Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song is a peculiar film alternately hailed as the first blaxploitation film and criticised for its reductive images of the black man. I, however, believe that there is a reason to view the film not from a specific genre viewpoint, nor to regard it as having to conform to perceived notions of proper representation. The film employs a Brechtian sense of estrangement, the Verfremdungseffekt, to specifically point out a number of political issues. It is this political function which will guide a lot of what I’m interested in here. While Melvin Van Peebles seems slightly schizophrenic about this film and has stated that he did not want Sweetback to be a political film, but rather a cross-over film which would entertain both black and whites, it also seems clear to me that this is more a case of subterfuge and perhaps rationalizing the box office hit of the film rather than actually describing the film accurately. Van Peebles claims that
The film simply couldn’t be a didactic discourse, which would end up playing (if I could find a distributor) to an empty theater except for ten or twenty aware brothers who would pat me on the back and say it tells it like it is.(from Reid, 1993: 76-77)
Yet, this notion of ‘tell it like it is’ was precisely what the film was seen as doing and that can hardly be considered coincidental; the film investigates the Black American urban experience and expresses clear political sentiments. The disruption effected by the film’s aesthetic V-effects is not just targeted at white film aesthetics, since in many ways the film follows in line of earlier traditions, such as cinema verité and French new wave, but also aimed at white social authority. If we regard any fictional representation as minimally political expressive, Sweetback presents several interesting views of whiteness.
However, let us first turn to the general context of the film. Having directed two earlier films, Melvin Van Peebles wanted to make a film for and about the black man. To gain control over the film, union wages and restrictions, he claimed to be making a porno film. Through various avenues, he raised $500,000 with which to make the film. These avenues were as elected as the film itself. Bill Cosby came up with $50,000, and when Van Peebles contracted gonorrhea from the sex scenes, he sought compensation from the Director’s Guild and got it. The money was used to further finance the film. Upon release, the film initially only opened in two theatres in the US (Detroit and Atlanta), but in the end grossed over $10 million in its first run (Rhines, 1996: 43-44).
It was this unexpected success of an independent film which caused studios to pause. As Guerrero points out in Framing Blackness it was estimated in 1971 by Variety that while 10-15 percent of the population was black, 30 percent of the audience in first-run, major-city theatres were black. (Guerrero, 1993: 83) At this point the studios could not ignore such numbers and the character in Shaft was changed to black and the core subject matter and narrative trajectory was copied, thus beginning to establish the genre of blaxploitation.
Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song portrays a ‘bad nigger’ who challenges the authority of the white system and wins. Witnessing police officers beating a young revolutionary, Sweetback rescues the youngster but at the expensive of himself; Sweetback becomes a hunted man and must run for his life. As he runs, the Black community protects him, uniting against the Man, as it were. Sweetback thus takes on a certain communal identity; he is deeply tied to the black community an as Rhines and Cripps point out, Sweetback can best be considered a version of Staggerlee which gives a reasonable explanation of how Sweetback can be viewed as a positive character despite the fact that is in fact a murderer. It also shows how black cinema draws on various cultural narratives from within their own community and thus excluding the white man from properly decoding the film. That was certainly the position I was in until reading Rhines and Cripps.
The film thus plays on its existence primarily within the black community, as pointed out clearly by the opening of the film with both its dedication to those who have had it with the Man and stating that it stars the Black Community. In many ways the film acts as kind of deconstruction of several of the ideological formations which often goes unquestioned in Hollywood films. The film draws on cultural narratives and cinematic myths in order to subvert them. Peter Stanfield argues that blaxploitation films’ notion of verisimilitude is based on a mix of social reality and earlier films. In other words, the authenticity of these films occurs as much through reference to canonical films; particularly film noir, gangster films and urban crime fiction. (Stanfield, 2005: 289) This move of intertextually weaving film with history and culture has been an ongoing concern for most of postmodern American cinema since the Hollywood Renaissance and is clearly also part of Van Peebles’ film. Many of the representations in the film I thus regard as specific comments and subversions of the Hollywood myths which have been built up over the earlier decades.
