Trick Baby And How It Ranks As A Blaxploitation Film

By Sandra Mitchell


Films in the Blaxploitation genre can have unusual or common themes central to their plots. But often, and with the best of them, they usually nod at issues that are traditional elements of African American societies. These are different from usual exploitation films, which tend to be very derogatory about its subjects.

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.

Of course racial dynamics propel the plot here, and these are mostly a given from a novel that was based on the real experiences of author Slim, a former pimp before he made bestselling novelist in the African American writing genre. These are delineated well enough in this film, although black men themselves who watched the central role of Folks were let down. Again, there was a lack of intensity and nothing of masculinity present in a half white character.

White Folks is the product of a black woman who had a baby from a white customer, thus the title. The accident of birth becomes the locus through which both film and book moves, although in the movie the intensity was seen as lacking. Production went ahead to complete a feature that works with subjects easily told through the visual medium.

In this regard, this feature can be explained, because to intensify or deepen the focus on Folks would have made some people squirm. With the lack of honest friction or real issues about racial conflict, the movie went on to become a somewhat feel good crime movie that dissolved the issues out of hard focus. The theme of black crime might have been well told, if not for the way the focus became the driver for the film.

Films from Hollywood will tend to be dehumanizing, concentrating more on great visuals than focusing on the story elements. This defect is something that is still present, and so whatever films there are that are found meritorious in a story sense will not end up successful, in comparison to those that tend to con people.

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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