Like Jane civilizing Tarzan, she taught him simple things like how to eat from a spoon without biting it. Ratings skyrocketed as the hip-hop generation obsessively consumed the blossoming relationship and "marriage" of the buffoon, Flav, and the Euro-American woman, Brigitte, who was also several inches taller than her beau. He received a spin-off, Strange Love, featuring a "love affair" with fellow Surreal Life cast member Brigitte Nielsen that lasted for three seasons. Viewers seemed to respond positively to his buffoonish antics. One of the more interesting cast members from The Surreal Life was Flavor Flav. The Pimp translates well in the music and reality television world, and one particular man proved to be a positive test case for the Pimp's transcendence and durability. Currently, the Pimp is a misogynistic figure who does not love women, and because the women he hates and exploits are Black women, America at large seems fine with that. With the patronage of Black audiences, Hollywood could safely Pimp out and profit from degrading Black people. The Pimps are played only in predominantly Black casts, because a foundation was laid to make it acceptable to portray Black women as whores and prostitutes. Oddly, the Pimp does not pose a threat to white men and certainly does not train his sexual aggression on white women like his Black brute predecessor. This figure is also masculine enough to silence Sapphire through psychological manipulation or the threat of or actual use of physical violence. The Black Pimp as interpreted by the Hollywood imagination is a macho, leather-wearing, handsome, financially secure, sexually viable man who is somehow above the law in some cases, he is the law! He kills many men and sexually satisfies scores of women with the emotions of an iceberg and looks good while doing them both. Though I doubt glorification of sexual exploitation was part of Melvin van Peebles's original idea when he introduced the genre with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in 1971, Hollywood certainly latched onto the sexuality portion and exploited it for increased revenue at the box office. Definitively, "the Black Pimp icon is a reactionary image that emerges from the actual prostitution of female bodies that occurs in oppressed communities" (Osayande 57). The Pimp became an icon in African American culture and film in the Blaxploitation era.
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