Black Nationalism in Shaft

Looking at Gordon Parks’s 1971 film Shaft, there are layers of sub context present in the film. Specifically looking at how the overall circumstances of the film’s titular character and production fit into the larger historical moment. Created concurrent with the Black Power movement, the film is split by a contrast between its themes and its production. The film was part of the blaxploitation era, a genre of film that gave black directors a chance to make films about black characters with agency, but also courted negative stereotypes of urban black communities. Park’s film can be interpreted in a black nationalist context, but it is also a film driven by Hollywood’s dominant perceptions of blackness. The film, which is part of the larger framework of the blaxploitation cinema of the 1970s, conveys a message of black power by subverting the stereotypes produced by the dominant cinema machine.

   The film places private investigator John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) in the middle of a dispute between Harlem mobsters and the Italian Mafia and uses the situation to embrace blackness. Made by a black director with a majority black cast for a black audience, the film embraces the “for us by us” aspect of black nationalism. Shaft’s choice to side with the Harlem Mobsters (who are opposing the Italian Mafia) instead of the white police mirrors the black nationalism. Even though Shaft does not condone the actions of the Harlem mobsters, he recognizes that white mobsters moving into Harlem would be worse for the black community and that siding with the police would open the door for the white mobsters. Examining this within the larger historical moment, the film is echoing the black power movement’s emphasis of building black institutions. 

    Reclaiming blackness was one of the main aspects of the black power movement, and using detective John Shaft, the film works to reclaim black masculinity. He’s level headed and street smart, able to outmaneuver both the white cops and the numerous mobsters, all while picking up women. Simply put, Shaft is cool. This character construction, working in the larger context of Shaft definitively standing by the black community in the film, works in the “black is beautiful” context of the black power movement. This also contrasts the dominant cinema portrayals of black masculinity in film prior to this era. Prior to this, black men in film were portrayed as either sexually violent, submissive/performative, or as part of the Talented Tenth. By making Shaft a clever, cool, and cunning detective, not only does the film towards the agency of black men, but it also works to create space for different concepts of black masculinity that were not represented by prior cinema.

    White society has a sizable impact on the film and its construction. As we read this film with a black nationalist context, the exploitative aspect of its production must also be considered. While it is a film that gives power and control to black artists, it is within the larger Hollywood framework that is dictated by the white owned, profit centric major studios. As such, white perceptions of black people in America, such as the idea of black people as prone to crime and hyper-sexuality, are exploited by the film. These manifest as the Harlem mobsters and Shaft’s sexual prowess. The inner city crime portrayed by the film’s black gangsters, fits into the larger stereotypes of black men in America (being criminals and thugs) that continue to exist to this day. So while it is a piece of cinema that empowers some, it comes with the cost of exploitation of stereotypes as well.

    Subversion of dominant ideology is also present within the sub contexts of Shaft, as the film uses the exploitative stereotypes to make a larger argument about black society in a White America. The systems and structures of America inherently facilitate racial inequality. This is shown in the stereotypes courted by the film. Shaft, however, subverts these structures through Shaft’s interactions with the police. Though the police attempt to have Shaft do all of the work within the black community for them, he uses his agency to stand by the black community and defy the white power structures attempting to control him and the clack community. Read in the context of black nationalism, the Harlem mobsters and stereotypes portrayed in the film are simply the product of systemic inequality created by dominant, White society. Shaft uses its black nationalist sub texts as a way of subverting its seemingly exploitative context.

The exploitative context of Shaft is part of what makes it such an intriguing film because it takes negative stereotypes of the black community and uses them to provide the means of success for the protagonist. In the end, Shaft and the black community he chooses, win. This narrative takes the exploited stereotypes placed on black society by the dominant ideological machine, and subverts them. Resolving the dichotomies between black nationalist and exploitative contexts of the film, allows one to read the film as a larger critique of white society in a black nationalist context. White America continually and systematically oppresses black people. John Shaft chooses the black community that exists outside of normal, white society because white society creates the structures that press black people. Shaft lends itself to a black nationalist reading, placing it in conversation with the larger historical moment that saw the proliferation of black power and nationalism.

wc: 904
Pledged: Phillips Hutchison

Parks, Gordon, dir. Shaft. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1971.