Shaftized
How the movie “Shaft” creates a love for Blaxploitation films.
Shaftized - A euphoric infatuation with the genre of Blaxploitation in film that develops after watching the film Shaft.
I was Shaftized as a baby so I really don’t remember how it felt at first, but I do know how it has felt ever since. The story of the 1971 movie Shaft is centered around an African American private detective named John Shaft, portrayed by Richard Roundtree, who was hired by a New York gangster to rescue his daughter from the clutches of the Italian mafia. Along the way Shaft battles the relations of racial and social issues that plague the Black community.
Like many people before me, especially Black people, after seeing Shaft as the earliest of Blaxploitation films I instantly fell in love with the genre and everything else it had to offer like the films of Pam Grier and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson. Like Shaft, their films also centered around crime and the racial and social commentary of the inner city, I was Shaftized. It’s called being Shaftized because like being baptized, it means you’ve been born into a new world and a new life and in this case that is Blaxploitation which was launched by the influence of Shaft. In time the rest of cinema would be Shaftized into the world of Blaxploitation, evolving the world of Black cinema into the epic dominance that it has today.
~~This story is dedicated to Shaft actor Richard Roundtree who passed away yesterday. Thank you for revolutionizing Black Cinema.
About the Creator
Joe Patterson
Hi I'm Joe Patterson. I am a writer at heart who is a big geek for film, music, and literature, which have all inspired me to be a writer. I rap, write stories both short and long, and I'm also aspiring to be an author and a filmmaker.
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Comments (1)
Oh no, that's so sad. May his soul rest in peace. It was so nice of you to write this as a tribute to him!