thecrimson | Super Fly, a movie about a drug pusher who escapes the law, is slickly crafted so that law and order do not triumph in the one instance they should. The film pushes the drug dealer-as-hero. The pusher has the customized Cadillac, the beautiful women, the fancy clothes, all gained by not obeying the law but by peddling death to the community. He's never caught in the end because death dealers (unlike black nationalist leaders and community workers) are allowed to go free.
AMAZINGLY, BLACK ACTOR Ron O'Neal, the star of Super Fly, steadfastly defends his role as being productive and says the movie opposes drug use. "The anti-drug commercials on TV don't do much good because the kids can't relate," he explained last summer. "We showed them just what the pusher's life is like. We showed that although the pusher has money he wants to get out. I get away in the end because it really happens that way. We interviewed lots of coke peddlers and they told us they're walking the streets today because of police corruption." The film's white producer, Sig Shore, adds: "So far as glamorizing the drug scene, if anybody has heard Curtis Mayfield's score, they know that it's all counterpoint to the action that's going on."
But counterpoints provided in theme songs are often lost on the most sophisticated of audiences, and to the millions of blacks around the country there is only one message--Freddy may be dead in the theme song but Ron O'Neal is still cruising around in his Cadillac with all those fine women. Get yourself a hustle brother, it's a lot easier than struggling for freedom.
About Junius Griffin who coined the term "blaxploitation"
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