In today's class, we watched the 1971 film Shaft. This may be my favorite film we've watched so far, with the second being the Melvin Van Peebles documentary because I found it very informative. I thought it was very funny both when it was trying to be funny and unintentionally. It had a lot of action, but it managed to still have a really engaging plot which some action movies tend to struggle with that. It had a lot of different elements going on: the romance element, the racial conflict, the kidnapping plot, as well as the sort of conflict between Bumpy and Shaft and the conflict between Shaft and Ben Buford. I wish that the film had fleshed out some of these more, such as if Ellie was Shaft's wife or just a girlfriend who was a single mom, and Shaft's past with Buford. I liked how Shaft wasn't taking any crap from any of the characters, but especially the white characters, such as in the scene where the mafia guy refers to him with the hard R and Shaft hands it right back. This is the movie being a product of its time, but I wish that the black women had been given a little more to do rather than be Shaft's plaything or a kidnapped daughter. However, in a sense, the daughter has massive importance to the narrative, just not of her own agency. I was really pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this film. It had some weak spots, but over all is a great time.