[Technically, I started this blog in 2010, but in terms of consistently
adding material to it, I have been continually expanding the content of this
hobby since this day, August 5th, from last year on. Hopefully I will be continuing
this blog for another year like this too. To celebrate, its befitting to choose
a really interesting film. Bear in mind that the version viewed was the British
BFI DVD release that was partially censored because of its infamous pre-credit
sequence. It doesn't affect the film after it, although believing that a second
could drastically affect a work, I wonder what the movie would be like in its
uncut version even if I'm going to stick with the British release.]
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| From http://image.toutlecine.com/photos/s/w/e/sweet-sweetback-s--aff--g.jpg |
Dir. Melvin Van Peebles
Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song is a raw film. Raw in how it was
made, Van Peebles having to make the
film by himself with funds from himself and donations from the likes of Bill Cosby, and raw in content. Sweetback
is a male prostitute, played by Van
Peebles himself, who goes on the lam after brutalising two white, racists
cops to save a young Black Panther member during a unjustified assault by them.
The police after him, their bigotry made even more uncomfortable when they have
African American officers on their squad, Sweetback's only means of safety is
to get over the US-Mexican border before they can get him. It's not long into
the film when Sweetback is on the run, making the chase, with him hiding
amongst friends and eventually going for the border, the most of the narrative. |
| From http://www.umbc.edu/cadvc/foralltheworld/images/film/Sweet-Sweetbacks-Baadasssss.jpg |
Sweet Sweetback... was the film that created the Blaxploitation
movement - that it leads to Quentin
Tarantino leads to a strange pair of bedfellows viewing this film again, Sweet Sweetback... the least expected
origin to the commercial/exploitation movement it led to. Its justifiable to
say that the film is an exploitation film, using the trappings of a genre
narrative to explore a politically incendiary topic of the time. A simple,
A-to-B narrative, with a clear goal to the end, sex and nudity, although not as
much as I thought there was the first time, and a couple of really chaotic and
messy brawls where Sweetback has to protect his skin from police officers who
have truncheons and guns on their side. Unlike a film like Shaft (1971) however, there are some radical differences. The first
is Van Peebles' experimental style -
superimpositions, image manipulation, multi-layering, cinéma vérité inserts -
which is pushed to an extreme, far more so than the other film of his I've
seen, his debut The Story of a Three-Day
Pass (1968) which is a richly textured drama that jumps into passages of
playing with the images. The other radical change is how politically aggravating
it is in its message, the director clearly expressing so much bile as the white
cops, stereotypes on purpose, are shown to willingly assault any black male to
get Sweetback, confusing them for him and even saying that they are all the
same in their eyes. Against such odds, Van
Peebles using prolonged scenes of himself running, we're given a
protagonist who we want to see succeed as he has to endure the physical travel
and strain to his body of his goal as well as avoiding the law, from eating a
lizard to sustaining himself when he deals with an infected wound. The music,
by Van Peebles himself with
contributions by Earth, Wind and Fire,
add to this, the final mantra for the last half of the film, male and female
voices chanting "They bled your
momma..." etc. and cheering Sweetback onward, really causes one's
heart to rise. Even if it's stereotypes being depicted, the fact that it's using
a genre narrative makes it able to use these caricatures to push the emotional
core rather than sour it.
 |
| From http://cineawesome.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/332392796_8bcb997055.jpg |
In terms of how the film has
aged, it hasn't done badly. Sweetback gets his name from his ability to leave
women in lapsing orgasms during sex, and admittedly Van Peebles willingness to depict this in every sexual encounter
means the film is entirely on the side of a protagonist who is inherently the
stronger in physical existence just because he is. It's strange to see this
though considering Van Peebles method
of lovemaking is just to lay on a woman and writhe around, and it begs
questions about these depictions, even if the money was used to finish the
film, that this is the only case to my knowledge where a director was paid
accident compensation from the Directors
Guild of America because he got STDs while shooting these scenes. But it's not a celebration of male,
heterosexual prowess that is centre of the film, and moments offset it. A scene
after the credits, even though it introduces Sweetback proper and his sexual
prowess, is still a public sex show involving a woman wearing a beard and men's
clothes, having sex with another woman with a strap-on, and a man dressed up as
a fairy godmother for "dykes".
