hen Keenen Ivory Wayans released I’m Gonna Git You Sucka in 1988, he wasn’t just making a spoof. He was dissecting the blaxploitation genre of the 1970s, a movement that brought Black leads and soundtracks to the screen but often leaned on caricature. Wayans, playing the straight-arrow soldier Jack Spade, returns home to avenge his brother’s death, only to find his community in the grip of drugs and controlled by a cartoonishly slick crime boss named Mr. Big (John Vernon). What follows is both satire and homage—a send-up that hits hard because it knows its history.
Continue reading
