Milonguita 

It seems we have reached a period of cinema where nostalgia marketing is at an all-time high. A good third of new releases are remakes, sequels, or re-imaginings of pre-existing successful films. It’s no secret that the motivation for reboots is easy money. The concept being if it was a hit once, it will be a hit again. Similarly, film studios have a habit of giving beloved films culturally sensitive ‘updates’ to concepts deemed unfavorable in retrospect. This is often accomplished by the text going out of its way to specifically call attention to the outdated messaging and the corrections being inserted.

So when I witnessed a trailer for a Shaft remake in 2019, I had to wonder, what themes would be considered in need of a 2019 makeover? I admit it could use a rework — the original movie’s plot is pretty flat, and the appeal basically hangs itself entirely around Shaft’s charisma. But to me, Shaft is most notably a time capsule of the Blaxploitation genre, which has a complicated past.

Depending on who you ask, it’s a film movement of either empowerment or demeaning exploitation. But undeniably, blaxploitation was a response to the lack of Black-centered stories in film. Prior to the 1970s, Black characters in film were either squeaky clean and morally perfect Sydney Poitier types, or worse, relegated to side characters who only served to uplift the white protagonist with little characterization of their own. Black directors such as Melvin Van Peebles took it upon themselves to provide an alternative to these sanitized, white-pleasing roles. In comes Marvin Van Peebles’ low-budget film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, a film “dedicated to the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the man.” This also set the standard for most blaxploitation tropes: superstud badass protagonists, excessive violence, explicit sex scenes, inner-city crime — sometimes drug-related, all set to an ever-present funk/soul soundtrack.

But most importantly,Sweetbackis a story of a wise-cracking, ultra-cool Black man from a poor background who fights against police authorities and wins. This sentiment, working in tandem with the rise of the Black Power movement, would become a staple of the genre, and no doubt a part of its appeal to Black audiences — even to those who refuted the more exploitative elements.

Shaft (1971) was put into production after the unexpected box-office success of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Studio executives saw an opportunity as the trend of low-budget all-Black cast action films began to rise. MGM had secured the rights to the Novel Shaft by Ernest Tidyman and hired Tidyman and John D. F. Black to convert the story into a screenplay. They recruited George Parks to direct the film and Isaac Hayes to compose the iconic soundtrack. MGM manufactured Shaft to mimic the style and provocative energy of Van Peeple’s flick but removed the "overcoming the white man" elements as well as the full-frontal pornography.

Now, John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is, in effect, a bad mother-shut-yo-mouth. He’s a well-dressed private eye with no fear and a quick tongue. The man even gets a bullet removed from his chest and barely feels the pain.

He does his business on his own terms, and with impeccable skill that leaves NYPD with no choice but to let him get away with stunts like throwing a man out of a glass window. However, Shaft’s enemy in this film isn’t really "the man" (a.k.a systemic racism), and the NYPD doesn’t so much repress Shaft as resent him because they rely on Shaft’s street knowledge. Instead, Tidyman and Black, trying to make Shafta mainstream hit, used the Italian mafia as the main source of conflict — a much more palatable choice for wide consumption seeing as crooked cops would have been a bit too “controversial.”