The Breakploitation of the 80’s

Posted on November 29, 2008

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. This is not a tale of two cities, I’m talking about the 80’s. The break-heard-around-the-world had taken breaking from NY to new frontiers. But with it came the trouble that many think ultimately killed it’s first rise to popularity in the 80’s: the media and commercialism.

Today there are many examples of companies tactfully using breaking in commercials, shows, etc…to push their products but back in the 80’s, it wasn’t the case. When it first became popular, breaking itself was something that companies thought they could commercialize and sell.

This period of breakploitation was horrible. And awesome. When I look at some of the stuff from back them I want to shake my head and smile at the same time. I’d be embarrassed to have bought into it back then but would love to cop some of the stuff now, even just for novelty’s sake.

There were a ton of books, like Breakdance by William H. Walkins, which were written to sell breaking as the newest fad (I guess pet rocks were sold out) and were targeted towards the youth. Some of these were how-to picture books and others were purely informative.

But if you couldn’t get your hands on a book, you could just turn on the TV. Instructional tapes were heavily marketed, advertised and sold. If you could spin on your back then you were qualified to be on camera and a couple of today’s celebrities even built up their resumes this way:

Alfonso Ribiero (better known as Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)

Mark Vincet (better known as Vin Diesel)

When it wasn’t being sold as a product, it was used to help sell other products like Hershey’s Chocolate…

For older urban dance connoseuirs, a related dance, Locking, was used to push Schlitz Malt Liquor:

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, we were blessed with what is, IMO, one of the worst movies ever made: Breakin’. This movie was so horrible, I was able to buy it for $4.99 at a Best Buy back in 2001. Do you know how bad a movie had to be to be sold at $4.99 in 2001?

But I still love it. It’s so unbearably bad, it can’t help but be entertaining. And the fact that it has both Jean Claude Van Damme as a backup dancer and Ice-T as an authoritative rapper adds to its iconic value. In fact, that only reason I don’t think that this movie is THE worst (and best) of all time is because of it had a sequel, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, which I also got for $4.99. The dancing, the clothing, the ceiling dancing…this scene says its all:

Breakploitation. Pretty much everything alluded to in this post came out within 3 years of the movie Flashdance. When you compare the short clip from that film to these 2 movies, its easy to see how breaking could be seen as some passing fad and the disrespect and damage caused it to go undergound for about 15 years. But since it never fully died, it was able to transcend the damage and reach the next generation. And despite modern day breakploitation flicks (I’ll buy them once they hit $4.99), we’re determined not to let history repeat itself.

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November 29, 2008 | In Films, Media |

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Haha — I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the kitschy movies of that era as well.

Comment by calvin — November 29, 2008 #
LOL..they’re painful to watch but I can’t take my eyes off the TV when they’re on. They’ve been religiously showing Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2 on the Retro Movie Channel the last few months and I’ve watched it way more than I’d like to admit

Comment by boon — December 1, 2008 #
All i could see was that you are quoting Dickens. nice. And it’s almost Christmas best dust off your quotes on “A Christmas Carol” and ish :). i have never really any of these movies, but FLASHDANCE! loved it! wanted to be Jennifer Beals in that scene where she is like in her converted warehouse or something getting her dance on….

Comment by MB — December 2, 2008 #
[...] few weeks ago, I wrote about breakploitation, the 80’s exploitation of the new breaking “fad” that popped up in the [...]

Pingback by More breakploitation from the 80’s: Vans Breakers : Celebreak.net — December 13, 2008 #
[...] can’t decide if this shirt comes down on the side of “breaksploitation” and “totally awesome,” but my instinct is to buy it now have you buy it now for [...]

Pingback by Things I Want: Crazy “Funky School of Breakdance” Shirt | More Than A Stance — May 29, 2009 #

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The Breakploitation of the 80’s

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