Gerald R. Butters - From SWEETBACK to SUPER FLY: Race and Film Audiences in Chicagos Loop

I have long been fascinated by the occupation of geographic space. Historians and cultural theorists have explored the notion of occupied space since the transnational attention that Englands Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies gave this concept in the early 1980s.

As a film historian I have become interested in the role of the motion picture theater as an occupied space. For the last hundred years, certain motion picture theaters have attracted audiences that were distinct in relationship to their race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or class. Often these theaters were patronized by individuals who occupied the geographic space or neighborhood in which the motion picture theater existed. But this was not always the case. Some theaters became distinctive because their audiences did not represent the dominant community of the neighborhood. This has been the case in the city of Chicago. The Loop has traditionally been the downtown, the epicenter, of the city. During the early 1970s the major, first-run motion picture theaters in the city were still located in the Loop. But during that time and immediately after, both the Loop and these theaters experienced hard times. The Loop faced many of the problems that decaying downtown regions experienced across the country in the mid-twentieth century. Deteriorating infrastructure and crumbling architecture gave downtown areas the appearance of being past their prime. In the first half of the twentieth

In this study I examine box-office attendance and programming in motion picture theaters in the Loop from 1970 to 1975. I chose these years because they were the heyday of so-called blaxploitation films and because motion picture theaters in the Loop booked films meant to attract an African American audience. I will only be able to begin to explore many questions related to this study, especially, Why did African American audiences suddenly begin attending motion picture theaters in the Loop in the early 1970s? Which came first: African American audiences or motion pictures that were meant to appeal to African American audiences? Did African Americanthemed motion pictures increase the desire of black audiences to attend these theaters? Why did certain theaters in the Loop screen a large number of black-themed films while other theaters played almost none? Were certain theaters thought to be identified with one race or another?

THE LOOP AS SPECIAL EXPERIENCE

In the late 1960s the Loop was the major entertainment district in Chicago, a destination for millions of Chicagoans who were commuting to their jobs or homes. Going to the movies downtown was an event for Chicagoans in the period from 1945 to 1970. Individuals dressed up when they went to a motion picture in the postwar era;

But the Loop was experiencing rapidly changing racial dynamics in this period, and business interests mobilized economically and politically to protect their investments. Because Chicagos major first-run motion picture theaters were located in the Loop, they were the first to screen major Hollywood films; once the studios figured that most interested urban patrons had seen the feature, the film would start showing at neighborhood theaters in Chicago and/or the suburbs. But the exhibition branch of the motion picture industry was learning to exploit the growing suburbanization of the white middle-class movie audience by constructing new suburban theaters and changing distribution patterns.