Sweet Sweetback Baadasssss Song constitutes a crucial landmark in the history of African-American cinema. Written, directed, produced and scored by Melvin Van Peebles in 1971, it recounts in an iconoclast and vivid style the story of a Black man in Los Angeles fleeing from the white police. The film participated in (or is credited with) inventing the blaxploitation genre.

The article deals with the issue of violence and manhood among militants in the Civil Rights and the Black Panther Movements. It first addresses the articulation of African American manhood in a context of fierce white slavery. Then, Simon Wendt gets unto the rise of the non-violence approach to protest from the 1920s, with African American leaders heavily influenced by the Indian decolonization example. Non-violence became a fundamental principle of the struggle against segregation and racism during the Civil Rights Movement.

With the disappointment of the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement and the development of the Black power movement, the author notices a shift in the approach to violence. Violence appeared to be necessary as a means to directly oppose the racial status quo but also as a fundamental element of masculinity. The issue was that this reformulation of masculinity, expressed in the machismo, armed bravado and martial rhetoric, was often done to the expense of Black women.

“‘They Finally Found Out that We Really Are Men’: Violence, Non-Violence and Black Manhood in the Civil Rights Era” offers an in-depth analysis of the gender articulation in the Black militancy, and especially in the Black Panther Movement. It allows to link the gendered meanings of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song to the broader context, especially since its view was defined by Huey P. Newton as a necessary prerequisite before entering the Black Panthers. A parallel is thus drawn between the new masculinity of the Black militancy articulated to challenge white supremacy, and the depiction of masculinity in Van Peebles’ movie.

Black Fights Back Part II: Black Filmmaking and Strategies of Opposition in America proposes an extensive historical approach to the development of African American cinema, from the 1910s to nowadays. It begins with the emergence of pioneering artists such as Oscar Micheaux, Emmett J.Scott, Noble Johnson and their attempts to present a positive image and counter negative and stereotypical descriptions of Black people. They also directly addresses the black communities life and the effects of racism. While the interest in Black films faded in the 1940s, the post-war era brought some changes with a new focus on African American subjects. The political context of the Civil Rights Movement influenced a new shift in independent black filmmaking, with Black artists trying to directly reach their community. In spite of Blaxploitation’s critics, it showed that Black independent filmamking was possible and showed the way to new generations of directors. Spike Lee, John Singleton appealed to mixed audience allowed the broader entry of Black artists in the cinema industry. However, the pressure from market imperatives and the industrial mould tend to hinder the progressiveness of African American directors’ fims.

This chapter permits to replace Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in its historical framework and to see its impact in the evolution of Black cinema. To this extent, Van Peebles’ movie appears as one of the landmarks of Black films which contributed to the democratization of filmmaking and its opening to African American artists.

The Chapter 6 of Gladstone L. Yearwood’s Black Film as a Signifying Practice offers an in-depth semiotic analyis of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song aesthetic. The author underlines on Van Peebles’ refusal to conform himself in Hollywood cinematic grammar. Van Peebles indeed frontally attacks the illusion perpetuated by mainstream cinema by breaking with all its techniques. To this extent, rather than laying the emphasis on the plot progress, he quasi exclusively focuses on political and ideological questions. He uses stereotypes, but only to deprive them from their consensual values to move away from them, and successively to challenge the traditional perceptions about race. This work of deconstruction of character types conventions allows a complex depiction of the reality.

In the same manner, Yearwood studies the juxtaposition of images and sounds which introduces not only singular editing techniques but also particular meanings. The director’s will to work outside of Hollywood parameters contributes to create a whole new cinematographic experience.

The author also proposes a particular understanding of the sexual question in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. While Lerone Bennett criticized the sexual depiction of the main character, Yearwood rather sees a rupture in both social and cinematographic terms in the way sex is featured on the screen.

“Narrative Transformation in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” provides a deep study of the film aesthetic and its subversion of the mainstream parameters. Through a dialectic analysis, the author explores the subtle and sometimes hidden meanings present in the director’s mise-en-scène and editing and reasserts the film as groundbreaking both in social and cinematographic terms.

Aristides Gazetas’ Imagining Selves: the Politics of Representation, Film Narrative, and Adult Education" offers a metaphysic perspective of the representation of reality in cinema. In its third chapter, “Film Narratives and Historical Representation”, the author explores the way cinema diffuse precise cultural discourses, or, in other words, what Jean Baudrillard calls a “politics of representation.” As a powerful means of visual information, cinema spreads particular imaginaries: through film narratives, it proposes definitions of cultural identities and the Other. As a result, it heavily influences our way to understand the world.
However, the rise of postmodernist theory (Lyotard) challenges and criticizes the given metanarratives enforced by the mainstream discourse. Postmodernist sensibility suggests a deconstruction of any foundational conceptions of knowledge. It opposes the indoctrination, the imposing of social representations operated by the saturation of rhetoric images hidden in the cinematographic medium. By reformulating the approach to these images, post-structural discourses give way to the complexity and multiplicity of the reality.

