Trick Baby And How It Ranks As A Blaxploitation Film

By Sandra Mitchell


The Blaxploitation films are about the most common subjects or can have unusual themes or plots. Yet all the best films found in this genre nod at the subjects that lie at the core of African American culture. These are very different thematically from movies that are also about exploitation, which are often derogatory in nature.

There is one film that might have risen above the rest, as differentiated by the common run of movies here. The film in question is Trick Baby, released in 1972, with a story taken from the novel of a famous black author named Iceberg Slim. The novel is really a very moving tale about African gangsters, something the feature was not able to be.

The movie is about the relationship between two black male con men who are planning their biggest con. These are Blue Howard and White Folks, hustlers working in Philadelphia, the latter being half white and therefore could pass for a white man. This is central to all their cons, and also their ace in the con that they are planning.

The racial tensions obviously propel this plot, but then it can be expected from the work of an author with very intense experiences in the African underworld, and his books were even bestsellers in his genre. Delineation of character was present in a watered down sense, and Folks was especially cited for having a ho hum and forgettable performance. There was no focus on being black and male, and that was something that could have really made the difference.

Folks is a product of the mating of a white man and a black prostitute, and so it became the title. It is an accident that is a focus in both works, but critics said that the book was very intense while the feature was not quite there. But then the production just went with the need for Hollywood products to work with easier subjects for film.

In this sense, the movie might be forgiven its being unable to really take advantage of the intensely dramatic idea of a biracial conman. However, no conflicts or friction arise from this, especially between Howard and Folks, and their relationship is mostly about the easier time they have of being able to get away with crimes. The cliched theme of black criminality was chosen above everything else.

Hollywood has always had the tendency to dehumanize the focus, to concentrate on visual elements instead of the story ones. It is one defect that no one has deemed to change, and so, no matter supposedly great films there are available from the industry, they do not address this defect. It is mostly about an industry that seems to want to be relevant always ending up producing semi con works.

The said plan by the protagonists is nearly derailed by a man with Mafia connections they victimized before. The twist is a classic cliche that happens before endings, something that critics have to howl about, even as the producers will go with it in the end. Maybe there was the idea to provide impact for the film in the box office sense all the time.

Thus, director Larry Yust thought it best to soften blows made by the story itself to be more acceptable to the general public. This is one organism that has an oh so sensitive stomach while allowing blasphemy to be its constant companion. And black experience is too much of a punch in the gut that it needs watering down.




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