Amongst the many quasi-cinéma vérité moments introduced later in the film,
where people stare directly at the screen and say whether they've seen
Sweetback or not for an unseen interrogator, one that stands out as the best is
a trio of "militant queers"
enjoying themselves immensely and allowed complete control of the spotlight in
a brief moment, staring the viewer down with smiles and a clear bond together.
Women as well, particularly one old women whose words are repeated and repeated
for aural effect, are allowed to speak for themselves as well in centre frames.
Even if this film can be compared to heterosexual softcore which makes women
background characters to be naked and fondled, it says something, even if its
minor and their duel is through "fucking",
that the strongest and toughest member of a Hell's Angels group Sweetback
encounters, throwing knives with accuracy and called on to challenge Sweetback,
is a red haired woman rather than a man. Such details undermine a simple view
of a film even if they're minor. The one thing that is going to universally controversial,
and more so now, is the infamous pre-credit scene where a young, underage
Sweetback, played by the director's own son Mario
Van Peebles, has sex with an adult woman. It's uncomfortable, but it also
brings up the issue of what we the film viewer, part of filmic history, do with Seventies
cinema, where this kind of trangressive and boundary pushing material seemed
more common and is something we still have to deal with when expanding that's
period's canon. Because this sequence is censored for the British DVD release,
shots completely black with the soundtrack still playing, I cannot believe I
can give a proper view on this issue, and to be honest, I'm perfectly fine with
the censored British release. I am a believer in the lack of censorship, but
I'm not comfortable with even
considering the issues with this case, especially when it doesn't affect
the meaning of the sequence and the film after the opening credits. It's a
potentially hypocritical statement, but I realised, sensibly, that there will
always be cases which challenge on-paper concepts like it; even if the actual,
uncut sequence turned out to be completely tame and merely provocative because
of the idea it was depicting, I will openly admit my lack of ability to be able
to judge whether the scene was right to do or not, and if it has artistic
merit, especially when the censorship does effect the tone and meaning of the
question before I could consider answering it.
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| From http://historyofcinema.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/files/2011/02/carfire.png |
It's a messy work, dark and dirty
in visual look and the product of someone who had to scrape by to make it and
had the determination to see it through. It's surprising to think how well this
did on its original release and in ushering in a sub-genre by itself alongside Shaft; it makes no sense that
Blaxploitation led to Tarantino's
very geeky cribbing of this kind of cinema considering that Sweet Sweetback... is still an edgy
channelling of the anger an entire minority must have felt in a period of
severe racism and flayed relationships with the (usually white) police. A film
depicting Black Panthers with complete sincerity, who went to change their
communities' situations even in non-violent ways through a militancy, feels so
out of place against a white director, whether he is right to do so or not,
using Afro-American cultural iconography as a tribute to grindhouse cinema.
This is an oversimplification of the argument, but even with a film like Jackie Brown (1997), about a strong
black female character, the through line from such politically antagonistic
filmmaking to the references to the sub-genre is such an erratic one in
hindsight. Sweet Sweetback... itself
clearly hit its underserved, target audience at the right time and place,
making itself a cultural phenomenon and an important film in independent, cult
and black American cinema. As a white male myself, I cannot expect to
understand what it would have been like for a black American to have seen this
film upon its release, feeling the sensations of seeing such unspeakable
violence from the police officers and the liberating feeling of a black male
outpacing them by his own tenacity and toughness. But it still causes the blood
to pump in even my body, decades later, to see this protagonist, more so when
you realise some of the risky things Van
Peebles had to do for real to get the images, and how he had to make this
film all by himself outside the American studio system, stand tall above these
racists and be charismatic while doing it. One man is able to take on an entire
law enforcement community, and one man was willing, with his production team,
with help from Bill Cosby, to make a
film by himself, with a risky production method and risky material, and succeeded completely to the point it's in
cinema's historical tomes as a victory even if it's just by itself. Like its
just as famous tagline - Rated X By An
All-White Jury - its caustic and feels liberated in its willingness to
speak its mind as bluntly as it is, and I cannot help but feel swept away by
someone able to do this.
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| From http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yoZniy4fpv8/TeXk5ENXOQI/AAAAAAAAAKQ/AVaNZDLUGzU /s320/Sweet_Sweetbacks_Baadasssss_Song_02.jpg |
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