January 24, 2010 at 3:11 P.M. Numerous essays have been altered, some have been damaged through the removal of words and sentences. I will struggle to make all necessary corrections as quickly as possible. These crimes are the direct result, I believe, of abuse of government power in a society that criminalizes censorship and lectures to the world concerning tolerance of different points of view. You must decide whether we are sincere about those public pronouncements. Most of the world seems to believe that we are no longer serious about opposing censorship, especially of expressions critical of American power.
January 20, 2010 at 2:06 P.M. Intrusions into my computer have obstructed the updating feature of my security system. I will try throughout the day to update my protection.
January 20, 2010 at 10:53 A.M. Lots of cyberwar last night has persuaded me to profile Nydia Hernandez, Esq. and several Cuban-American lawyers as well as politicians in future essays. "Error" inserted overnight has been corrected.
January 19, 2010 at 2:20 P.M. A complete scan of my system revealed that the updating feature of my security system has been blocked. I will continue to run scans throughout the day in an effort to provide updates of my security system. I surmise that this attack is a message that, regardless of who is sworn-in as "Governor in New Jersey," cyberwarfare will continue. I will continue to struggle. A previous effort to reach this site was obstructed. I received the message: "Blogger cookies disabled." ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey" and "How Censorship Works in America.")
January 19, 2010 at 11:20 A.M. "Judith Butler and Gender Theory" was vandalized, while this essay was also defaced overnight. I cannot say how many other writings have been altered or damaged. Perhaps this wave of attacks is a protest against the swearing-in ceremony for Christopher Christie in Trenton. The Mafia is not thrilled at the election of Mr. Christie. ("Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless" and "Anne Milgram Does It Again.")
More sabotage, "errors" inserted, obstructions of access to the Internet and my sites. Many essays vandalized. I am struggling. Perhaps I struck a nerve with my identification of Senator Bob and a shady Secaucus Construction firm. August 8, 2008 at 2:51 P.M.
This essay was plagiarized by the consummate wordsmith, Manohla Dargis. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")
"Shaft," Gordon Parks (Director), starring Richard Roundtree, co-starring Moses Gunn, screenplay by Ernest Tidyman and John D.F. Black, based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman, music by Isaac Hayes. (MGM, 1971-1973, Director's Cut DVD http://warnervideo.com/ ). The soundtrack by Issac Hayes is highly recommended.
The early seventies was a dark time in America. The sixties' revolution was incomplete. A mood of despair had set in as the hopefulness of the "Summer of Love" decade crashed into the grim realities of recession, oil crisis, high crime rates and visible collapse in Vietnam. The African-American struggle entered a new phase as the idealism of Dr. King faltered against political corruption and the illegalities of the Nixon Administration's war on the Constitution. Culture was an underappreciated battleground. American identity was reinvented in ways that people did not appreciate at the time.
As a teenager during the seventies, I remember the decade well. This cultural transition (from "peace and love" to "black power") is evidenced by an important and neglected American film, Shaft. This movie ushered in an era that would have seemed impossible only five years before it was made, an era whose contributions to our national and global imagination go a long way towards explaining Senator Barack Obama's real chance of becoming the first African-American president in our history. (This essay appeared before the election of President Obama, but not before I bought my "Obama" t-shirt.)
Why do I say that? Shaft was the first movie to appropriate American archetypal images, recreating the options for African-Americans and (even more importantly) everyone's imagination of American political-mythic forms. Everybody -- certainly all of my friends -- wanted to be "John Shaft." I had the hat, the outfits, platform shoes, even mastering Richard Roundtree's walk.
Before you laugh, remember that the President of the United States is a Jungian archetype associated with the earliest images of heros in Western civilization, from Odysseus to Philip Marlowe. Many of these archetypes may be traced to ancient African civilizations, not only Egypt. Recall President Kennedy's funeral procession and the ancient rituals of Greek and Persian heros associated with the riderless horse. This ritual signals both the loss of the hero and his continued presence among his people. This is an important point to remember on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. ("Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Philosophy of Science" and soon, "Dr. King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail.")
Shaft appeared only a few years after the King and Kennedy assassinations. Heros were desperately needed then. They are even more vital today -- and far more scarse.
In 2008, it is finally possible for the U.S. Presidency to be filled not only by an African-American man, but (alternatively) by a woman. These candidacies are, partly, a result of cinematic reimaginings of our collective subconscious language that are nearly forty years old. Jane Fonda's strong iconic film presence must exist before you will see someone like Senator Hillary Clinton as President of the United States.
