Thompson, Dave. "Blaxploitation: Funk Goes to the Movies." Funk. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2001. p. 207-213.

Note: this is an essay, not a chapter, from Dave Thompson's book Funk.

The essay begins talking about the recent 2000 re-release of Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson and how the accompanying score had changed from Isaac Hayes’ iconic funk soundtrack to the “urban dance” of R. Kelly, Outkast, and Too $hort. However, back in the early 1970s, the media created narrow stereotypical genres for anything outside the mainstream musical scene and thus, blaxploitation wasn’t just a film movement but a music movement and way of life as well. It originated outside the Hollywood system, where most black actors and directors felt relegated to before the blaxploitation boom. Although blaxploitation was categorized under the B-movie moniker, its connection to the large counterculture of dissatisfied, young, black people gave it a larger impact than your typical B-movie films (i.e. horror, etc.). The “A movies” featured black stars. However, they didn’t address the black audience. Blaxploitation arose out of black society’s need to be represented on screen.

Thomson introduces Melvin Van Peebles and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song as the answer to that problem. After detailing the production and financial troubles encountered by Van Peebles, he goes into the distribution of the film. However, because only two theaters played it on the opening weekend and nobody would advertise or review it, it was ignored by the media. Additionally, there was no publicity money left over from production, so Van Peebles had to use the "dynamite" soundtrack (recorded by then-unknown Earth Wind & Fire) in order to create awareness for his film. This was the first time that a soundtrack was used to market a film – something that is quite common now. The blaxploitation films that came after would follow suit, each with its own funky soundtrack – Shaft had Isaac Hayes, Superfly had Curtis Mayfield. The essay then describes summarizes the plot of several blaxploitation movies (since it is, after all, in a book about music).

This is relevant because it transformed the way many films are advertised. Instead of going through the traditional avenues of trailers and critical reviews, Van Peebles used funk, the music of the streets at that time, to get the message out that a corresponding movie that was just as funky was playing. With the success of the album, more distributors decided to show the film and eventually, it became the highest grossing independent film ever (at that point). Thus, the distribution and advertisement of this film serves as a reminder to the mainstream of culture's power to create an underground success based solely on word of mouth and music.