Franklin also accused the filmmakers and marketers of reshaping Black Girl to chase sensationalism. She said that early in production, efforts were made to exploit the material for sex and violence, including retaining a scene in which the young Billie Jean disrobes in front of the camera; the scene was eventually filmed without nudity, but remained in the picture despite her objections. The marketing campaign then enlarged a fleeting five-second moment in which Norma Faye threatens Billie Jean with a knife and used it as the film’s supposed defining image. Franklin protested that the poster falsely presented the family drama as a violent exploitation movie. After she threatened to denounce the campaign publicly, the knife disappeared from the illustration—only to return a week later—before being removed again. The film was also quietly edited for a PG rating: voice-overs were used to erase every instance of the word “fuck,” and Franklin said she was urged not to reveal the cuts because audiences might realize material had been removed. The film premiered in 1972 at Manhattan’s Strand Theatre, then called the Penthouse Theater, in a benefit for sickle-cell anemia, but the troubled production and misleading publicity reflected the larger difficulty of marketing a serious drama about working-class Black women during the blaxploitation era.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
The Knife Poster, the Disrobing Scene, and the Secret PG Sanitizing of Black Girl
Black Girl (1972) / 1970s
Franklin also accused the filmmakers and marketers of reshaping Black Girl to chase sensationalism. She said that early in production, efforts were made to exploit the material for sex and violence, including retaining a scene in which the young Billie Jean disrobes in front of the camera; the scene was eventually filmed without nudity, but remained in the picture despite her objections. The marketing campaign then enlarged a fleeting five-second moment in which Norma Faye threatens Billie Jean with a knife and used it as the film’s supposed defining image. Franklin protested that the poster falsely presented the family drama as a violent exploitation movie. After she threatened to denounce the campaign publicly, the knife disappeared from the illustration—only to return a week later—before being removed again. The film was also quietly edited for a PG rating: voice-overs were used to erase every instance of the word “fuck,” and Franklin said she was urged not to reveal the cuts because audiences might realize material had been removed. The film premiered in 1972 at Manhattan’s Strand Theatre, then called the Penthouse Theater, in a benefit for sickle-cell anemia, but the troubled production and misleading publicity reflected the larger difficulty of marketing a serious drama about working-class Black women during the blaxploitation era.
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