues at AU.
Movies
Travel
Read more: http://www.aurora.edu/academics/undergraduate/history/gerald-butters.html#.WOr-IBIrJR0#ixzz4doYIqtFF
Gerald R. Butters, Jr is a Professor of History at Aurora University. He also teaches in the Masters of Liberal Studies graduate program at Northwestern University. His previous books include Black Manhood on the Silent Screen and Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966. A Fulbright scholar, Butters has lectured to the European Community in Luxembourg and to audiences in Romania, France, Great Britain and Canada.
Gerald R. Butters, Jr. is a Professor of History at Aurora University. He also teaches in the Masters of Liberal Studies program at Northwestern University. A Fulbright scholar, Dr. Butters has published three books including From Sweetback to Superfly: Race and Film Audiences in Chicago’s Loop (2015), Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966 (2007) and Black Manhood on the Silent Screen (2002). In Fall 2016, he (and Novotny Lawrence’s) edited collection Beyond Blaxploitation will be published by Wayne State University Press. Butters’ work has appeared in Flow, Choice, Reviews in American History, Cercles, The Journal for Multimedia History, Film and History and Film/Literature Quarterly. Butters has lectured internationally, including an address to the European Commission in Luxembourg in 2009.
Black Manhood on the SIlent Screen
Author was assistant professor, according to cover flap.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Racialized Masculinity and the Politics of Difference
2. The Preformed Image: Watermelon, Razors, and
Chicken Thievery, 1896-1915
3. Black Cinematic Ruptures and Ole Uncle Tom
4. African-American Cinema and The Birth of a Nation
5. The Defense of Black Manhood on the Screen
6. Oscar Micheaux: From Homestead to Lynch Mob
7. Within Our Gates
8. Blackface, White Independent All-Black Productions,
and the Coming of Sound: The Late Silent Era, 1915-1931
Conclusion
Appendix: Two Silent African-American Film Synopses
Notes
Bibliography
Index
early-twentieth-century motion picture houses, offensive stereotypes of African Americans were as predictable as they were prevalent. Watermelon eating, chicken thievery, savages with uncontrollable appetites, Sambo and Zip Coon were all representations associated with African American people. Most of these caricatures were rendered by whites in blackface.
Few people realize that from 1915 through 1929 a number of African American film directors worked diligently to counter such racist definitions of black manhood found in films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, the 1915 epic that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. In the wake of the film's phenomenal success, African American filmmakers sought to defend and redefine black manhood through motion pictures.
Gerald Butters's comprehensive study of the African American cinematic vision in silent film concentrates on works largely ignored by most contemporary film scholars: African American-produced and -directed films and white independent productions of all-black features. Using these "race movies" to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race in popular culture, he separates cinematic myth from historical reality: the myth of the Euro American-controlled cinematic portrayal of black men versus the actual black male experience.
Through intense archival research, Butters reconstructs many lost films, expanding the discussion of race and representation beyond the debate about "good" and "bad" imagery to explore the construction of masculine identity and the use of race as device in the context of Western popular culture. He particularly examines the filmmaking of Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific and controversial of all African American silent film directors and creator of the recently rediscovered Within Our Gates—the legendary film that exposed a virtual litany of white abuses toward blacks.
Black Manhood on the Silent Screen is unique in that it takes contemporary and original film theory, applies it to the distinctive body of African American independent films in the silent era, and relates the meaning of these films to larger political, social, and intellectual events in American society. By showing how both white and black men have defined their own sense of manhood through cinema, it examines the intersection of race and gender in the movies and offers a deft interweaving of film theory, American history, and film history.
=====
Beyond Blaxploitation
Machine generated contents note: I. Pioneer to Precursor to Blaxploitation -- 1. The "Black Enough" Visual Aesthetic in Cotton Comes to Harlem / Vivian Halloran -- 2. Racial Exploitation in Watermelon Man: Contemporary Applications / Charles E. Wilson, Jr. -- 3. Sweetback in Chicago / Gerald R. Butters, Jr. -- II. The Canon and the Not So Canon -- 4. In the Beginning There Was Shaft / Eric Pierson -- 5. The Blood of the Thing (Is the Truth of the Thing): Viral Pathogens and Uncanny Ontologies in Ganja and Hess / Harrison M.J. Sherrod -- 6. A White Rim for a Blaxploitation Audience? The Making and Marketing of Detroit 9000 / Novotny Lawrence -- 7. As Foxy as Can Be: The Melodramatic Mode in Blaxploitation Cinema / Joseph S. Valle -- III. Was, Is, or Isn't Blaxploitation -- 8. Stomping on Stepin Fetchit: Historicizing "Blackness" in African American Film Culture of the 1970s / Allyson Nadia Field -- 9. Norman It's Not about You: Decentering Black Gayness in Norman... Is That You? / Alfred L. Martin, Jr. -- 10. Making Exploitation Black: How 1970s "Blaxploitation" Discourse Marginalized Industry History and Constructed Black Viewers' Tastes / Laura Cook Kenna -- 11. From Harlem to Hollywood: The 1970s Renaissance and Blaxploitation / Walter Metz.
