The night Shaft came to town

Love, race at movies

He's a complicated man. But no one understands him but his woman. (Shaft!)

-- Shaft theme song lyrics by Isaac Hayes

Go back to the fall of 1971. It's Friday night in a small southern town, but this young man has a plan. Detective John Shaft is coming to town in film, and I am not going to miss him. Graduating high school that May, I was now officially a college man, and the world was waiting to be explored. Ready for more sophisticated music, I fell for rhythm and blues -- Joe Tex, The Isley Brothers, Rufus Thomas, Marvin Gaye. The music thrilled me.

In high school, I had black classmates, but none I would call friends in the real sense of how friends go to each other's houses. They say the most segregated hour in America is 11 a.m. Sunday, but our high school cafeteria was a close second. That changed for me that summer. Working in the local discount store, I was freed from the social and cultural constraints my small southern town had carefully built the past 100 years. Unloading a semi-trailer of cow manure together tends to break all that down. I went now to people's houses, on double dates and, yes, we talked music.

The song came first. The first minute and a half was no singing, mainly the electrifying wah-wah guitar solo of Charley Pitts. Then came that deep voice of Isaac Hayes that informed us Shaft was "a bad mother--" before the backup singers interrupt the implied profanity with the line "Shut yo' mouth!" I bought the 45 and played it often.

The film was generating a lot of controversy. Described by some as the first blaxploitation film, it starred Richard Roundtree and featured plenty of sex, violence and dialogue on race in America. Movie critic Vincent Canby wrote, "the black movie audience -- an audience whose experiences and interests are treated mostly in token fashion by TV --[Shaft] might be one of the more healthy and exciting developments on the current movie scene." I was in.

My small southern town newspaper proclaimed that fateful Friday that the local theater would be showing Shaft that evening. With my date in tow, I got there early for the 7:30 p.m. showing to make sure I got a good seat. As the place began to fill up, I noticed we were (and would be) the only nonblack people sitting there. Soon, some good-natured joking went on -- "Hey, you sure you in the right theater?" I smiled and said "I'm here for Shaft" -- to which I got an "I hear that!" The theater was completely full and my date grew fidgety. For the first time in my life, I felt what it was like to be the distinct minority, to be the other. After the show, we were surrounded by strangers and some work friends, all excited to know what I thought of the film, eager to share their feelings, and, yes, their pride.

The Italian writer Italo Calvino, after visiting Birmingham, Ala., in 1959 was moved to write: "What counts is what we are and the way we deepen our relationship with the world and with others -- a relationship that can be one of both love for all that exists and of desire for its transformation." That is what I saw that night, that is what I witnessed.

Go back to Friday, and the local Malco theater is playing the new documentary on the American novelist James Baldwin, called I Am Not Your Negro. The movie offers a challenging snapshot of Baldwin'scritical observations on America's ongoing race relations, along with a sobering reminder of how far we've yet to go. We arrive for the evening showing and discover we are the only patrons that night. Leaving the theater, I felt a little sad because of the empty room. Then I see a young couple -- one black, one white -- getting some popcorn and heading back in to see their comedy film. I thought back to 1971, while remembering one of the last words by Baldwin in the documentary: "The world is before you" he said "and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in."

See you at the movies.

NAN Our Town on 02/23/2017

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