I was extremely glad to lead the readings this week, alongside Chris. The readings were incredibly interesting, fun reads, and were so relevant to the our screening of Blacula (1972).

One of our readings, The Cult Cinema Marketplace, did not have much to do (directly) with Blacula, but was interesting nonetheless. This reading took a close look at cult cinema from the angle of political economy and pays close attention to labor, funding and entrepreneurship, marketing, niche promotion, exhibition, and black markets. The reading did a beautiful job at breaking down all the aspects of cult cinema from the angle of political economy, breaking it down into: Production Culture, Funding and Distribution, Marketing, Exhibition Culture and Piracy. Very simply put, the reading was about:

Production Culture

• Crew and cast working on films that became cult often display a “superior survivor” tactic–almost like they’re referring to an experience one has to be initiated to and graduate into (Think of Tom Savini crews).
• “I would say that our company is kind of a ‘tribal’ thing. Once you are in and get the secret tattoos–we’re then in there as a family operation…The core group that we have is intensely loyal. When work is slow they’ll come in anyway…It’s not just a paycheck issue.”

Funding and Distribution

• The spirit of independence of cult films is evidenced in their unique funding structure, complete with unsavory accounting tricks.
• There are two oppositions that run through the funding of cult cinema: (1) commercial funding vs. state involvement, and (2) single and multi-source funding.

Marketing

• Cult films don’t market themselves as cult. If they did, it would take the point away. Films become cult because their audience likes what it likes, it’s an audience that doesn’t want to be told what to like.
• Rather, the marketing of cult films is also has tricks, like piggy-backing off of other film titles’s success.

Exhibition Culture

• Exhibition in cult cinema is undisputed. It is the interaction between screen and audience that cults become solidified.
• The most significant exhibition contexts for cult cinema are midnight movies, film festivals, fan culture, underground and avant-garde exhibition, home viewing and the black market.

Piracy

• A special case of cult exhibition, one that is worth exploring, is the black market.
• Piracy is linked to qualities such as anarchism, anti-authoritarianism, lawlessness, grassroots democracy and equality.

Next, Blacula. Blacula was super progressive and revolutionary towards the blaxploitation era. Before Blacula, blaxploitation was seen as a cycle of repetitive action films rather than as a genre, but Blacula changed this by incorporating the horror genre with blaxploitation. Blacula was progressive because, unlike previously released blaxploitation films like Shaft (1971), it inverted tropes and avoided stereotypes (both vampire and black).

A great example of how Blacula steered away from stereotypes and tropes is in Mamuwalde and Tina’s relationship. Their relationship suggests a deep romantic attatchement, different from the usual trope seen in earlier vampire films of an abnormal sexual vampire.

All-in-all, I thought Blacula was a great film that was fun to watch. It had a dope “groovy” soundtrack (a blaxploitation trope that Blacula didn’t avoid) and a hip title sequence.