Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song. 1971. Directed by Melvin Van Peebles.

(3/17/01)

A lot of this film is just shots of a man running and being chased. It just went on and on and got tiresome. It seemed like the film ran out of imagination.

The "hero" of the film is Sweetback. He is a performer in a sort of private sex-show who kills a couple of cops who are mercilessly beating another black man. He is pursued, but never caught. By his wits he escapes across the border into Mexico and the film promises that he will return, seeking revenge.

Sweetback isn't that interesting. He doesn't say very much and doesn't project much personality. He was definitely interesting as a black man who is not subservient to whites, a new figure on the screen at the time, and as an image of the black man as sexually potent. He is desirable to women--both black and white--and not through any seductive quality. His magnetism comes through sheer phallic power.

I liked the black-black sex scenes. I thought they were hot. Near the beginning of the film a woman summons a young boy into her room and asks him to service her. He does so and she screams and moans a lot. When he leaves her, after the credits, it is not a young boy but a grown man. It is kind of interesting and challenging, watching a male service a beautiful black female for her pleasure and at her request. There is another scene where Sweetback goes to a woman he knows and asks her to remove his handcuffs. She wants him to fuck her first.

Then there is a black-white sex scene which doesn't interest me as much. Sweetback gets involved with these bikers in a scene which goes on and on and on and is full of superimposition. What is the purpose of those superimpositions? I think he is given shelter and pays for it with sexual service.

Sweetback is unequivocally negative about whites who are either mean or stupid or both. One horrible scene occurs when the police attack a friend of Sweetback's who tells them over and over in a terrified voice: "I don't know where Sweetback is." They either shoot one of his ears or beat it with a gun and threaten to do it to the other one. In another scene officers beat up a black man they find in bed with a white girl, mistakenly believing that it's Sweetback. When they realize their mistake one says, "So what?"

It comes across as a very nasty, bitterfilm. Being white, I found it a scary film to watch. It certainly gave a voive to the anger of blacks against whites. But except for being one of the first films to really show that anger and having maybe the first portrayal of a threatening black male this film just wasn't that interesting.