by Jimmy Gilmore, Senior Staff Writer
Shaft or Sidney Poitier is a great, alternative documentary that plays much more like a visual essay. Jonathan Gayles takes as his topic representations of black superheroes in the late 60s to mid 70s and asks a variety of scholars to comment and analyze them. The results, which move through Green Lantern, Black Panther and more, are often illuminating and really elevate the discussion about how the superhero projects different cultural values. While the film is structured as a series of interviews, they feel more like a virtual round table discussion. Gayles removes his voice largely from the piece - he introduces and concludes. Rather, his editing acts as a way to structure roughly a dozen different voices who all provide different insights into the industry, the social context, and the visual analysis of the heroes.
As a media scholar, I really enjoyed Shaft or Sidney Poitier precisely because it took this approach. While it's easy to point to its "talking head" structure as too redundant, the voices are all so fresh, so eloquent, and provide such different insights that the short (56 minutes) piece fly by. For the emerging field of superhero scholarship, as well as the emerging field of digital media presentation, it's a smooth entry that really does feel like sitting in on a very well-informed round-table at a conference.
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