By Vincent L. Hall
“You liked him before- so he’s back with more. Last time, he was nice-this time, he’s ice. If you wanna see Shaft score-you better, ask your mama again!” –Trailer for Shaft’s Big Score
Roger Ebert’s June 1972 critique of Shaft’s Big Score was more insightful than most. He deserves the credit for going be- yond the “black movie” label to weighing its value in film and culture.
“The creation of a movie super-hero is a tricky business. You’re not simply making an action movie; you’re creating a mythical character who has to be durable enough to survive maybe half a dozen sequels.
That was the case with “Shaft,” the incredibly successful movie about a Black private eye. The movie was made on a limited budget, and there were a lot of rough edges, but John Shaft captured enough imagination to take a million dollars out of the Roosevelt Theater alone last summer.
Ebert did a little coding. The Roosevelt Theatre was located at 2497 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, uptown New York. Shaft made a million dollars out of one theatre in Harlem in 1970 and encouraged investment in the genre.
“Shaft’s Big Score is intended as mass-audience escapist entertainment and works on that level better than ‘Shaft’ did,” says Ebert.
There is more to the Shaftian Trilogy than escapist entertainment, but Ebert’s point is well taken. Does it seem like I am fixated on the recent transition of Richard Roundtree? You damn right!
In a nation that labeled us from the Three-Fifths, to Colored, to Negro, to Black, to African American, Shaft’s character was significant. And that was when they weren’t calling us Nigger!
But Shaft’s iconic “badassery” forced White folks to put some respect on our name. John Shaft was too big and bad to be called “boy.”
Wow. Some of you are scratching your heads, so let me go back a paragraph and clue you in on the “Three Fifths Compromise.”
This clause (Article I, Section of the U.S. Constitution of 1787) declared that for purposes of representation in Congress, enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state. Obstacles to our right to vote are nothing new. Not even Shaft could change that!
Let me describe what 1972 felt like if you weren’t there.
This was back before air conditioning was common in Black households. You had to wet the water fan while grandmother used her hand-crafted quilt from a menagerie of scraps to make you a pallet. Even in poverty, you could lay down on the floor and sleep like you were in a “Sleep Number” bed. We made do!
In March of 1961, shortly after JFK took office, he signed Executive Order 10925, ordering the government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated equally during employment, without regard to their race.”
By 1970, college-educated Blacks were slowly and strategically promoted into the management ranks and “higher paying” positions.
Black veterans and unskilled laborers finally got jobs at the post office where their White counterparts had been for years. America’s middle class was dependent on good government jobs!
The Black Middle Class was burgeoning, and BEOG’s (Basic Equal Opportunity Grants) made college affordable until Ronald Reagan showed up in the 1980s.
Reagan gave the “shaft” to Blacks, organized labor, and anyone else who was not White and male. College grants, Social Security, Medicaid and Food Stamps were dramatically cut.
While Shaft was making his “Big Score,” his persona made it viable for us to see ourselves— and not just as cocky, streetwise private detectives. Shaft made us see ourselves as suave, debonair, and self-assured.
If we can see it, we can be it. Shaft caused us to look beyond poverty and oppression to prosperity and opportunity.
Shaft’s Big Score ends in “an incredible land-sea-air chase involving a helicopter, a speed- boat, and a shoot-out in the old Brooklyn Navy Yard.
But the message was clear. Chase your dreams and use any vehicle you must to gain respect, freedom, and justice. That is the Big Score!
May the ancestors greet Richard Roundtree with a thunderous roar. He did more for us as a people than most could ever gather. I asked my mama, and she paid for me to see Shaft’s Big Score!
You should see it too!
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, award-winning columnist and a lifelong Drapetomaniac!
