Historical Texts

Shaft Trailer

Shaft is a 1971 American blaxploitation film directed by Gordon Parks and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. An action film with elements of film noir, Shaft tells the story of a black private detective, John Shaft, who travels through Harlem and to the Italian mob in order to find the missing daughter of a black mobster. The movie was adapted by Ernest Tidyman and John D. F. Black from Tidyman's 1971 novel of the same name.

• Shaft is shown as a ‘man on a mission’ throughout the movie. He is trying to complete the task of finding Marcy (daughter of Bumpy - mob) and goes to different lengths to ensure she is found.

This relates to Freedom Writers, because ‘Erin Gruwell’ (teacher) also goes all out for the students. She makes them learn that they need an education, even though they don’t want it.

• Blaxploitation Genre came forward in 1971 in the United States, in this very same movie. This genre targets the Urban Black audience. The movies within this genre are set in ‘the ghetto’ of where they the characters are involved with gun/gang crime, violent behaviour as well as being part of or related to a mob.

This genre fits into Freedom Writers, as that is also set in ‘the ghetto.’ The characters are all represented to be involved with crime as they have this hatred towards one another. They have this ethnic disgrace towards one another, where they are seen as being racist towards one another by the way they live their lives.

• The movie does not contain specific indication to racism yet some of the characters behaviour involves them being prejudice. A seen where Shaft puts his hand out for the taxi, and the driver stops ahead of him where the other passenger is a white man. This portrays how there is a ‘fear of the black man.’

In one scene, Erin makes the students swap their seats, so she can divide them from the tribes they sit in. She asks Ben (the only white boy in the class) to go to the back (where all the black people are seated) and he instantly says ‘I can’t go back there.’ This shows the strong stereotype black people hold of being involved in violence.

• The film uses Strauss’s Binary Opposition. We see the:
  Black vs. White
  Harlem Mob vs. Mafia

Freedom writers also contains this very same use of binary oppositions. It is seen more as, Hood vs. Hood. This shows the way the different people from the different multi-cultural backgrounds have been segregated.

Books I will Use:
*FERGUSON, ROBERT Representing ‘Race’: Ideology, Identity and The Media
*MALIK, SARITA Representing Black Britain: Black And Asian Images On Television
*STRINATI, DOMINIC Introduction to Studying Popular Culture, An
*O’SULLIVAN AND JEWKES Media Studies Reader, The