Shaft.

In the spring, I watched a series of Blaxploitation movies to get a sense of what was going on with all of that. The first one I watched was Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which became my favorite because of how weird and open and strange and hopeful it was—so different than the movies that tried to emulate it afterward. It was the kind of movie that could only be made once maybe, whose magic couldn’t be reached except by accident almost, by chance. 

I watched Gordon Park’s Shaft after that—I love his photography— and felt a little disappointed by how it seemed to try to take the aesthetic of Sweet Sweetback—the baaad motherfucker—without taking the politics of the movie: the police are not our friends. Shaft is a Black cop and a lot of the villains that he fights against are Black people, and the whole thing gets kind of muddied up because of that, most of its conversation on race too clean cut and forced. I missed the whimsical weirdness of Sweet Sweetback, how it was both political and somehow also in a world outside of that. 

Now, I’m writing an essay on John Singleton, mainly on Boyz n the Hood, but I wanted to watch more of his work to get a better sense of all of the stories he’s told and worked with. So I found myself watching Shaft again, this time the 2000 version, the Singleton take. My expectations were kind of low because I didn’t see how he could take this thing that was so specific and drastically change it in a compelling way. I leaned back on my couch, prepared to endure the same kind of aesthetic, the same kind of message, the same kind of sexualization of all women and prizing of White women, but from the very beginning of the film, I was surprised.

It opens with what you think is the dead body of a Black man (predictable), but look, he’s still alive, and what happened to him? He was taunted by a White racist in a bar when he was out with his White friends, and he picked up a knife and went over there to confront him, and his friends were scared because they thought he was going to stab the White man (predictable), but instead, he cuts holes into a napkin, drapes the napkin over the White man’s face, a makeshift KKK mask because if he’s going to be it, why not commit?

That’s how I knew this film wasn’t going to be the flashier twin of the old one. Throughout the movie, Singleton subverts our expectations of both Black and White people, allowing them to be problematic in moments without being fixed in that attitude. They have the ability to learn, to change, to shapeshift, like the (less) racist White man in Shaft’s police force, who kept calling a Black guy he brought in Cornbread until Shaft called him out on it. The White cop was not sorry, didn’t even feel bad, but later, he helps Shaft sabotage some guy’s plan, a hoodie pulled over his head, the White cop robs someone, becoming, for a moment, the kind of person he’s been talking down to this whole time. Then there’s the White woman who could help convict the White racist from the bar, but instead hides for decades and when she finally has the chance to speak out, the film does not make her into a hero. The Black people in this movie can save themselves, and will do so, for better or for worse. There is dignity in this movie. There is the ability to fight back against America’s racism without getting pulled into the undertow, swallowed up. 

I love the breakdown of stereotypes, I love the agency, and I especially love the minimal sexualization in this movie whose original was all about it. Vanessa Williams plays Shaft’s work partner without ever becoming his love interest and not because he doesn’t respect her or find her beautiful, but because you can work with a woman without sleeping with her. There are no hot White women in this movie that are flaunted as a prize. If there’s any kind of love in this film, it’s the love for the Black community, maybe, for the people in it, regardless of the mistakes they make. (‘70s Shaft has a cameo as this Shaft’s Uncle, and even he is written with more dignity now, more respect for himself and the people around him.)

There’s also this moment where one of the main villains loses his brother, and he—this tough guy, this king pin—is wildly messy in his grief, but allowed to be, to cry, to buckle at the knees, to rage, and this is something I love about Singleton in general. He does not separate strength from vulnerability in his male characters. He allows them to break down, and often, this is when they are the closest to seeing themselves, to understanding what’s going on inside their bodies and their minds. 

This remake of Shaft is great. The plot is taut and thoughtful. It doesn’t preach anything, but it does rework some of the older messages, and—maybe most notably—it allows everyone the chance, at least once, to change their minds about who they want to be. 

Image: Paramount Pictures