Blade the Great

A great movie about the vampire slayer Blade appeared in the 1998. Wesley Snipes did a really great job there and the movie quickly became a Blockbuster.

The story of Blade is a combination of vampire horror movies with kung fu action movies. Also the urban setting makes the reference Blaxploitation movies quite clear. Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) is a vampire hunter, who is half vampire himself. Shortly before his birth his mother was bitten by a vampire, mixing his blood. Blades biggest enemy is the white yuppie vampire called Frost (played by Stephen Dorff). Frost needs Blade to perform an ancient ritual, which will cause vampires to rule the world. In his fight against Frost, Blade is aided by a young black female doctor, Karen, and an old, bitter, white sidekick.

The movie us es a lot of action, violence and an outrageous, almost ridiculous plot, which relates it very clear to the low-budget Blaxploitation movies of the 70s. Blade is represented as a strong, ruthless macho that fights evil outside of the law (like Shaft). He is also trapped between good and evil (like Priest in Superfly), because he is half man, half vampire. The only thing that suppresses his vampire urges, is a serum that Kristofferson makes for him. Later it turns out that Blades mother was turned into a vampire by Frost, which makes him Blades father in some way. In the end Blade kills Frost by using a deadly serum made by Karen. Blade is a movie that relates to the 70s Blaxploitation genre, but combines it with modern action and horror movies. Blade is a classical Blaxploitation hero in the tradition of Shaft and Priest and has to battle a white evil, which also happened a lot in the old movies. The movie also plays with the creation of black masculinity by making Blade rid iculously cool en macho. But at the same time he is represented as weak and dependable. Also the female lead is not degraded to a sexy looking scream queen, but is a strong black female who actually helps Blade numerous times and can kick ass if necessary. Most other new commercial Blaxploitation movies do not have such a strong female character.

Blade has more to do with the 70s Blaxploitation than Shaft 2000, (even though the latter refers to it more clearly), especially because Blade is more outrageous and deliberately camp at some times. This connects it to the b-movie and pulp qualities many of the Blaxploitation movies of the 70s had. They too combined blackness with all kind of outrageous action and different genres (even kung-fu, which is featured very prominently in Blade). Blade is also a more ruthless black hero than Shaft 2000 is, and the movie is also prepared to look at his darker side, trying to define what makes the him savage. In doing so it again rela tes to the more radical side of Blaxploitation pictures of the 70s. Also de violence is more clearly aimed at a white menace (Frost and his vampires), that represents white supremacy and the white system. Shaft 2000 fails to do this; most of the violence is directed towards the Latino gang of Peoples. Next to that, Shaft 2000 does not direct much anger towards the system. Shaft is frustrated about it and rejects it, but in the end, we do not know if the system would have prevailed or not (because Christian Bale is shot before his trial). Even Shaft remains dependable on the system and in the end even returns to it. In Blade the system is automatically rejected by our hero, because he never was part of it anyway (When he encounters cops, the first thing they do is shoot at him). Authority is also represented as clearly corrupt, because vampires have infested politics and the police force, having spies and collaborators everywhere. This gives a more paranoid and who the hell c an I trust feeling, than Shaft 2000. For example the two corrupt cops in Shaft 2000 are exposed quite quickly and than killed by our hero. In Blade it is impossible for our hero to catch all the corrupt cops. He also is far more cynical about it (in that way he can also be related to Shaft from the 70s). The fact that Blade is more radical in its attitude is quite striking, when you realize that it was made by a white director and that Shaft 2000 was made by the director of the quite radical Boyz N the Hood. This indicates that most black directors who where once radical, but now work in Hollywood are kept on a tighter leach than white directors. Or it has to do with the fact that Paramount is a bigger studio than NewLine, and takes less risks.

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Author:: Mary Anne Winslow
Keywords:: Blade, Blockbuster
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