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You can make a case for any film regardless
of its shortcomings, or in the case of Sweet Sweetback’sBaadasssss Song, its disregard
for craftsmanship in favor of uncontrolled and coarse protest. Sweetback was written,
produced and directed by Melvin Van Peebles. In the absence of a suitable lead, he
cast himself as the titular Sweetback, a black hero resisting The Man, mostly by running
away from him.
Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song is a graphic, discordant,
low-brow frenzy of noise believing itself to be a landmark, dissenting voice of
its time.And it doesn’t ease into its rhetoric.We’re ushered in by a starving
and destitute 10-year old Sweetback wolfing down a meal in a brothel while a
group of prostitutes fuss over him. Moments later, he’s coerced into sex with one
of them while a choral rendition of ‘This Little Light of Mine” plays. Audiences
with the mettle to stay beyond that point are led to the (then) present day, where
the adult Sweetback is now a sex showman displaying his generous genitalia and
performing live porn shows for a living. He cuts his career short when he pummels
two white police to death for beating down a Black Panther, and carries out an
arduous escape to the Mexican border.
Van Peebles credits his cast as ‘The Black
Community’ and dedicates the film to “all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough
of the Man”. This cinematic offering however is a manic mishmash of footage
passing itself off as “experimental” cinema. Melvin stated that he approached
this film “like you
do the cupboard when you're broke and hungry: throw in everything eatable and
hope to come out on top with the seasoning”. He tossed
everything in alright: cross dissolves, freeze frames, lens flares, shaky cam,
dizzy cam, cuts to black, severed sound effects, negro spirituals, chants, and an
Earth, Wind and Fire score played to within an inch of its life.
In the first act a mute and empty-eyed
Sweetback fucks, fights and stares into space like he’d rather be in
another movie, until the running starts. And then, on it goes. Looooong after we
get what’s happening. For over half of the screen time he sprints and staggers,
leaps and crawls through streets and alleyways, crackhouses and storm drains, hills and deserts. All along, he staves off thirst (by drinking from
puddles!), hunger (by decapitating lizards and eating!), injury (by sanitizing
his wounds with his baadasssss urine!) and the trigger-happy police (by running
faster! and leaping from bridges! and f*cking some more!).When we gratefully
get to the end, where Sweetback crosses the Tijuana, and warns of his return to
collect his (still unspecified) dues, the narrative has been simple enough. The Man
subjugates the black man, and the black warrior rises to fight back. How? By
murdering, and f*cking, and running.
Coarseness and effrontery aside, however,
this film possesses a categorical value. Van Peebles committed an act of unheard-of
audacity by depicting the brutal murder of white bad guys by a black good guy
in 1971 America. He’s an obnoxious and unafraid filmmaker despite—and likely
because of—his unrefined sensibilities. What he lacks in proficiency, he
compensates with abstraction and consciousness. The policemen’s murder is jaggedly
juxtaposed with solarized footage of a hulking oil derrick, like a vast machine
is under threat. A preacher appears to offer up‘black Ave Marias’ for
Sweetback, and by extension, all black people. Peebles even displays pragmatism
by introducing a group of Hells Angels who not only spare Sweetback’s life (after
he beds their white female leader, no less), but also grant him the chance to
make good his escape, an offer he benevolently passes on to the Black Panther he had
earlier rescued.
This film has fought its way into history.
It continues to be studied as an epoch-making work. It grossed millions,
shifted perceptions about blackness, spawned a film genre, and sparked
conversations that 1971 society desperately needed to have. Still, here we are
decades later, in Post-Baadasssss, Post-Rodney King, Post-Treyvon Martin,
Obama-led America, and the jury is still out on how much progress has been made.
Just because it made the statement it was
meant to make, Sweet Sweetback’sBaadasssss Song cannot be passed off as a
carefully crafted piece of art. Brash and uncultured work cannot be celebrated
as auteur or innovative. Melvin Van Peebles has entered into cinema history because
he was a filmmaker of great courage, relevance, and innovation. But not because
he was any good.
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