Representations of whites, or perhaps even ‘whiteness,’ is an interesting point in Sweetback. One thing which offended many reviewers were the stereotypical and one-sided representations of whites; they were all uniformly evil and it was impossible to regard them as realistic characters or even humans. This seems to be precisely the point for me; a kind of turning the tables on the Hollywood dream factory and asking “how do you like stereotyped portrayal?” It is obviously also a way of aligning the film with black experiences rather than the typical white point of view, attempting to generate and feed into the Black Nationalism of the time. By making all whites relentlessly evil it also allows any act committed against them to be free of any sense of guilt. As spectators, we are invited to regard Sweetback’s actions as necessary considering the circumstances.
The white people that are encountered in the film are either cops or otherwise trying to assert authority over Sweetback. The first encounter with the police is at the brothel where Sweetback works, where the police are asking the owner if they can get a black man to take down to the station for a few hours, to make them ‘look good.’ Someone has been causing trouble and it is easier to find a black man to blame for a few hours than to actually do anything. The offer that whoever comes with them downtown will not be heard rings rather hollow when we see how they treat the young revolutionary Mu-mu they encounter along the way. It is this treatment which makes Sweetback stand up to the Man.
Here we see more how whites view black, but this in turn also gives us an idea of what whites represent within black community, at least for the ones around Sweetback. Driving through the city, the cops jokingly state that it is best not to “stir up the natives” playing on the metaphor of the city as jungle and blacks as primitives in this urban landscape.
In a later run-in with the police, Sweetback is questioned but it sounds as if the cops are really talking to a child; they are clearly talking down to Sweetback, trying to make Sweetback sympathise the injured cops pointing out that they are still in the hospital. They even claim that the cops who were injured were Sweetback’s friends as well which they obviously were not. When they talk to the captain, we see how corrupt and violent the police force is, especially towards blacks. This is enforced later on when the cops think they are about to catch Sweetback and violently attack the black man. When they learn that it was not Sweetback and that they have in fact brutalised an innocent man, the responce is merely “So what?” since blacks clearly do not warrant sympathy. There is even an undertone suggesting that they actually enjoy doing this.
Here the film justifies the dissatisfaction that blacks may feel against police authority in their neighbourhoods; the police as portrayed are truly oppressive and brutal. Such a representation is a clear political expression, and again it seems peculiar that Van Peebles would shy away from admitting that it is so obviously a political film. He has also argued that he wanted to make a film where blacks would leave the theatre and be able to look each other in the eyes.
The other encounter Sweetback has with whites is a group of bikers, who are presented in a rather ominous manner. The scene is backlit with the camera keeping close to the ground, often going no higher than the hips; with people talking it becomes difficult to get a sense of who exactly is talking. With tilted angles and a constantly moving camera, the narration blocks our access to any of the white bikers and so disrupt any possibility of creating a structure of sympathy with them. Their masculinity is threatening and while it seems that they may be led by a woman, the struggle which Sweetback has to enter into in order to be free is a sexual one. Though the rules are not explained they become clear enough; whoever comes first has lost. Obviously, this is hometurf for Sweetback and he wins easily.
This sexual encounter is an echo of the film’s opening, where a black man fucking a white woman is prevented because it would upset the white authority which is present in the form of the two cops. Now, later, Sweetback asserts his own hyper-masculinity and must thus be released by the now symbolically castrated bikers. Sweetback has fucked the white system.
Sweetback is a film fully powered by stereotypes and it would be wrong to say that the blacks in the film were not also portrayed stereotypically. However, while they may be stereotypes they remain dangerous stereotypes; the black man is a sexual being, which is emphasised several times in the film and there are no excuses for this. The opening scene shows how Sweetback was initiated early into the sexual realm and with the addition of the gospel-music this initiation carries overtones of a spiritual experience. That Van Peebles uses his own son, Mario Van Peebles, in this scene especially as explicit as it is, carries other overtones that do border the uncomfortable.