Beyond Blaxploitation, the first book-length anthology of scholarly work on blaxploitation film, sustains the momentum that blaxploitation scholarship has recently gained, giving the films an even more prominent place in cinema history. This volume is made up of eleven essays employing historical and theoretical methodologies in the examination of spectatorship, marketing, melodrama, the transition of novel to screenplay, and racial politics and identity, among other significant topics. The book fills a substantial gap that exists in the black cinematic narrative and, more broadly, in film history.
Beyond Blaxploitation is divided into three sections that feature original essays on a variety of canonical blaxploitation films and others that either influenced the movement or in some form represent a significant extension of it. The first section titled, "From Pioneer to Precursor to Blaxploitation," centers on three films-Cotton Comes to Harlem, Watermelon Man, and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song-that ignited the African American film cycle. The second section, "The Canon and the Not so Canon," is dedicated to forging alternative considerations of some of the most highly regarded blaxploitation films, while also bringing attention to lesser-known films in the movement. The final section, "Was, Is, or Isn't Blaxploitation," includes four essays that offer significant insights on films that are generally associated with blaxploitation but contest traditional definitions of the movement. Moreover, this section features chapters that address industrial factors that led to the creation of blaxploitation cinema and highlight the limitations of the term itself.
Beyond Blaxploitation is a much-needed pedagogical tool, informing film scholars, critics, and fans alike, about blaxploitation's richness and complexity.
=====
Banned in Kansas
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments 000
1. Progressivism and the New Medium of Film 1
2. Kansas and the Fight over Motion Picture Censorship 000
3. "We Can Hardly Make Any Definite Rules": The Difficulty of Censorship as Practice, 1915 000
4. The Birth of a Nation and Kansas 000
5. The Battle Lines Are Drawn, 1916-1917 000
6. World War I and the Struggle against Sin, 1917-1919 000
7. The Roaring Twenties, 1920-1927 000
8. The Challenge of Sound, 1928-1934 000
9. An Age of Maturity? 1934-1948 000
10. The Moon Is Blue over Kansas, 1948-1954 000
11. Jane Russell, Brigitte Bardot, and Ephraim London as the Enemy, 1954-1959 000
12. The Final Years of Film Censorship, 1960-1966 000
Conclusion 000
Appendix 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
If you caught a movie in Kansas through much of the past century, you’re likely to have seen a different version than did the rest of America. Theda Bara’s depictions of wicked sexuality were off-limits, and a film such as the 1932 Scarface showed far too much violence for decent folk—a threat to Protestant culture and to the morals of the general population.
In 1915, Kansas became one of only a handful of states to establish its own film censorship board. The Kansas board controlled screen content in the state for more than fifty years, yet little is known about its activities. This first book-length study of state film censorship examines the unique political, social, and economic factors that led to its implementation in Kansas, examining why censorship legislation was enacted, what the attitudes of Kansans were toward censorship, and why it lasted for half a century.
Cinema historian Gerald Butters places the Kansas Board of Review’s attempts to control screen content in the context of nationwide censorship efforts during the early part of the twentieth century. He tells how factors such as Progressivism, concern over child rearing, and a supportive press contributed to censorship, and he traces the board’s history from the problems posed by the emergence of “talkies” through changing sexual mores in the 1920s to challenges to its power in the 1950s.
In addition to revealing the fine points of film content deemed too sensitive for screening, Butters describes the daily operations of the board, illustrating the difficulties it encountered as it wrestled not only with constantly shifting definitions of morality but also with the vagaries of the political and legal systems. Stills from motion pictures illustrate the type of screen content the board attempted to censor.
