vostoklake: (wayne)
2014-11-21 10:40 am
Entry tags:

Pimpin' posts ain't easy: BLACK DYNAMITE


I'm going to intrude on Cousin War Arrow's shtick for a second here...




The original live-action Black Dynamite film (2009) was the perfect blaxploitation parody, an homage to the genre with a special tip of the hat to Rudy Ray Moore's rhyming kung-fu pimp, Dolemite. But the animated series - currently in its second season on Adult Swim in the US - blasts off into orbit (quite literally, in one episode), becoming a perfect blaxploitation version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - the Alan Moore graphic novel series, not the hideous Hollywood abomination loosely based on the first book thereof.

In LxG, every possible fictional character and situation co-exists, making it cross-over and what-if heaven. In the Black Dynamite animated universe, every Afro-American cultural icon, real or fictitious, is present in a vaguely defined "1970s" - plus era-appropriate honkeys, such as Richard Nixon or Elvis. All right, you might consider a "Michael Jackson is an alien" plots to be vaguely predictable. And the one where Black Dynamite is betrayed by O. J. Simpson on a space mission, where he meets a Soviet space chimp and Black Santa Claus, might be a bit silly. But I defy any man, woman, or children alive to watch the Apocalypse Now parody starring Mr T. and two different versions of James Bond where the MacGuffin is a secret barbecue sauce recipe and try to tell me that they ain't seeing THE GREATEST DAMN ANIMATED THING ON TV SINCE BACK WHEN THE SIMPSONS WERE ACTUALLY GOOD AND SOUTH PARK WAS TRULY TRANSGRESSIVE.

Here, let's just bask in the warmth: