With his smarts, swagger and unapologetic sexuality, Rowntree – who died on Tuesday aged 81 – spearheaded a new type of Black masculinity in mainstream cinema
n 1971, Richard Roundtree made surely the greatest entrance in cinema history. Shaft, his big-screen debut, begins with Roundtree emerging from the subway and striding confidently on to New York’s 42nd street on a wintry morning. Neatly groomed afro, moustache and sideburns, smart suit, polo neck and long, tailored leather coat. The hi-hats and wah-wah guitar of Isaac Hayes’ funky theme tune get going.
It’s difficult to appreciate from today’s perspective the impact Shaft made in 1971, and Roundtree, who, was a huge part of that. He wasn’t just “the first Black action hero”, he introduced a whole new type of Black masculinity to mainstream cinema. Where previous Black stars such as Sidney Poitier had played civil, principled, unthreatening and asexual characters , Roundtree’s Shaft was heroic, sexual, wisecracking and unapologetically, proudly Black.
Shaft came out at the tail end of the Black power movement but it was by no means militant. Director Gordon Parks,, knew the landscape well. He had photographed members of the Black Panther party for Life magazine a few years before. They even asked Parks to join them; he said the camera was his weapon. But as Roundtree’s Shaft negotiates a fractured, volatile 1970s New York, he moves between, and mediates between, all factions.
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