Melvin Van Peebles Quotes

If you take the '70s with Blaxploitation pictures, there was a proliferation of black-content films and motion pictures, television, stage plays and so forth at a time when Hollywood was in trouble financially, and it was cheaper to do black films to keep the lights on until they could reestablish themselves.

There's people saying that 'Jackie Brown' was a blaxploitation movie, when there's nothing at all blaxploitation about it other than Pam Grier being in it.

The funny thing about cinema is, usually when they do a story that has African Americans in it, there always has to be a white guy who's the savior.

Why do we always have to see black people in hindsight? Why are the Hollywood movies always historical? What about the contemporary image of black people?

My 'Black Panther' run really wasn't about Black Panther. It was about Ross. It was about exploding myths about black superheroes, black characters, and black people, targeted specifically at a white, male-dominated retailer base.

All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do.

It really upsets me that the media insists on turning 'Do the Right Thing' or 'Boyz N the Hood' into 'black films.' They are American films. They may open the window on the black experience, but they had things to say to everybody. That's why they were so successful.

Let's face it: there aren't a lot of black superheroes. So, in dealing with a black superhero, you're going to deal with ugly history and the beauty of history.

I can't wait to see little white kids dressing up as Black Panther.

I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community - that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale.

I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.

There haven't been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

You know, I'm an African-American quarterback. That may scare a lot of people because they - they haven't seen nothing that they can compare me to.

If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity.

There have been so few decent films involving Negroes that right away everybody expects every film to do everything. But when you make a flick, there are maybe two things you're trying to put into that flick. You can put the other things in another time.

There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.

White people are potential humans - they haven't evolved yet.

People are tired of mainstream media's limited and confined portrayal of people of color.

You know it's going to hell when the best rapper out there is white and the best golfer is black.

I think America loves cooperative black men. I am not against Colin Powell, but I know who he is.

If you are going to call a film a 'black film' then you have to make a film that represents everyone that's black, which is almost impossible. That is why white films are not called white films, they are just called 'films.'

The movies 'Dope' and 'Straight Outta Compton' blew me away. I love seeing directors and writers of color make amazing slices of pop culture.

There's so much material out there that's unnecessarily racist. It takes a shot at what is 'urban' or demonstrates blackness with some sassy, neck-jiving character that's not even relevant to the plot. I see it time and time again, and it doesn't move the story forward. It just kind of cryogenically freezes us in this old racial paradigm.

So, I was sitting there and I watched 'Paranormal Activity' and I was like, 'Boy, white people do dumb stuff in movies.' So I was like, 'Why don't they just leave the house... What if paranormal activity happened to a black couple?'

I do know in the 1960s comics, Martian Manhunter took on the form of a black man - that could have been influenced by the political climate back then.