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2* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The theme is so funkalicious it can [[Series/FatherTed make suicidal priests recover from their depression]].
3* AdaptationDisplacement: While the film has been overshadowed by its own theme song, the novels have faded into complete obscurity. (Which is actually rather a shame - they're pretty good.)
4* CompleteMonster:
5** ''Shaft in Africa'': [[BigBad Vincent Amafi]] opens the film [[EstablishingCharacterMoment executing a diplomat's son]] who got too close to the truth that Amafi is running a modern day slave trade. Amafi offers young men from Africa new lives, only to sell them into labor-intensive jobs for literal pennies where they work 7 days a week for 16 hours per day with no way to speak up lest they face deportation or murder. Using slave labor on his own estates, Amafi has an apartment full of enslaved workers burned down and the workers killed in an attempt to murder the hero John Shaft. It is revealed he is keeping a group of prisoners in his own estate's dungeons, even rigging the cells with explosives to kill them all should Shaft not surrender.
6** ''Imitation of Life'' comic, by David F. Walker, Dietrich Smith, et al.: Lou Peraino, or "Lollipop Lou," is a vile mobster running a pornography operation, happily dealing in the most extreme territories people can think of--even [[SnuffFilm snuff]]--so long as he's paid. Lou has no issue addicting young men and women to drugs to force them to become "stars" for his films, and when he's tracked down by Shaft, Lou is about to use a {{Blaxploitation}} actor gang-raped by a bunch of men dressed in Klansmen suits.
7* FairForItsDay: Sure, the TV movies [[{{Badbutt}} stripped out much of what made John Shaft cool]], but it still made Roundtree/Shaft the first black lead of a primetime procedural show.
8* JustHereForGodzilla: The film is one of the best Blaxploitation flicks, and was such a huge hit that it saved its studio MGM from bankruptcy and led to two sequels and a TV series, as well as two modern revivals. But that theme song all by itself is what people remember.
9%%* MemeticBadass: Shaft.
10* MemeticMutation:
11** "Daaaaamn right."
12** "A bad mother--" ''[[CurseCutShort "Shut your mouth!"]]''
13** "We can dig it!"
14* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The entire 1971 film stands out as very much of its time (the slang, the haircuts, the clothes, the funk soundtrack, the mere concept that Shaft can afford office space in ''Times Square''), but the opening credits are especially notable for Shaft walking through the Gay Activists' Alliance "zap" protest of Fidelifacts, showing that it was shot on January 18 of that year.

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