Shaft and the Era of Blaxploitation
Last year, Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries acquired items to form a new collection: the Black Film and Television Collection. In honor of Black History Month, we’re shining a spotlight on a different item from this collection each week.
In last week’s post, we discussed the lobby card for Oscar Micheaux’s 1938 film Swing, starring Cora Green. Our next spotlight is on original materials from the 1971 film Shaft, which includes the script used in the production in the movie, which was a defining entry in the Blaxploitation genre.
What is “Blaxploitation?”
We’ll start with the obvious: the word itself blends “Black” and “exploitation” and was coined by Beverly Hills-Hollywood NAACP president Junius Griffin in 1972 and wasn’t in the context of praise.
Blaxploitation movies are made by black filmmakers with black actors for black audiences. They portray strong black characters who were the heroes and leads. During the mid- to early 1970s, more than 200 movies of the genre were made, in subgenres such as horror, westerns, comedy, drama, and action.
Rather than trying to dispel stereotypes, movies like Shaft reinforce them. And while the movies were popular with audiences, that approach did create some critics, like Junius Griffin and other NAACP members.
Exploiting a lurid loophole
The Hays Code ruled Hollywood from 1934 to 1968, enforcing a strict set of moral standards for films. But filmmakers tend to be creative people, and “exploitation films” were the loophole they chose. If they depicted these offensive (and entertaining) subjects under the guise of a cautionary tale, they could get away with including them.
Over the years, court cases and boundary-breakers chipped away at the Hays Code. In 1968—the same year most history textbooks mark as the end of the Civil Rights Movement because it coincides with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) scrapped the Code in favor of the film rating system. It was into these unique circumstances that a new genre—Blaxploitation—was born.
John Shaft’s world
Shaft is an adaptation of Ernest Tidyman’s 1970 detective novel, directed by Gordon Parks. Opening on an urban panorama overlaid with a funk soundtrack, the movie stars Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, a stylish and suave private detective in New York who is approached by the boss of a Harlem organized crime family (Moses Gunn) in search of his kidnapped daughter (Sherri Brewer). In the course of his mission, Shaft dispatches mafiosos, teams up with activists in the Black Power Movement, and delivers enough one-liners to cement his legacy as one of the iconic characters of 20th century film.
Even a brief glimpse at the original movie script’s pages (like the one shown above) showcase the swagger and bombast of the protagonist, who would go on to anchor multiple sequels. The movie’s iconic theme song, written and recorded by Isaac Hayes, has been sampled and reused dozens of times since the movie’s release, and the film itself has been preserved by the Library of Congress. It provides one of the early blueprints for the Blaxploitation genre, which continued to flourish throughout the 1970s.
It’s well worth noting that while Shaft’s director, stars, and core audience were Black, its writers were both white men. This information certainly complicates how many viewers receive the film’s representation of Black characters—and those complications became the focus of blaxploitation’s most vocal detractors.
Blaxploitation may have had its heyday in the 1970s, but it’s never truly ended. The genre was carried into the 21st century by the generation of filmmakers it inspired, including John Singleton, Spike Lee, and the Hughes Brothers.
Our next entry will be a look at Cheryl Dunye’s 1997 film The Watermelon Woman, and the growing influence of Black women in the film industry.
---Natalee Dawson, Communication Coordinator at UIowa Libraries with assistance from Anne Bassett, Liz Riordan, and Jerome Kirby
