 The New York Times analyzed the film within a discussion of the genre of blaxploitation : " As the audience for blaxploitation dwindled , it seemed as if Car Wash and The Wiz might be the last gasp of what had been a steadily expanding black presence in mainstream filmmaking . " The St. Petersburg Times noted , " Of course , it only took one flop like The Wiz ( 1978 ) to give Hollywood an excuse to retreat to safer ( i.e. , whiter ) creative ground until John Singleton and Spike Lee came along . Yet , without blaxploitation there might not have been another generation of black filmmakers , no Denzel Washington or Angela Bassett , or they might have taken longer to emerge . " The Boston Globe commented , " the term ' black film ' should be struck from the critical vocabulary . To appreciate just how outmoded , deceptive and limiting it is , consider the following , all of which have been described as black films , . . . " and characterized The Wiz in a list which also featured 1970s films Shaft , Blacula , and Super Fly . 
