He Is a "Bad Mother*S%@!#": Shaft and Contemporary Black Masculinity
2004; Saint Louis University; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1945-6182
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Gender, and Advertising
ResumoThe essence of is performance. And the essence of the performance has grown increasingly violent. -Jackson Katz, Tough Guise (1999) America is currently caught up in an odd nostalgia for the 1970s, and American popular culture is now overflowing with the simulacra of that decade: The music, clothing, hairstyles, and even television shows of the 1970s have all been recycled and commodified in some form in recent years. Among the cultural artifacts being resurrected are the popular blaxploitation films of the era, including the one that many believe launched the blaxploitation cycle, Gordon Parks's Shaft. As is well known, a powerful mythos surrounds this film, based on the popularity--with both black and white audiences--of the title character, as well as the great financial success of the film. These qualities, coupled with the nostalgia for all things '70s, likely prompted executives at Paramount Studios to give a green light to the $46 million budget for director John Singleton's remake--or, rather, his update--of Shaft for a new generation. Apparently, it was a wise investment: According to Variety, the film earned $70.3 million domestically and another $32.6 million overseas, for a total of $102.9 million worldwide (Shaft 2000). Given the moderate success of the film, particularly here in the U.S., one must ask: What are we to make of the resurgent interest in blaxploitation films in American culture, and how are we to receive this newly erected Shaft? In an article discussing both versions of Shaft and the legacy of blaxploitation films, Richard Maynard offers this caveat: ... before the new Shaft makes us all fondly remember the brief era of the supercool Superflys, we might pause and take a look at what we're celebrating. Indeed, we might. Since representations of black men in American film so often rely upon a particularly overdetermined image of black masculinity--an image now widely on display in American culture--I think it is imperative that we give the issue of and Singleton's Shaft a close and critical examination. A particular type of black masculinity--one defined mainly by an urban aesthetic, a nihilistic attitude, and an aggressive posturing--has made its way into the cultural mainstream in the last two decades. Though there are numerous contributing factors, this image of black has developed largely as a result of the commodification of hip-hop culture, and the ubiquity of rap music and the videomercials that sell it. More specifically, it is the result of the popularity of the urban gangsta and his embodiment in the gangsta rap of artists such as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and Tupak Shakur. In this same time period, we have also seen an increase in the production of African American films, which have often utilized rap or hip-hop music for both aesthetic and thematic purposes. Consequently, some film criticism has focused specifically on the question of black and how this identity has been reflected on screen, mainly in the so-called hood films of the 1990s, such as Boyz N the Hood, New Jack City, Juice, and Menace II Society. However, few essays examining such racial representations in contemporary film seem to relate the problems of black men to a larger crisis of masculinity in American culture (Beavers 256-57). But framing a discussion of the dilemma of black men only in terms of race does a disservice to the issue at hand because it minimizes or altogether ignores the influence of class, gender, and sexual preference upon the cultural constructions of masculinity. In her discussion of in Singleton's film Boyz N the Hood, Robyn Wiegman astutely notes that the black male is stranded between the competing--at times overdetermining--logics of race and gender (174): On the one hand, as a black within a racist social and political hierarchy, he has neither power nor privilege; yet, on the other hand, as a male within a still patriarchal power structure, he has both. …
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