.Black Moses has moved on, and I wrote about it for The Root. He was such a great musician, that's it's a shake that'll he'll mainly just be remembered for Shaft and not as a ground-breaking song-writer and producer. People are even connecting him to disco, calling him one of the progenitors of the genre, when that just isn't accurate. He was one of the few artists that made the transition from soul to and disco and back without losing any dignity.
The joint on The Root says I did my master's thesis on the 70's film Shaft, which isn't exactly true. My critical thesis was an examination of the three Shaft screenplays: the original, as written by Ernest Tidyman, the re-write by John D.F. Black and then the remake 90s era written bv Richard Price. I was going to include the novel, but decided to focus on the screen portrayals. In a nutshell, I said John Shaft was curiously black in Tidyman's version, accurately Black in D.F. Black's version and had been neutered in Price's version, really devoid of any black maleness at all.
One thing jumped out and bit me in my research that isn't widely known. In Tidyman's version, late in the first act, Shaft casually solicits an anonymous blow job... from another man. It's a really curious, intentional emasculating of an alpha male character, one we had never seen attributed to white pulp-fiction detectives of the same era, like Mike Hammer. Today, I can look back at that and think that homosexuality was cool and counter-culture progressive in the late 60's, and he was trying to capture the essence of this change of mores in John Shaft. But I doubt very seriously if, on the tail end of civil rights, of Martin, Malcolm and The Black Panthers, black audiences were ready for a strong black male protagonist soliciting sex from another man. It's crazy, because the scene is almost dropped in from left field, and never brought up again in Tidyman's piece. Any thoughts out there on why Tidyman, a white cops reporter turned monster author and screenwriter from Cleveland, may have thought it was cool to have Shaft getting head from a dude?
I think Gordon Parks tried to capture the idea behind what Tidyman may have intended by having Shaft be unphased by an ass-pat from the gay bartender at the No Name Bar in The Village: that Shaft was so far progressed, so confident in his maleness, that it didn't register, it didn't have to. It's a great scene, for that reason, because it flew in the face of conventional thought: black man as angry sexual monster, as histrionic, violent homophobe. Here, he's just man enough. That's something Park's added, with his NYC sensibilities. D.F. Black brought the real sound of black people. And Isaac Hayes, of course, brought the funk. There was alot of controversy among Hayes' band members and even scholars, ala, James Brown, about who actually conceived and composed the classic riffs in Shaft. Sad, that Hayes is gone.
Uncle Bernie passed on to, and I wrote about that as well. Bernie Mac had to grow on me, because he looked too much like a Jolly Nigger Bank for my liking, and he borrowed too heavily from the Robin Harris, Rudy Moore tradition of signifying, to the point where it was more take-off than homage. His stand-up was funny, but he found his beat as Frank Katton in the Ocean's Eleven films. That's the Bernie Mac i wanted to see more of. I also enjoyed his TV show, if off-put by the notion that I'd heard it employed mainly white writers.
The joint on The Root says I did my master's thesis on the 70's film Shaft, which isn't exactly true. My critical thesis was an examination of the three Shaft screenplays: the original, as written by Ernest Tidyman, the re-write by John D.F. Black and then the remake 90s era written bv Richard Price. I was going to include the novel, but decided to focus on the screen portrayals. In a nutshell, I said John Shaft was curiously black in Tidyman's version, accurately Black in D.F. Black's version and had been neutered in Price's version, really devoid of any black maleness at all.
One thing jumped out and bit me in my research that isn't widely known. In Tidyman's version, late in the first act, Shaft casually solicits an anonymous blow job... from another man. It's a really curious, intentional emasculating of an alpha male character, one we had never seen attributed to white pulp-fiction detectives of the same era, like Mike Hammer. Today, I can look back at that and think that homosexuality was cool and counter-culture progressive in the late 60's, and he was trying to capture the essence of this change of mores in John Shaft. But I doubt very seriously if, on the tail end of civil rights, of Martin, Malcolm and The Black Panthers, black audiences were ready for a strong black male protagonist soliciting sex from another man. It's crazy, because the scene is almost dropped in from left field, and never brought up again in Tidyman's piece. Any thoughts out there on why Tidyman, a white cops reporter turned monster author and screenwriter from Cleveland, may have thought it was cool to have Shaft getting head from a dude?
I think Gordon Parks tried to capture the idea behind what Tidyman may have intended by having Shaft be unphased by an ass-pat from the gay bartender at the No Name Bar in The Village: that Shaft was so far progressed, so confident in his maleness, that it didn't register, it didn't have to. It's a great scene, for that reason, because it flew in the face of conventional thought: black man as angry sexual monster, as histrionic, violent homophobe. Here, he's just man enough. That's something Park's added, with his NYC sensibilities. D.F. Black brought the real sound of black people. And Isaac Hayes, of course, brought the funk. There was alot of controversy among Hayes' band members and even scholars, ala, James Brown, about who actually conceived and composed the classic riffs in Shaft. Sad, that Hayes is gone.
Uncle Bernie passed on to, and I wrote about that as well. Bernie Mac had to grow on me, because he looked too much like a Jolly Nigger Bank for my liking, and he borrowed too heavily from the Robin Harris, Rudy Moore tradition of signifying, to the point where it was more take-off than homage. His stand-up was funny, but he found his beat as Frank Katton in the Ocean's Eleven films. That's the Bernie Mac i wanted to see more of. I also enjoyed his TV show, if off-put by the notion that I'd heard it employed mainly white writers.
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