As Kansas faced the march of modernity, even state politicians began to criticize film censorship, and Butters tells how by the 1960s the board was fighting to remain relevant as film companies increasingly challenged its attempts to control screen content. Banned in Kansas weaves a fascinating tale of the enforcement of public morality, making it a definitive study for cinema scholars and an entertaining read for film buffs.
Gerald R. Butters, Jr. (Associate Professor of History at Aurora University) presents Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship 1915-1966. In 1915, Kansas was one of a handful of states that established its own film censorship board. From limiting depictions of sexuality to censoring violence in the 1932 classic "Scarface", the Kansas board controlled what the state's population saw on the silver screen for over fifty years. Banned in Kansas explores the political, social, and economic factors that led to the policy of movie censorship in Kansas, the attitudes of ordinary Kansas citizens toward the censorship, and why censorship continued for so many decades. Banned in Kansas also scrutinizes the daily operations of the film censorship board, and the complexities it encountered with regard to shifting definitions of cultural morality, as well as vagaries of political and legal systems. Black-and-white stills from censored movies illustrate this informed and informative contribution to American cinema history.
=====
Sweetback to Super Fly
From press.umsystem.edu
Racial politics and capitalism found a way to blend together in 1970s Chicago in the form of movie theaters targeted specifically toward African Americans. In From Sweetback to Super Fly, Gerald Buttersexamines the movie theaters in Chicago’s Loop that became, as he describes them, “black spaces” during the early 1970s with theater managers making an effort to gear their showings toward the African American community by using black-themed and blaxploitation films.
Butters covers the wide range of issues that influenced the theaters, from changing racial patterns to the increasingly decrepit state of Chicago’s inner city and the pressure on businesses and politicians alike to breathe life into the dying area. Through his extensive research, Butters provides an in-depth look at this phenomenon, delving into an area that has not previously been explored. His close examination of how black-themed films were marketed and how theaters showing these films tried to draw in crowds sheds light on race issues both from an industrial standpoint on the side of the theaters and movie producers, as well as from a cultural standpoint on the side of the moviegoers and the city of Chicago as a whole. Butters provides a wealth of information on a very interesting yet underexamined part of history, making From Sweetback to Super Fly a supremely enjoyable and informative book.
Authors/Editors
Gerald R. Butters, Jr., is Professor of History at Aurora University. His publications include Banned in Kansas: Motion Picture Censorship, 1915-1966 (University of Missouri Press).
Reviews
“Through exacting, thoroughgoing research, Butters presents an engaging, lucid book that tells a truly interesting story about our American history, film, and race. One might ask: Does this book—with its focus on a neighborhood in Chicago during a particular historical window—hold interest for readers who may not be purposefully seeking a treatise on either the place or time or genre? The lessons here about how this nation’s cities ended up the way they did is relevant across disciplines. The lessons here on the theater industry and how theaters came to serve particular populations and communities (not just those in the Loop) are universal as well. From African American and cultural studies to media and urban studies, this book holds key relevance. A deeply engaging read.”— Robin Means Coleman, author of Say It Loud: African American Audiences, Media, and Identity
=====
Butters, Gerald R., Jr. Black Manhood on the Silent Screen
Roy Liebman
Library Journal.