It is not a character-driven film, we get little access to any character’s thoughts or motivations. As soon as Sweetback is on the run, the black community protects him unquestioningly and we learn little else of these characters. Sweetback himself is not particularly well characterised either; with only nine lines in the entire movie, we get no access to Sweetback’s thoughts. However, Sweetback does undergo a transformation through his “pilgrim’s progress”: from denying any specific help to Mu-mu other than stopping the police, Sweetback changes his mind later in the film when he meets Mu-mu again and is confronted with a choice of saving himself or Mu-mu. His answer: “Take him. They are our future.” This is hardly to call the film a Bildungsroman, for Sweetback is far too undeveloped a character. Instead, as with the reference to Staggerlee also makes clear, Sweetback is best considered a mythic personae, an icon for the culture in which he exists.
By reducing the characters distinguishable traits, the film increases their appeal and the possibility for (black) spectator engagement; in effect it mythologises them to a far greater extent and Sweetback’s struggle and escape take on the iconicity of the whole black struggle for freedom and escape from injustice. When Sweetback is running for the Mexican border with police and dogs after him, he seems like nothing more than an escaped slave running from cruel masters. But unlike an escaped slave, there is the promise that Sweetback will return to exact revenge. The film ends with a note to: “Watch out, a baad asssss nigger is coming back to collect some dues…”
Sweetback can be regarded as an act of detournement, ie. the process of reworking earlier works into opposed meanings. One movement is taking what white/dominant culture will obviously regard as a criminal and dangerous individual and turn that very individual into a hero, even a saviour for the black community. The other movement is to deny and destroy what is regarded as the norm. It has long been agreed that the realistic, linear, plot-driven, transparent narration employed by Hollywood films are ideologically coded. Sweetback does a lot to go against this ideology, primarily by breaking narrative conventions.
The use of the jump-cut is predominant throughout the film, whether it is by jumping forward in time for just a few frames, such as it occurs in the beginning of the film. Later, during the interrogation of Sweetback by two cops, the classic 180 degree rule is broken, creating a confused scene more reminiscent of a montage sequence than a conversation. This use of montage editing is used heavily throughout the film, as are other unusual devices such as split screens, whether across time or space or superimposed images. All of this helps generate a jumbled and fragmented narration which feels far more episodic than linear. Along with the shaky camera, often adopting a documentary-like style, there is very little unity of time, space or narrative. The frequent superimpositions of industrial machinery over Sweetback’s escape suggests how Sweetback is running from the white system of industrial society. It gives an almost claustrophobic feeling to the city, the weight of it bearing down on Sweetback much like their images weigh down on the profilmic events.
Such narration seems typical today where jump-cut editing is standard features of music videos and action films, but even in these instances there are elements which help create narrative coherence. Music is often used as a unifying element in these cases, and music is certainly also important in Sweetback. Music becomes significant but rather than serving as mood enhancer, the more typical use, it becomes a strong Leitmotif for Sweetback, but to such an extent that it disrupts the clear flow of narrative when Sweetback approaches the funeral; the constant shifting between the Sweetback theme and the women crying creates a rupture in the soundtrack and makes it difficult to follow the events, especially since we have no idea about the relevance of the funeral at first, let alone who the people might be.
Again, we see how our expectations are disrupted since music through what might be considered aural jump-cuts disturbs our decoding of the film. There are other examples of how music and sound is disruptive, such as when the police captain answers the phone and hears several conversations at once, making it difficult for us to hear what exactly is being said. Also, during the beating of Mu-mu, the music-track is so loud as to obscure much of the dialogue between the cops.
The other important thing which is destroyed in Sweetback is the image of the black man as he has been represented before in Hollywood films. As Guerrero points out, Sidney Poitier was the only real black actor in Hollywood and due to the roles he took on, he was considered almost a traitor to his people. Sweetback thus does all the things that Sidney Poitier would never do, has sex on camera is a ‘bad nigger,’ comes from the ghetto and so forth. Stereotype that he may be, or perhaps generate, Sweetback is a different portrayal of the black man than has been seen before, and that takes on a special significance, even if much of what he does can be regarded as negative. Certainly a whole lot can be said about the reception of Sweetback especially by blacks, but this is not the place.
Whatever one might think of the film, Van Peebles broaches two taboo subjects; that black suspicion of police authority in their communities is justified and unbridled black sexuality. Such narrative enactments can only be viewed in a political light, and that probably points to why the film created such controversy. It is clearly not just ‘harmless entertainment’ and there is a very clear message to the film and any spectator’s reaction to the film will be coloured (pardon the pun) by one’s view of the message.
