film, giving them positions from the screenwriter to casting them as extras in the film. The inclusion of African Americans in the film and during the filmmaking process added a more realistic urban feel. Including African American in filmmaking made a notable impact and set the precedent for future directors. The genre of Blaxploitation affected Hollywood's vision of African Americans as well as the existing political hierarchy in which they were placed in the United States. The increase in Blaxploitation films generally established and defined African Americans in the post-civil rights ear in the United States. By creating the Blaxploitation genre, new representations of Black Power could be shown to audiences. Since the majority of African-American movie-viewers were adolescents, it was determined that horror and action movies sold best to these "ethnic" audiences. Between 1966 and 1975 around seventy Black action films were made either by Hollywood studios or first-time African-American production companies. These actions films varied in quality. They ranged from creative narratives to low-budget films. Since during the 1960s and 1970s African Americans first came to become the focus of mainstream entertainment, the creation of the Blaxploitation era formed a visual tradition to refute the stereotypical stigma of African Americans established from history. These films also revealed the limitations and lack of opportunities African Americans were given in society during the period following segregation. However, critics such as Clayton Riley from The New York Times argued that Blaxploitation films provided an overly simplistic view of African Americans, which could have had detrimental effects, potentially making African Americans more submissive to societal injustice. See also African-American culture Bibliography Kisch, John, and Edward Mapp. A Separate Cinema: Fifty Years of Black-cast Posters. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1992. Print. Locke, Brian. Racial Stigma on the Hollywood Screen from World War II to the Present: the Orientalist Buddy Film. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print. McCluskey, Audrey T. Imaging Blackness: Race and Racial Representation in Film Poster Art. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Print. Ongiri, Amy Abugo. Spectacular Blackness: the Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2010. Print. References African-American cultural history Cultural appropriation History of racism in the cinema of the United States Stereotypes of African Americans Theatre characters