melvin van peebles’ ” sweet sweetback’s baadasssss song ” was a watershed moment in the history of american cinema and the black movement .
it was released less than a decade after the civil rights movement had begun and almost twenty years before the rodney king incident .
its violent and highly sexualized revenge tale of a macho black hustler fighting back against white oppression and winning was something that had never been seen on an american movie screen before .
in style , content , and how it was conceived and produced , ” sweet sweetback ” was a cinematic revolution , whether or not one agrees with its subject matter .
van peebles , a black american who first gained recognition by writing novels in france , built ” sweet sweetback ” from the ground up almost entirely by himself .
because no studio would dare fund such a film , he was forced to raise all the money himself .
the movie ended up costing about $500 , 000 , part of which was put up by none other than bill cosby .
van peebles cut costs by hiring non-union labor and taking on most of the film’s responsibilities himself .
he wrote the script , scored the music , edited and directed the film , as well as starred in the central role .
he was also a brilliant entrepreneur who always found a way to make an extra buck .
for instance , when the mppa slapped the film with a dreaded x-rating , van peebles not only threatened to bring a lawsuit against jack valenti and the mpaa , but he also developed a little marketing scheme : he coined the phrases ” rated x by an all-white jury , ” which he put on the movie posters to help advertise the film .
he also printed the phrase on tee-shirts which he had no problem selling .
the storyline in ” sweet sweetback ” is deceptively simple .
it takes place in los angeles , and van peebles stars as the title character , a tough male hustler of few words who grew up in a brothel , and makes money by doing what he does best : having sex .
one day , he agrees to go with a couple of amiable white cops down to the station to make it look like they’re bringing in suspects on a politically-charged case involving murder .
however , on the way to the station the cops arrest a young black revolutionary named mu-mu ( hubert scales ) , who they proceed to beat viciously .
acting out of complete impulse rather than political motivation , sweetback fights back and beats the cops to the brink of death .
the rest of the film follows sweetback as he evades the cops on his way to eventual escape in mexico .
although the repetition of watching sweetback run gets a little old by the end of the film , this plot allows van peebles’ camera to roam the darker side of l . a . – the ghettos , alleys , and back-street whorehouses that other films had always overlooked .
van peebles’ entire point in making the movie was to secure on celluloid a vision of the black experience in america that other filmmakers had ignored .
at the beginning of ” sweet sweetback , ” he offers this epigraph , which is a traditional prologue used in medieval times when a messenger brought bad news : ” sire , these lines are not an homage to brutality that the artist has invented , but a hymn from the mouth of reality . . . ”
van peebles wanted to make sure that his vision was one of reality , not of exaggeration .
of course , with today’s abundance of rap and hip hop music that sings the same ode to black inner-city life , as well as films by spike lee , john singleton , and the hughes brothers , ” sweet sweetback ” doesn’t seem all that revolutionary .
it is important to remember that this film must be viewed in the context and time period in which it was made .
at that time , ” sweet sweetback ” was so controversial that only two theaters in the entire united states would play it .
distributors were petrified of a film that , in van peebles’ words , gave the black audience ” a chance to see some of their own fantasies acted out – about rising out of the mud and kicking ass . ”
of course , once it caught on , it caught on big .
” sweet sweetback ” is now considered to be the film that kicked off the blaxploitation era , although van peebles disassociates ” sweetback ” from other movies like ” shaft ” ( 1972 ) and ” the mack ” ( 1973 ) , because those were financed by big hollywood studios .
” sweet sweetback ” is also the only film deemed mandatory viewing by the black panthers .
however , even if when viewed from an african-american perspective , ” sweet sweetback ” is certainly not without its controversies .
when it was first released , an article was published in ” ebony ” magazine denouncing the film , while at the same time the black panthers used an entire newsletter to praise it .
there have been arguments that the victory for sweetback is really no victory at all – beating cops and then running away to mexico is nothing to be proud of .
others have pointed out that sweetback has little to say throughout the film ; he has no political motivations , and therefore the violence and havoc he wreaks is not rooted in fundamental beliefs , but in personal and selfish motives .
still others point to the clich ? black potency that stereotypes sweetback as being good at nothing but having sex , illustrated in a scene where he gains the respect of a white biker group by bringing their female leader to orgasm .
nevertheless , a movie like ” sweet sweetback ” cannot be made without conflicting points of view .
it is a revolutionary movie not because it’s about one man’s defiance , but because it put front-and-center black issues that had never been dealt with before .
until that point , american cinema was an almost exclusively white domain , and with the exception of sidney poitier , all black actors were relegated to specifically black roles that were important only in relation to whites .
the fact that ” sweet sweetback ” was a movie by black about blacks , was something new ( in the opening credits , van peebles lists the starring actors as simply ” the black community ” ) .
van peebles tells an interesting story that goes a long way toward defining the difference between ” sweet sweetback ” and all movies that had come before it .
when the movie first opened , he saw it in a theater next to an older woman .
near the end of the film , when sweetback is wounded by the police and stumbling through the southern california desert , she kept saying to herself , ” oh lord , let him die .
don’t let them kill him .
let him die on his own . ”
it was so ingrained in her mind that death was imminent for any african-american in a movie who rebelled against white authority , that she couldn’t even conceive of the possibility that the film might end with his successful escape .
and , of course , sweetback does escape , and the screen fills with the message : ” watch out !
a baad asssss nigger is coming back to collect some dues . ”
beyond the political aspects , ” sweet sweetback ” is an entertaining picture , which van peebles always intended it to be .
he squeezed every drop out of his limited budget , and produced a film that , although dated now , was technically fantastic at the time .
he shot in rough , documentary-like fashion , while also utilizing almost every visual and aural trick his technology would allow him .
he makes good use of older techniques like split screens , freeze frames , reversed color schemes , and overlapping images .
the only time the film ever looks bad is during the night sequences , because van peebles simply did not have the needed equipment .
watching ” sweet sweetback ” more than twenty-five years after its initial release , one realizes that it still has bite .
arguments can be made that race relations in the united states have made quantum leaps since the early seventies , but there are still problems that are reflected in this film .
but there is more to the film than its racial aspect .
the legacy of ” sweet sweetback’s baadasssss song ” is not only the plentiful amount of art and music told from the african-american perspective , but more importantly , the work of every artist who has fought to fund and produce that which is important to him .