I had a very hard time "dissecting" Shaft this week beyond thinking it was a funny and entertaining movie about this bad-ass black man. I feel like the reading and class discussion helped me out a little, though, so here goes nothing...
One of the most interesting things to me in both watching the film and reading the article was the idea of the 'power of masculinity' within the movie. The article said that since Shaft is black and not white, therefore 'inferior', he must use his dominance of masculinity over femininity instead to prove his power. Shaft's relationships with the women in the movie really pissed me off, but it also makes so much sense to me in the context of the time and woman's "role" in culture at the time.
When we first see Shaft with his "girlfriend" (Ellie, I think her name was?), I almost thought that maybe Shaft had this ultra sweet and sensitive side and was in this committed, loving relationship. Thinking that he could be this hard, bad-ass cop by day and sweet, sensitive boyfriend by night made me really love him. I saw the pictures of Shaft and Ellie sitting on the coffee table beside them while they had the foreplay on the couch and I thought they only confirmed my belief that they were in a steady, loving relationship. But nope, turns out Shaft is a promiscuous womanizer who is letting this woman put obsessive pictures of him in her apartment and tell him she loves him, and he's just getting laid behind her back. Although this made me like his character less, like I said before, it really made sense that Shaft took advantage of his dominance over women in a time and society where he couldn't take his full "power as a man" because he wasn't white.
The other thing that intrigued me that was touched upon in both the article and class on Thursday was the argument over whether Shaft as a character was a "role model for the black community" or just a "product of the white studio imagination and merely a 'black-skinned replica' of a white action hero". I don't think I'm really entitled to answer that question, not having seen enough white action films or black action films to form an opinion, but what I think is really fascinating about the situation is the time period the film was made in and how much that effects the representation of the character. Filmed in the early 70s, Shaft came into being right after the Civil Rights movement-- racial tensions were still so high. I feel like the character was an extremely risky one for Richard Roundtree to portray-- he took the chance of offending white audiences with a character that is "too black" and the chance of offending black audiences for a black character who misrepresented the race. I wish I could know what the actor himself thought of the character. What do you guys think about this question?
I wish I could do a little more comparison of Shaft vs. typical action heroes of our movies today as we did in class, but I feel like I'm completely under-qualified to do so. Actions movies really aren't my thing. I'm interested to see what the rest of the group might have to say on that though. I suppose this is all for now!
(By the way, do not image search "shaft women" or "shaft ellie" when looking for pictures for this blog...)
yeah, I definitely had a hard time coming up with a blog worth discussing so I agree with you and also the class discussion really helped me out. I applaud Roundtree because he really did portray Shaft as a strong, proud, and confident black man in America which I assume there were a lot of at this time. This probably got him in trouble and brought a lot of criticism on him and his film from white movie goers.
ReplyDeletehahaha thanks for the disclaimer at the end of your blog, that was funny.
I know! that whole relationship deal that you thought was going on is exactly what I thought was going on. I totally agree with your anger when seeing this because i remember thinking" aww he may be just a push over with his cute wife", but then I felt as if out of nowhere he was sleeping around. what the hell is up with that? now i know it even says in the intro music that he is a sex machine but hey... it really fooled me haha
ReplyDeletealso on top of this i really liked your use of the article i thought you made some really good points. great post!
I thought it was interesting reading a woman's thoughts on this film and I think that this whole movie was to play that domination of woman due to his color so I think that you are right. I think that he is a composite like the pen cup scene and it kind of shows the only way really that a black man could get ahead at the time was to not bee completely "black."
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you mentioned the time period and how that gave reason for, or at least explained, why Shaft’s behavior towards women was the way it was. Not that it was entirely due to the time period (I think that it was mainly because of Shaft’s character), but I think that people might have looked at what Shaft did to women differently in the 1970’s than they do now.
ReplyDelete“...he took the chance of offending white audiences with a character that is "too black" and the chance of offending black audiences for a black character who misrepresented the race.”
This was a really nice comment and brings up ideas that I didn’t even think about when I watched the film or even when I wrote about the film. I’m not sure how I feel about the character in terms of whether he is just a black version of a white superhero or a black role model. I agree that this was definitely a bold move for Richard Roundtree, considering the fact that this was released in the early 1970’s and was one of the first films of the genre. Nevertheless, looking back, I think that this was an extremely positive moment for cinema and society as it marked the first time when a black man was portrayed as being a dominant and iconic “super” hero.
Your last line made me actually lol. And this is a really, really good post. You explore the issues of racial representation, gender, time period, and action movie convention really well, and make connections that make a lot of sense--all the more strong by the fact that you're not all that familiar with the genre. And your point about Shaft being promiscuous by having power in a society in which he is otherwise largely powerless is very well taken. Hard to tell if he was really cheating on his girlfriend though, or whether we were meant to see that he really did have a committed relationship and really could keep a woman happy in a domestic situation, but also be so much man that he could get away with sleeping around too. It being the 70s, and a few years before second-wave feminism, that might have been the case.
ReplyDelete