In 2010, I think that President Obama merits high marks as U.S. President, despite inheriting a catastrophe from the previous administration. Much depends on what transpires over the next few years.
John Shaft was a hero in a genre that was already familiar to audiences and, therefore, non-threatening -- private eye, Noir mysteries -- in relation with every iconic film in this much-loved American tradition, from "Farewell My Lovely" to "The Big Sleep," to "Blade Runner" and, in a way, "Something Wild." American detectives are distant cousins of Europe's knights on horseback. There must be a John Shaft in the American imagination before there will be a Barack Obama Presidency in the United States. Incidentally, both Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton have loyal supporters in the Latino community, as they do in every other community.
I will review Shaft, a film which made many non-blacks in America wish to be African-Americans -- maybe for the first time in the nation's history -- ushering in a society in which previously excluded people became heros and idols for the young, especially for young men of all colors and ethnicities. I also thought it would be great to be Bruce Lee. Shaft made a lot of non-blacks rich. More African-Americans should share in the proceeds of classic films from another era, made possible by their talents but not contributing to the artists' enrichment. I alternated between wanting to be Walt Frazier and John Shaft -- ideally, a combination of the two.
Shaft is a great B-movie, transformed into an A-movie by its political and cultural significance in terms of America's racial history. Many B-movies have become classics, including a touchstone for Shaft and the greatest Noir film (in my opinion) "Out of the Past."
Shaft gestures at several great movies in the American canon, while pointing at the hard realities of city life "seen" through its images, establishing visual references to admired directors' works, from Orson Wells director and performer ("Citizen Kane"/"The Third Man") to John Huston ("The Maltese Falcoln") -- all are glimpsed in Shaft.
Among African-American film heros, my favorites include: Sydney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, Denzel Washington and (any resemblance to me is coincidental -- Chris Rock), Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby and in direct continuity with Richard Roundtree's "John Shaft," today there are African-born Djimon Hounsu and Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, and especially Will Smith as all-American action hero. By the time, Will Smith is an action hero with global appeal in the fine sci-fi movies "I Robot" and the mythic-political "I am Legend" -- carrying multi-million dollar movies to a nice profit -- it has become possible to elect an African-American president.
There is trouble in the city as cool private eye, John Shaft (played perfectly by Richard Roundtree) establishes an independent relationship with the police. He can't help them. They're on their own. The cops are usually clueless about what is going on. No African-American screen persona -- with the possible exception of Sydney Poitier in the classic, "In the Heat of the Night" -- establishes such a dismissive attitude to the authorities as John Shaft. The cops and old time mobsters, Vic Androzzi (Charles Cioffi) and Ben Buford (Christopher St. John), are throwbacks to a different era, a time when they could still "muscle a guy and get him to talk."
I don't advise you to try that rough stuff with John Shaft. It isn't only that he'll kick the cops' asses; worse, his lawyers will sue the city in the morning. References to the "Young Lords" will mystify the kids. The Young Lords were a Puerto Rican and Latino political organization and, some say, street gang, in the early seventies that were like the Black Panthers for the African-American community. The Young Lords did a lot of good work in New York.
New York is a much more dangerous and sleazy city in this movie than it has become since. Had anyone told me that Disney would open a store on 42nd Street in 1975, I would not have believed it. And I would have been horrified. I am appalled at the loss of the "colorful" element that filled mid-town during the seventies. Most of the street people have become attorneys and moved to New Jersey. No one can explain to those who weren't here what it was like walking in the West Village, at 3:30 A.M., after a night of club-hopping and a little "tea party" at an (allegedly) underground afterhours club. "You gotta check your weapons." I expected more "errors" inserted by now. You guys in New Jersey are getting old.
The person sitting next to you at such an establishment might be Lou Reed or Debbie Harry. Harlem and the Bronx were exploding with the music everyone would be listening to during the next decade in America. Great things are happening now, today, not only in the Bronx and Manhattan, also in Brooklyn and Queens, where many artists have found affordable places to live in order to create their work. "If it's not happening in New York," the message is still true, "it's not happening."
