“Shaft” (1971) was Hollywood’s first blaxpoitation film to become a hit. It starred the then unknown Richard Roundtree. It is most famous for the Isaac Hayes song that opens the film:
Who’s the black private dick
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
(SHAFT!)
You’re damn rightYou see this cat Shaft is a bad mother-
(Shut your mouth)
But I’m talkin’ about Shaft
(Then we can dig it)
The parts in parentheses were sung by Stax singers Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, who later became the Dawn of Tony Orlando & Dawn.
The opening scene shows John Shaft, a black New York City detective in a long brown leather coat, walking through Times Square as the song plays. A wonderful opening but then it becomes like a late-night movie. Shaft tries to save the daughter of a Harlem crime lord to prevent all-out war with the Mafia. It only gets good again towards the end.
Blaxpoitation films were made by Hollywood in the 1970s for black audiences. They were mostly crime dramas with black leads. Pam Grier made her name starring in them. They pushed stereotypes of blacks as oversexed, badass and violent. Shaft himself is a good example of all three.
Civil rights leaders condemned it but black audiences loved it: back then almost no film had a hero who was unashamedly black.
“Shaft” had a black director, Gordon Parks, and two white screenwriters. One of them, Ernest Tidyman, created the character as a sort of black James Bond, writing seven books about him. Tidyman is one of the few whites to win an NAACP Image Award.
Sex machine to all the chicks: He has a main chick, Dina, who wears a wedding ring, another one on the side, Ellie, and, to put the “all” in “all the chicks”, he picks up a white chick at a bar for a one-night stand and has a shower scene with her.
Ellie: I love you
Shaft: Yeah, I know. Take it easy.
Shaft lives in a huge, well-furnished apartment and always takes the taxi – like he is made of money. He reads Essence magazine and uses what seems like too much slang. He likes to say “Right on!” and holds up his fist, like some bad stereotype of the 1970s. Everyone is cat, dude or baby. That slang, I later found out, was put in over the protests of Tidyman. But in the end it did not matter: the language was picked up by black teenagers. So was Shaft’s habit of crossing the street without looking.
In the opening scene, at the newsstand, you can see Naomi Sims on the cover of Essence.
It is amazing how much New York looks the same nearly 40 years later.
The film cost $500,000 (370,000 crowns) to make but brought in $13 million! Two sequels and a short-lived television series dutifully followed. In 2000 John Singleton brought it to the next generation with Samuel L. Jackson playing John Shaft’s nephew.
– Abagond, 2010, 2016.
See also:
Shaft lol i can remember an episode of fresh prince of belair where Will finds out Shaft was fictional and throws a hissy fit lol
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@peanut
OMG I was just watching that episode LOL.
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So, are Blaxpoitation films considered to be a bad thing or not?
Oh, and one more thing:
two whute screenwriters
I guess it’s a typo.
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My immigrant father had seen Shaft and I remember his admiration for the lead character’s fashion and copied the way he dressed for several years. My father even went so far as to perm his hair to get an afro. I kid you not. Have you ever seen an AM with an afro? That would be my daddy.
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..I have always been intrigued by the name ‘Shaft’ and its implications (subliminal etc). Not sure if this has been previously discussed elsewhere…
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leigh204
Nice story about your dad (funny in a good way). Shaft was the ultimate hero to my dad & uncles. They all had several black turtlenecks & that leather jacket in their wardrobe arsenal.
I see Shaft as one of the better quality blaxploitation films. We recently had a family movie night & among the movies watched was Coffee (Pam Grier). Man I loved watching that movie! It was nostalgic, but even more it was a tremendous feeling to see a black woman as powerful & powerfully feminine & beautiful.
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Shaft is great. The novel that the film was based on was written by Ernest Tidyman, a white writer….
…but what’s the status of that solutions to colorism post?
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With respect to blaxploitation films, it seems they were an outgrowth of pulp fiction about black characters living on the edge of legitimacy.
Donald Goines was once a well know black writer whose black characters were mainly street guys.
Crime Partners, Black Girl Lost, Death List, Whoreson, Dopefiend and Swampman are titles I own.
Then there is Chester Himes who wrote Blind Man with a Pistol. He’s best known for writing Cotton Comes to Harlem.
