Of course, since it hadn't yet been Martin Luther King Day in the U.S., I didn't realise the appropriateness of watching it on that particular day until after the fact.
And having watched it, I wish I hadn't already set a monthly viewing series for 2023 (with another potential candidate lined up for 2024), because the documentary revealed so many blaxploitation or blaxploitation adjacent films that I have yet to see. In fact, I almost got out my phone and started making a Letterboxd watchlist of them on the fly. (Since the movie is on Netflix, I can still easily do that at some point in the future.)
For starters, can you believe I haven't actually seen the original Shaft?
This is not to suggest that blaxploitation is a total blind spot for me. I'd say I've seen five to ten movies that qualify as blaxploitation, with Super Fly and Blacula as a few titles that come to mind. The number of titles I've heard of but not yet seen, though, could make up a 12-month series with some overflow.
And while I don't like to announce my monthly series a full year ahead of time, there's a good chance the option I originally had lined up for 2023 will get bumped back again to 2025, since Is That Black Enough for You?!? filled me with a real thirst to catch up on these other titles I've known about but not yet watched, plus some others that might be new to me.
As a movie itself, Mitchell's film might be lacking a bit. It's too long at two hours and 15 minutes, though I should say it went by pretty quickly as I remained easily engaged with all the great footage he's assembled, as well as interviews with luminaries like Glynn Turman, Harry Belafonte, Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Dee Williams and Laurence Fishburne.
Still, Mitchell is a journalist, not a filmmaker -- I used to listen to him on KCRW when I lived in LA. The massive amount of content he's assembled proceeds chronologically, which is a useful way to organize such a compendium, but reflects a lack of imagination in terms of narrative structure. Plus you rarely get the sense that he's speaking to a larger overarching thesis statement, instead writing passages to link the chronological discussion of the films. These are observant passages and are interesting unto themselves, but they don't seem to be serving a unifying concept.
Plus he has some weird tendencies, like making a first reference to someone without including their first name. At one point he was talking about Sammy Davis Jr. and he simply referred to him as "Davis" despite it being the first mention. There was another instance of that but I can't remember who it was.
I also find the title a bit florid for someone who is as academic and even-keeled as Mitchell tends to be. It's a reference to a repeated line of dialogue in a couple movies, but the outrage evident in the three punctuation marks is not something Mitchell himself embodies.
Still, Is That Black Enough for You?!? clearly got me fired up to dive into movies by and about Black people at some point in the near future, even if that near future may be 12 months away.
Plus, it's always good to be reminded what Martin Luther King Jr. fought for on the third Monday in January.
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