Shaft is asked by the "Big Boss" to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter. It's always a beautiful woman to be rescued and a dragon or two that the "knight of sound heart" must slay. We are immediately reminded of everything from "Farewell My Lovely" to "The Glass Key," Arthurian "Romances" (a capital letter is deserved) and film versions of Scott's "Ivanhoe." A cultural earthquake is taking place as an African-American man is stepping into the archetypal hero's journey, centering himself and all African-Americans in the universal language of forms and images in the United States. This is powerful and important, politically and aesthetically.
The scene where Shaft is waiting naked for his love's return to an apartment that was very chic and daring for the early seventies -- a "pad" that now resembles a seedy dentist's waiting area -- could not have been played by white actors at the time. Today it would be a challenge for all but a few suburbanites. If it were me in that undressed condition, I'd wear the hat and platform shoes and nothing else -- except, perhaps, for the big shiny belts that were much favored during that era. "Horror show," you say?
The casual encounter between Shaft and a white woman of "easy virtue" as they used to say -- promiscuous men, like Mr. Spitzer, are rarely described as being of "easy virtue" -- was also breaking new ground. Yep, I definitely wanted to be John Shaft. No wonder all of my fellow students at high school suddenly made a dramatic transition to Shaft-inspired clothing and hummed the theme by Issac Hayes. Don't say anything about the word "Shaft."
Somehow, life rarely immitated art. Women at the time seemed to have a recording to play when approached by men at parties: "What is wrong with you?" ("Richard and I.")
Men commiserated with one another, even as they purchased more hats and platform shoes. Two scenes in this fast-paced film stand out: 1) the shot in the telephone booth, at night, as Detective Shaft walks away from the viewer is both a tribute to Orson Wells and Graham Greene in "The Third Man"; and 2) the shoot-'em-up on the stairway at the building where Shaft is to effectuate the rescue is a gesture in the direction of everything from Clint Eastwood's spaghetti Westerns to Bogey and Cagney, as well as the action genre to which Mr. Parks is contributing, the gangster flick. Mr. Parks is clearly a fan of "Public Enemy" and other thirties' gangster movies, choreographing action sequences with ironic camera distances and a smile.
Mr. Parks is playing in this movie. This explains his achievement. Mr. Parks -- like most African-American directors -- is saying to white critics, "I know the format and tradition." It is necessary for African-American film-makers to do this because people will assume that they do not know their traditions, taking it upon themselves to explain the obvious to someone who is clearly a master of the art form.
I recall an interview with Spike Lee where the young director mentioned a critic who pointed out that a shot of two people talking was cut off at the knees. It will not occur to mainstream critics that such an angle may be DELIBERATE. The director may be using this camera angle as a technique or comment on the scene: "The characters are in knee-deep," for example. An African-American director will be assumed to be making a mistake in such an image from an unusual angle; a white director will be hailed as a genius for including the same scene in his movie. Now you know why "errors" are inserted in my reviews, especially when they are better than what you will find in the mainstream media. Time for another inserted "error," Ms. Milgram?
I have experienced this sort of cretinous reaction to things that I have written for years. This is especially true in discussing philosophical matters. Persons with a tiny amount of knowledge of the subject, will presume to instruct me -- even when it is clear that I have read dozens of books dealing with the issue whereas they have not. Shaft is one of the films that makes this sort of condescension impossible in cinema. I hope. However, directors like John Singleton ("Higher Learning"), do not receive the big money opportunities that MUCH less talented people seem to get. By the way, I have no desire to direct or act, only to write. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
Think of a remake of a classic Noir film, say, "Out of the Past." Get Singleton to direct it. The ambiguous "dark" hero (Robert Mitchum in the original) is Djimun Hounsu; the female lead as a sinister femme fatal, is Christina Ricci (Ricci loves to be evil); the loving and good woman is Scarlett Johansson; the Big Boss in the criminal world is Michael Douglas, playing his father's role in the original. Beef up the Mexican scenes. Salma Hayek gets a part as an F.B.I. agent (of Mexican origin to get the Latino dollars) tracing the goings on south of the border.
You'll hear the cash register ringing. The movie can be brought in under budget without pricey special effects.
I am looking forward to seeing John Singleton's remake of Shaft, which I will review separately, along with a few other films by this director. Singleton works really well with Mark Whalberg, who would be great in a Western opposite Thandie Newton, co-starring Russell Crowe. The chemistry between those actors will be great. "Fort Apache"? As for John Shaft, "he's a bad motherfu ... only talking 'bout Shaft."
