Most people know Shaft through his epynonymous first movie, in which Richard Roundtree plays John Shaft, hard-boiled private dick who'd risk his neck for a brother man. Shaft and its sequel, Shaft's Big Score, followed a predictable course in which Shaft fights both gangsters and police suspicions to right wrongs, save his life and get the girl.



Shaft in Africa takes the franchise in a completely different direction. An international gang of people smugglers replace the small-time hoods. Shaft is whisked from Harlem to Africa to pose as an immigrant labourer, and track down the traffickers exploiting young Africans. After many adventures he makes it to Europe, where he lives in an overcrowded tenement in Paris with other illegal workers. He must battle the smugglers to free the migrants - but not before their tenement is set on fire.



You read correctly: Shaft in Africa is a drama about the plight of illegal migrants sold into slavery in Europe. It could have been made yesterday; tenement fires in Paris are common, where undocumented workers are warehoused in sub-standard conditions to this day. To my knowledge, Hollywood has yet to touch the issue; the British film Dirty Pretty Things broached the topic of illegal workers in 2005, but the politics were a pale pink next to Shaft. In the former, Chiwetel Ejiofor sums up the immigrant experience with, "we are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms. And suck your cocks." Which is true, but doesn't say why it's happening.



Compare this to Shaft, who encounters a smuggler overcharging him and the Africans for an overcrowded room in a tenement:

"Fellows, I take care of everything. Now, this room cost you each 100 francs a month.

We only earn 200 francs a month. For this room, we pay half.

No space in Paris. Very costly. No room, you in street. In street, police come. Ask questions, send you home. But how you go home? No money! So: go to prison. Lock up. 100 francs a month, everybody stay happy."

That's a good summary of the undocumented worker's condition: as long as you're illegal, the threat of deportation keeps you silent. At one point the smuggler shows his evil capitalist colours and rants, "I've given thousands of jobs to Africans and they don't complain. But because of that black bastard and that troublemaker Shaft I've had to leave this country!" Later, a French police sergeant tries to mollify Shaft after a fire in the tenement fire kills some of the Africans:

"The law will punish him, monsieur."

"Fuck the law. What is the law doing about the shitheads who charge 100 Francs a month to stay in a craphouse like this? Why don't you really clamp down on the slave trade? I'll tell you why. Because the black ghettos of Paris is as far away from the Champs Elysee as 125th Street is from Park Avenue. You need a bunch of poor bastards to work on your roads and your goddamn kitchens. So don't lay any of that 'law will punish you' shit on me!"

Shaft connects exploitation, racism and ghettos to the profit motive. No One Is Illegal couldn't say it better. And this wasn't some earnest documentary, it was an action film: though it lost money, the movies were popular enough that CBS tried to leverage Shaft into a TV series. We know illegal immigrants are the first to be targeted during a recession - imagine the impact of mainstream audiences encountering Shaft's sympathetic portrayal today. For that alone, Shaft in Africa is worth watching.



There's another reason to see the film. It's obvious you don't watch a movie named after a euphemism for a penis for progressive gender politics. His character is defined by his sexual prowess - though I suspect that, like a lot of blaxploitation films and hip hop afterwards, much of that is braggadocio, not meant to be taken seriously. Which is what makes Shaft in Africa so fascinating: it elevates Shaft (pun intended) to the status of a sex god. And not because he's good in bed, but because his penis is so large. It's like Shaft as told by Rainer Wolfcastle; there's absolutely no subtlety.



Shaft meets the girlfriend of the head smuggler, and she tries to seduce him:

"How long is your phallus, Mr. Shaft?"

"My what?"

"Your cock."

"Baby by now it shrunk down to 20 inches..."

"You can usually tell by the size of a man's nose. Or the length and thickness of his thumbs. I always look for a man with a prominent nose. And long thick thumbs."

"Baby you're not turning me on. I got too many things on my mind."

Of course he relents, telling her "Baby my nose may not be too prominent, but I got two of the longest, thickest thumbs..."

And it gets better. Shaft meets an African princess, whose culture dictates she has her clitoris amputated on reaching 'womanhood'. She soon learns the ways of Shaft:

"Were you disappointed I wasn't a virgin? Hmm?"

"Hell no baby, you had some good teacher."

"John, this is hardly the time to talk about it, but I've made an important decision. Because of you."

"Well, my daddy told me, he said John, the one time you should never ever make an important decision is right after you've made love."

"It's about my clitorectomy."

"That's an important decision all right."

"February comes, I'm not going to let them do it."

He didn't even have to send her to Clitoraid. Shaft's penis is so great, he can overturn entrenched cultural traditions with it. Yes, Shaft features a black man being objectified for his animal sexuality; yes, it reduces women to slavish conquests. But at this point my analytical ability breaks down and I'm simply dumbfounded that something like this could get written and filmed. Shaft is not a lover, he's a force of nature with transformative sexual powers... who's a friend of exploited migrant labour. Watch it and deconstruct it if you can.

Labels: blaxploitation, movie review, Shaft in Africa