The experimental techniques all aim to disrupt the naturalness, the givenness of images which spectators are used to being confronted with in Hollywood films; in order to make spectators see things in a different light these techniques are required as are some of the more unpleasant sides of the film: the sexscene between a prostitute and a child, Sweetback brutally beating the cops, the rape scene and so forth all needed to reject the accepted subject matters just as the representation of the events needed to be radically different.
The message and the subject matter are clearly interconnected and as already mentioned the subject matter was what began to define the blaxploitation cycle. Thomas Cripps argues how genre films can easily become exploitation films by using an interesting definition of exploitation: exploitation sensationalises its subject matters and loses its ritual structures in favour of emphasising an empty “aesthetics of cool.”
Blaxploitation thus suffers from only focussing on what is done to the black protagonist, while what is done by the protagonist generally kept in hyperbolic terms to fetishise the cool, black urban hero but it does not hold, according to Cripps, any deeper cultural truths about what is done by the black community. Implicit in his argument is thus that the black hipster is empty and impotent since it follows a white cultural myth celebrating the individual over the community, while black myths either does or should emphasise community values.
We can examine the difference between this argument by contrasting Sweetback to Shaft, both released the same year and thus at least to some extent parallel in development. As noted, Sweetback represents the paths and avenues available to the black American which is relying on a sense of community. Opposed to this is Shaft’s cool posturing which is little less than a black re-enactment of the stereotypical white detective.
Also, the film takes in elements of what will later be called the action film, though this genre had not yet solidified, but again subverts the expectations of the audience. Sweetback is not a Dirty Harry which can fight back against social injustice and the impotence of the law through violence; it is not plausible for a black man to fill that position, this would be too unacceptable for white society. Instead, Sweetback takes the only option available for the black man; he runs from the law. What is more interesting than this simple act of escape is the way that the black community is subsequently represented.
The black community unquestioningly protects and helps Sweetback against the oppressive system of white society. As one of the many reversals in the film, law is rendered unlawful and unjust and the community needs to defend itself against the law rather than being defended by the law. Instead, the community becomes the place where justice resides. It is here that we see how Sweetback denies that the black community should assimilate and assume the values of white society; the black community is excluded from white society and so needs to create and follow its own cultural space.
A sense of community is overpoweringly important for the film and it this is emphasised by the opening credits with the dedication “Dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man” and “Starring the Black Community.” Such an internal identity of blackness is clearly marked by other signs such as “Rated X by an all white jury” and the catch phrase “You bled my momma. You bled my poppa. But you won’t bleed me” drawing clear lines to slavery and oppression while also inviting resistance against white society. Furthermore, the film ends with the note: “Watch out - a baad assss nigger is coming to collect some dues.”
The impact of the film shows that the political was at least as important as the aesthetic function of the film, but it is also important to realise that the two are connected, as pointed out earlier. What made later blaxploitation films less radically subversive was precisely the fact that they were made within a studio system and hence conformed to the ideologically coded, transparent Hollywood narrative structure. The subject matter may have been sensational, enticing and pushing the limits of what could be shown on the screen, but it did not push the limits politically. The radical political expressiveness which Sweetback forged, whatever flaws it contains in its representations of women and other areas, was recuperated by Hollywood and made tame.
Sweetback was oppositional at heart, and it seems to me evident that the rough edges, what seems to annoy many of the critics and spectators, are precisely the entire point of the film. It has to be provocative and infuriating, otherwise it would never have had the impact it did. What the film achieves admirably is show the ‘twoness’ of American culture which W.E.B. DuBois pointed out repeatedly and advocates that this needs to stop. Such a rhetoric existed earlier in the Black Nationalism but Sweetback was the first film to express these sentiments. In this way, the film may be regarded as an exploitation film in that it serves up a subject matter in order to capitalise on it. However, had this been the only reason for making the film, it would never have been made in the way it was.
The film aligns itself clearly with the independence and separation of the black community, feeding off but also into the Black Nationalist movement. There is no peaceful co-existence as was Marti Luther King’s dream, but rather keeps more in line with Malcolm X’s view of “The Ballot or the Bullet.”
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