I chose to watch the film Super Fly for our discussion on Blaxploitation. The film was released in 1972 and was directed by Gordon Parks Jr. I selected a theme for this film that I feel represents it very well; "The Black Man Controlled." I will discuss how some of the black characters in the film were looked up to and at the same time were controlled by the white men. This film, like many other Blaxploitation films, has a black action hero trying to work successfully through a white dominated world.
The film takes place in Harlem, a place that the director obviously wants to look rough. Our first glimpse of the main character, Priest (Ron O"Neal), was snorting cocaine in his bed with a beautiful woman lying next to him. The way the director shot this scene automatically gave him the image of being someone of importance before seeing anymore of the film. We soon find out that he is indeed the main character. Priest and his partner Eddie (Carl Lee) are cocaine dealers that have very different views about what they want to do with their lives. Eddie seems fine with where he is in his life; making money, doing drugs, and "living like a king." Priest on the other hand is tired of dealing cocaine and wants out of the business.
Eddie and Priest's plan is to gather up all of the money they have previously made ($300,000) and buy 30 kilos of cocaine. They would spend the next four months selling it and turning the profits to $1 million. They would then split the money and stop dealing cocaine. Their only source of getting a mass quantity of cocaine was through Scatter, (Julius Harris) a retired dealer that is a friend of Priest's. After coaxing him into it he finally agrees to get the drugs as a favor. Eddie and Priest have built a large "family" of dealers throughout Harlem that the police have caught wind of. They brought in Fat Freddie (Charles McGregor) and forced him to tell them who he was working for.