127.18 (Nov. 1, 2002): p92.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Univ. Pr. of Kansas. 2002. c.296p. illus. ISBN 0-7006-1197-5. $35. FILM
Butters (history, Aurora Univ.) argues that from its inception motion pictures reflected and reinforced the hostility of the white majority toward
African Americans. Early comedies negatively stereotyped them as thieving and lazy, while more serious films often portrayed black males as a
physical danger to their "betters." In most cases, white actors in blackface demeaningly played such characters. Within the framework of
contemporary film theory, Butters examines films from the 1890s to the dawn of sound. He argues that D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation led
to the establishment of several, usually short-lived, film companies devoted to black audiences. Of these pioneering companies, Oscar Micheaux's
is the best remembered. The author's research is <
clear whether he has actually viewed them. Although it could use some judicious editing (certain points are made over and over), this book is well
recommended for academic libraries.--Roy Liebman, California State Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Liebman, Roy
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Liebman, Roy. "Butters, Gerald R., Jr. Black Manhood on the Silent Screen." Library Journal, 1 Nov. 2002, p. 92. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA100622570&it=r&asid=5e47d2c15f37e0d7388f8ce58104c76e. Accessed 9 Apr.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A100622570
---
4/9/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1491795410821 2/3
Butters, Gerald R., Jr.: From Sweetback to Super fly: race
and film audiences in Chicago's loop
K. Hatch
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
53.10 (June 2016): p1481.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
Butters, Gerald R., Jr. From Sweetback to Super fly: race and film audiences in Chicago's loop. Missouri, 2015. 256p bibl indexes afp ISBN
9780826220363 cloth, $60.00; ISBN 9780826273291 ebook, $60.00
53-4303
PN1993
MARC
Butters (history, Aurora Univ.) explores the transformation of Chicago's grand movie palaces in the 1970s from first-run theaters that showcased
new Hollywood releases for a largely white, middleclass audience to venues for soft-core porn, blaxploitation, and martial arts films catering to
youthful black audiences in the 1970s. Some of this history is familiar--white flight, decaying movie palaces, and the decline of the Hollywood
studios--but much is new. For example, Butters carefully delineates how white exhibitors worked to attract black audiences in order to stay afloat
during an uncertain era and the importance of the Loop for helping to inspire a cycle of black-themed films during the decade. The book is clearly
written and well researched, though more interviews with audience members from that period would have added flesh to the author's claim that
the transformation of these theaters contributed to the formation of a black community. Nevertheless, the book stands as <>. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Upperdivision
undergraduates through faculty; general readers.--K. Hatch, University of California, Irvine
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hatch, K. "Butters, Gerald R., Jr.: From Sweetback to Super fly: race and film audiences in Chicago's loop." CHOICE: Current Reviews for
Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1481. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942714&it=r&asid=af7dd244ca9817afcc3923d76f481ae2. Accessed 9 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942714
http://www.aurora.edu/academics/undergraduate/history/gerald-butters.html#.WOr-IBIrJR0
'From Sweetback to Super Fly' looks at the racial evolution of the Loop's entertainment district
'From Sweetback to Super Fly'
The story of Chicago's Loop, told through the racial change of its movie theaters and audiences, is the focus of “From Sweetback to Super Fly” by Gerard R. Butters Jr. In this Tribune file photo, a group of young men relax on a Loop subway railing in 1972. (Ovie Carter / Tribune file photo)
Bill Savage
The history of Chicago's urban spaces and race relations can be viewed through many lenses. Gerald R. Butters Jr.'s new book, "From Sweetback to Super Fly: Race and Film Audiences in Chicago's Loop," <
Butters' foundation is the idea of the "occupation of geographic space." Spaces do not necessarily belong to different groups of people. Instead, people choose to frequent spaces open to them, and then by their occupation make such spaces their own.
Chicago's Loop, with its businesses, restaurants, stores and theaters, had traditionally been a white space, occupied by white workers, tourists and consumers of culture. But if enough African-Americans came to the Loop to work and eat and shop and watch movies, their presence could reshape the racial identity of the place. A space could become multi-racial, or, if abandoned by one group, change its racial identification in the wider culture.
2016 Printers Row Lit Fest to feature Marilynne Robinson, Sebastian Junger
2016 Printers Row Lit Fest to feature Marilynne Robinson, Sebastian Junger
That's exactly what happened in the first half of the 1970s, as the Loop became perceived as a black space. This spatial/racial shift was not an isolated phenomenon; it was "a microcosm of larger structural alterations in the nation." As is so often the case, the Loop was central not just geographically but symbolically. As a result of the civil rights movement, "(p)sychological barriers fell as black Chicagoans, goaded by the Black Power movement and frustrated by years of segregation, began moving freely throughout the city. As the 1970s began, new patterns of geographic occupation — brought about primarily through the patronizing of entertainment venues, especially motion picture theaters — emboldened black Chicagoans."
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The movie business is, from start to finish, all about money. With the closing of many neighborhood theaters on the South and West Sides, African-Americans began to spend their money downtown at the same time white audiences — perceiving the city as inherently dangerous due to urban unrest, including riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. — were fleeing to the suburbs. Loop theaters therefore made more money booking black-themed movies. As they booked more such fare, from "quality" black dramas to so-called "blaxploitation" action flicks, white audiences dwindled further, creating a reinforcing circle.
<
Elite, if not elitist, African-American cultural critics could deride these movies as lacking uplift or glorifying cultural dysfunction (much as some critics do today regarding rap music), but audiences paid for what they wanted: black narratives at the show.
