I think the most notable of these is sexuality. John was not only shown to have many partners but there were even active sex scenes, content which has not been very abundant for black men. This is because previous influential works, such as The Birth of a Nation, have portrayed black men as predators and rapists, whose one goal was to hurt women, which in turn instills fear and prejudice into the population that struggles to go away. Shaft's portrayal then, over half a century later, was practically revolutionary.
This was a good thing, right? Despite the (luckily decreasing) taboo around it, it has to be admitted that humans have sex. It's just how we are. So portraying this positively, especially with a black man at the center, is a good thing! It helps to embrace human nature while working to break down stereotypes and prejudice. Yeah... too bad women, a kind of big part in SEXuality, play minimal roles in this movie in the first place, and the ones they do play? Incredibly sexist.
It's great that this movie worked to flip some stereotypes over, but I don't like that it felt the need to put others down to get there. Of course, women as sexual beings is not the issue, not even close. Just like men, women are human, and just like men, they desire sex. I actually think it's a good thing to portray women as sexual. My problem is that is almost all they do in this movie.
From the beginning to the end, John is seen with multiple women for sex and sex only. He has a girlfriend, who we get a sex scene with, but instead of portraying some type of love or mutuality alongside this, we see him cheating on her with a white woman.
Other than Marcy, who I'll get to in a second, this is literally all women do in this movie: have sex with John. We don't see any personality, ambition, plot, a little job isn't even mentioned, nothing relates to them outside of sexual relations with Shaft. As stated earlier, there is nothing wrong with sexuality in a movie, in fact, I encourage it - but when it's played off as women's only purpose, it becomes an issue.
Marcy Jonas was the one female character to not be sexualized in the movie, but her part wasn't any less revolting to me. At the beginning of the movie, John meets with Bumpy Jonas, who reveals that his daughter has been kidnapped and asks John to rescue her, and thus begins the plot. Can you tell where I'm going with this?
Yes, the one woman not portrayed solely as a sexual object is a damsel in distress.
From the very beginning, rescuing the helpless little girl is the mission. When we finally see her, all she does is get held at gunpoint and threatened, then rescued by a group of men a few minutes later. And that's it. That's all we get: a stereotype surrounding femininity as weak and useless, unable to navigate the world without men to guide her.
For a movie that breaks a lot of stereotypes surrounding black men, it sure encourages them in women.
It shouldn't take bringing one group down to lift another, and I honestly find it a little sad that a movie about black people, a group that has been oppressed for so long, couldn't understand this.
For as many men as we see in this movie, was it really so hard to have just one woman in a position of strength and/or power? Even just in the background? It would have been incredibly easy to just replace a couple of the men with women - and they didn't even need to be major characters. One of the more minor police could have taken that role and it would have succeeded in portraying women as more than just sex objects and damsels in distress.
I can definitely see the appeal of John's position, but I don't think it is something that I can enjoy because it puts down half of the population to get there. Instead, I'd like to see more movies with similar ideas in relation to black men, but with the addition of portraying women as actual people with actual roles and desires.
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