Blaxploitation – (n.) a term for a genre of movies, made particularly in the 1970s, that largely featured Black actors and were aimed at Black audiences. Examples include: Hit Man, Super Fly, Cleopatra Jones, The Mack, Willie Dynamite, Foxy Brown, and of course, Shaft.

Growing up a suburban, nearly-translucent white boy in Oklahoma, the closest I came to experiencing the Blaxploitation genre was Madea Goes to Camp. I knew some things through references in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but I just assumed these were movies that weren’t meant for me. Depending on who you talk to, Shaft might be more for me than for Black people (written by white people who intended the film version to be white, John Shaft is considered very honky-adjacent), and sure enough, it was love at first sight. But who can blame me? They say this cat, Shaft, is a bad mother (shut your mouth!).

John Shaft is a private detective living in New York City, specifically Greenwich Village. You know, where folk music was discovered (I wonder if Shaft is a fan of Simon & Garfunkel)? He starts the movie off by fighting some mobsters, just to show us that he won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. He learns that Bumpy Jonas, a mob boss in Harlem, wants to hire him to find his daughter whom he believes has been abducted on her way to college. Bumpy tells Shaft to find a man named Ben Buford, but when he finds Ben, the two men are shot at by an unknown shooter. They soon discover that they are caught in the middle of a power struggle between two mobs, Bumpy’s and the Italians. Eventually, Shaft learns that Bumpy’s daughter is being held at a hotel. He and Ben and some of Ben’s men infiltrate the hotel under the guise of employees, determined to return Bumpy’s daughter to her home.

I mean, I’m not trying to belittle the story here, but that’s the plot to every film noir ever. Literally, the only changes are…cosmetic. And that’s where I think a lot of criticism for Shaft comes from. It doesn’t truly get to the heart of the Black experience, it simply puts blackface on a white movie. Now, while I understand that take, I don’t fully agree with it. I think a lot of credit should go to Richard Roundtree for what he brings to the table as John Shaft. The way he talks, the way he moves – none of it is like how Humphrey Bogart would do it. Once Richard Roundtree was cast in Shaft, the whole dynamic of the film changed. The man literally invented “swag”. Casting Roundtree was the absolute stroke of genius that Gordon Parks made as director of the film.

Gordon Parks was a very talented man. He only made five feature films, but he was also a renowned author, poet, composer and photographer, and he had a great influence on many who came after him, particularly Spike Lee and John Singleton. He’s even the namesake of a Sesame Street character. With Parks at the helm, making the decisions, Shaft became much more than just a film noir marketed to a Black audience; it became a pioneer. Also, that score is excellent. Shaft is the blueprint for every Blaxploitation film that came after it. And Shaft is a complicated man. Can you dig it?

Bonus Review: Buck and the Preacher

What a perfect film to pair Shaft with. Buck and the Preacher is all at once a Western classic, a blaxploitation film, and one of the few media portrayals of “Exodusters”, post-Civil War African American settlers who went through hostile Native land and around white plantation owners to make a new home in Kansas Territory (something Gordon Parks would know about considering he was descended from them – in fact, just for another recommendation, Gordon Parks’ directorial effort before Shaft was called The Learning Tree, and it’s about the descendants of Exodusters in the 1920s). This is Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, and he also pulls double duty as our hero, Buck – a cowboy who acts as Moses to these Exodusters. Along the way, he runs into Reverend Willis Oaks Rutherford (a wily and devilish Harry Belafonte), whom he enlists to help him ward off a group of white raiders.

Buck and the Preacher took the same philosophy and bare bones of Shaft and transferred them over to an even more predominately-white genre. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, the film wasn’t the success it should have been when it was released. But that’s why I’ll always recommend it whenever I can. It’s an exciting thrill ride that proved Sidney Poitier was as much a force of nature behind the camera as he was in front of it, and that alone is reason enough to keep it in the eyes of the public. Fortunately for us, it’s also entertaining as all get-out.