But not exclusively. Butters shows without a doubt that black audiences were far more catholic in their tastes than movie bookers, critics or white suburbanites thought. Movies such as "Jaws," "The Exorcist" and "The Godfather" appealed across racial lines, attracting both black and white audiences in the Loop and suburban theaters alike. ("The Godfather" movies and their depiction of Mafia culture, in fact, were part and parcel of the narrative tropes that movies such as "Shaft" and "Super Fly" exploited.) African-American and white audiences also filled theaters together for the exotic new genre of kung fu movies, but films featuring African-American men and women as heroes in dramatic crime narratives were central to the transformation of downtown movie-going audiences.
Review: 'The South Side' by Natalie Y. Moore
Review: 'The South Side' by Natalie Y. Moore
Also important to the new status of the Loop was the parallel phenomenon of big-screen pornography. Court cases knocking down censorship restrictions had led to the production and distribution of both soft-core and hard-core pornography (Hollywood studios desperate to make money in an industry that was on hard times had something to do with it as well). Several downtown theaters exclusively or predominantly screened pornography, which also contributed to the perception of Loop movie-going as less than family friendly. (By 1990, there were no movie theaters in the Loop at all, Butters reports.)
Then there's the matter of the physical spaces of the theaters themselves. Though some of these movies made good money in their disparate genres, the large theaters were expensive to maintain, and many owners didn't bother. As the physical structures deteriorated, the Loop gained a reputation for crime, seediness and decrepitude that was one part reality (many of the theaters were falling apart and infested with rodents) and one part prejudice (crime rates in the Loop, then as now, were lower than in outlying neighborhoods, despite media hype). But movies are all about reputation, even glamour, and once a Loop theater gained a reputation for being an X-rated venue, or for criminality, or for blackness, many potential customers drove to the brand-new and sparkling clean suburban mall theater instead of venturing downtown.
Butters frames his discussion of the content of these films, as well as the culture of the movie business, with the voices of contemporary critics, African-American and white alike, especially two men familiar to most Chicago film buffs: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. Siskel and Ebert were reviewing these films in and writing about these theaters during the early '70s, and Siskel especially comes alive as a thoughtful critic attentive to the environment moviegoers sought (fewer loud video games in the lobby, not to mention fewer rodents in the theater) and to the content of the films and the broader cultural context in which the Loop was perceived.
Finally, Butters connects his narrative of art and commerce to the politics of the early 1970s, when so much of the Loop was declared subject to the eminent domain and bulldozers of the Richard J. Daley administration and "urban renewal." Much of the criticism of Daley-era programs emphasizes how he rebuilt the city in destructive ways, by obliterating neighborhoods for the University of Illinois at Chicago or creating the vertical ghettoes of the Robert Taylor Homes on the ruins of Bronzeville. But Daley and his real-estate developing cronies set their sights on the Loop as well. Vast swaths on either side of State Street were slated for demolition, including every Loop movie house. Luckily a few (the Chicago Theatre, the Oriental) were saved, thanks to preservationists and the less bulldozer-happy administrations of Mayors Michael Bilandic and Jane Byrne.
But, given its $60 price tag, the book needed serious editing, which it did not get. Far too often, three or four sentences labor to do the work one or two could have done, with awkward repetitions of subjects, key phrases and facts. Crucial ideas get buried mid-paragraph, and framing issues — like the particular ownership or location of theaters — are repeated between and within chapters (sometimes even within paragraphs). Some facts of film history need better explanation (e.g.: an X rating did not originally designate a film as sexually explicit hard-core pornography; X just meant a movie intended for adult audiences only). The illustrations of newspaper ads for different films, useful but not essential to Butters' arguments, are poorly reproduced and so add little.
Luckily for all concerned — especially for any reader interested in a deeply informed, nuanced and insightful new take on racial change and Chicago's film culture — "From Sweetback to Super Fly" overcomes these problems.
Butters takes his readers back to a time not just before streaming video, or the Internet, or DVDs, or VHS. He takes us back to a time when African-Americans, finally free to go wherever they pleased to consume entertainment, lined up on the streets to patronize the grand movie palaces of Chicago's Loop. The fact that this liberation coincided with the decline of the Loop as a destination for white Chicagoans and suburbanites is the tragic result of yet another narrative of racism in Chicago.