(Patrick Works invokes a roll/role call of history.)
A long while back I went to see the remake of “Shaft.” I decided in the end that the movie fell kinda flat because the director missed a crucial half of the character. As I see it Shaft was Shaft because of two distinct things:
1. Shaft is a bad motherf*cker.
2. The chicks really dig him.
While Sam Jackson’s Shaft was definitely a pretty bad dude … Richard Roundtree he ain’t.
Then it occurred to me that Shaft was really a rock star character on screen … or that our rock stars are really screen stars on stage. Mick Jagger has of course explored this at length, as has David Bowie more fully and completely.
Now of course we have more than just music figures as role models, though so many of us fix on entertainment. Lately some dialog here has revolved around historical figures of influence so I thought I’d post the Lester Bangs Memorial Personality Survey:
Who in history is your underground hero? Punk progenitor? Fifth Column Forebearer?