There were a few other black writers like Goines. Iceberg Slim was one. Most died young, mainly victims of the life they wrote about.
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Slappz, why did you read these books?
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no_slappz is probably like this guy Vecente on tyra show, you have to see this video above…
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My favourite bit of dialogue from Shaft:
“Where the hell are you going, Shaft?”
“To get laid, where the hell are you going?”
I still rock the turtle-neck sweater and leather jacket ensemble from time to time. And I feel totally badass when I do it; I’m sure there is a little extra groove in my step, with “Theme from Shaft” playing in my head.
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@D&nni
The Vicente jerk is an asshole. He has alot of self hate issues. I’m even more angry because he is not even “light skinned” himself, his ass is dark also. I dont know slappz ethnicity for sure. So to me Vicente is worse than slappz cause I know he is black.
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@Leavumthinking:
Hahahaha about Vicente. The rest are dimwits to!
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That Tyra clip was simultaneously one of the funniest things I have ever seen, but also really sad when you think about the level of self-hate involved.
Vecente should have a conversation with a Klansman, it might give him some perspective.
Btw, how did we get from Shaft to this again?
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Btw, how did we get from Shaft to this again?
ha ha…because good people allowed it
he he
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that GOOD MEN do nothing” -Edmund Burke
Sorry – as I laugh to myself ‘ha ha ha’
Back to the topic
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Last little bit on the Tyra clip
I heard how this was all scripted the guy vencente had a video on world star hip hop saying how some producers told him what to say to add controvesy to the show and to make him stand out. Even if you wactch the rest of the show Tyra says how he may be playing for the cameras.
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Tyra’s show is known to be scripted.
Hmm…yet another diversion into color issues. How about that solutions post?
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Herneith, you asked:
“Slappz, why did you read these books?”
Yes.
Have you read any of them? Or anything by Ralph Ellison or Richard Wright?
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I’m sure there is a little extra groove in my step, with “Theme from Shaft” playing in my head.
Check this scene out from “The Wire”…
Herc: “He’s a complicated man. And the only one who understands him is his woman.”
Carver: “Seek therapy.”
Now what would Franz Fanon have to say about that I wonder?
😀
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@slappz:
I have read both Ellison and Wright. ‘Invisible Man’ is one of my favourite books. As for the other ones no. I didn’t ask you if you read them, I asked you why you read them.
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Yeah Slappz what you know about Iceberg Slim lol Ive read a couple of his books too
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herneith, you asked:
“I asked you why you read them.”
I read pulp fiction as well as better stuff. Goines is a pulp writer who told a few entertaining tales from the streets.
Ellison was a great writer. Wright was a total sucker for communism and Native Son was proof of his political delusions.
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Shaft, along with Marvin Gaye was one of my first crushes. I would spend hours listening to both albums (yeah, I am THAT old) and staring at the pictures of Richard Roundtree and brother Marvin. It was much later that I saw Shaft, Trouble Man or any other blaxploitation films. I think that Denzel chanelled Shaft for his role in Training Day. Although the characters were very different, Denzel had that Shaft swagger down pat.
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@eshowoman:
On a previous poll, https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/poll-the-most-gorgeous-man-in-the-world/ conducted on this blog, of the ‘best looking men, Richard Roundtree would have been one I would of chosen although it is nigh on impossible to choose as there are TOO many good looking men out there! Others that come to mind from that era are Fred Williamson, Jim Brown(maybe a little earlier), that caught my fancy.
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@Slappz:
Yes I agree with you in regards to Ellison. It is a pity he didn’t write more. I believe he experienced the curse of having written a book which was a hard ‘act’ to follow at the start of his career. As for Richard Wright, so what if he was writing from a communistic viewpoint? Enjoy the book for it’s plot and writing. If I took that particular view, I wouldn’t read because the particular writer didn’t espouse my viewpoint! If I took that tact in regards to ‘literature, I would never have read books by Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs to name but a few.
As for Goines and that genre, my equivalent of purely ‘entertaining books would be the ‘bodice rippers’, otherwise known as romance fiction, fiction is right, but entertaining none the less. I also find historical whodunits entertaining and in some instances educational for more often than not I will seek out historical books on the time period in question. So they serve some purpose other than entertainment I suppose.
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A classic American film and one of my alltime favorites.
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