“Film Narratives and Historical Representation” provides a theoretical understanding of the articulation of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song in its discursive and historical context. The film appears as initiating a new way of cinematic representation which breaks with the positivist dominant discourse. Through a deconstruction of the images of Black people or the use of collage/bricolage (and through maybe its French New Wave influence), Van Peebles opposes the mainstream discourse and frontally displays the complexity of the world. He presents a distinct mode of representation which allows a multiplicity in the interpretation of reality. The director abandons the former “total representation” which “solidify” any identity in a type. If not directly addressing Van Peebles’ production, Gazetas proposes a powerful theoretical perspective on the philosophical stakes raised by Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

Thirty four years after Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song’s release in the theaters, its author, director, producer, soundtrack-composer Melvin Van Peebles reviews the impact of his film , replacing it in the historical framework of the particular relationship of African Americans with the cinema industry.

Van Peebles begins with the primary inconsistent descriptions of Black people in Hollywood’s movies, from the “buffonesque” pre-war image to the moralistic figure of the “New Negro”, which hypocritically still presented the old racist and paternalistic attitude. While Black characters were more or less present , the whole cinema industry did not open itself to Black directors, actors and cinema workers. As a result, until the end of the 1960s, Black audiences did not crowd in theaters. Van Peebles’ arrival in San Francisco as a French delegate to present his first film set up a new deal by opening the studios to Black artists. However, the succeeding blaxploitation wave, if directly appealing to the African American audiences, constituted according to Van Peebles a reactionary reversal of the first “Black films” of the 1970s to maintain a status quo. The director had to wait the 1990s to see a “new wave” of young Black directors to eventually see a new “artistic diversity”, with Black directors and actors involved in every part of the cinematic landscape. The article ends with a point of view on the current state of Hollywood and the need for democratizing the production of films, now permitted by the new technologies.

“Lights, Camera & The Black Role In Movies” provides a lucid personal view “from within” about the tremendous impact of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song on the cinema industry. It replaces the landmark movie in its historical framework and underlines the personal motivations of its director who had faced a particularly bad treatment of Black role in movies.

Surowiecki, James, Making It, Transition, No. 79, 1999, 176-192

 

This conversation with Van Peebles offers a intimate perspective on the trajectory of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’s director and his approach of cinema. The text begins with a presentation of the artist, underlining the multiplicity of his activities, from painter to first Black trader in Hollywood to American expatried in Europe. It explains his personal vision on the articulation of race in the United States and its interpretation on screen: in films like Watermelon Man or Sweet Sweetback, race is considered as an quasi exclusive social condition. It also sheds a new light on the singular acting of Van Peebles, whose expressionless acting was considered as especially bad. The article rather analyzes this un-expressiveness as political, a means to assert that the main character is only the product of social determinism, showing an almost Brechtian sensibility. In parallel, it also explores the influence of the French New Wave on his aesthetics.

The conversation in itself gets unto Van Peebles’ awareness of the impact of Sweet Sweetback on Black cinema with the director developing his particular considerations about the blaxploitation genre. He offers his understanding of the character of Sweetback and his trajectory and evolution throughout the movie, from an underclass passivity to political consciousness.

Later on, Van Peebles deals with his smart marketing strategy and the obstacles that he faced during the production and distribution phases, and with censorship.

This article proves to be interesting regarding Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song inasmuch as it provides rare insights of the director’s approach to his film. While Van Peebles does not like to talk about the aesthetics of his creations, here he presents certain crucial aspects of his filmmaking methods.

 

 

Bell Hooks’ “Artistic Integrity : Race and Accountability” deals with racial representation in cinema in a white supremacist aesthetic framework. It begins with the observation of initial inequality between White and Black directors in their subject matters: while White directors seem to be not responsible for their focus on the white world, Black directors constantly need to justify their choices of exclusively black, or whites, subjects.

Like any artists from marginalized groups, Black directors have to find a balance between demonstrations of political and social consciousness and expression of artistry, what Stan Brakhage calls the “aesthetic ecology.” This is particularly difficult, especially for artists who, dealing with a structure of domination, feel pressed to “assume responsibility for producing resisting image.” This appeal is moreover enhanced by the need to fill out the vacuum in the depiction of black subjects.

The threatening phenomenon is the instauration of a racial essentialism which compels artists to obsessionally focus on their environment. As a consequence, there are real difficulties to break with the dominant cinematographic discourse which maintains, even subtly, racist aesthetic and status quo.

In this article, Bell Hooks addresses the tremendous problems faced by directors when trying to escape from a racially defined dominant aesthetics. It provides insight on the difficulties of challenging and reformulating the representation of Black people at the movies. In this sense, it is directly linked to Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, which uses stereotypes as a mean to reject the racial paradigms of institutionalized cinema. Van Peebles’ film appears as one of the first attempts to challenge the dominant discourse and propose a rich and transformative alternative aesthetic to the self-reinforcing dominant discourse.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song: a Guerilla Manifesto is the personal account of Melvin Van Peebles on the chaotic production of his independent movie. It gets onto the initial motivations and the fundamental commandments that will determine his film: Black characters would be victorious, the film had to be entertaining and commercially viable to spread its message, the casting should include 50% of inexperienced actors… Then, Van Peebles recounts the nineteen days of the production phase and the multiple incredible events that punctuated it: the use of what he calls “globs” to shoot efficiently, the management of amateur actors, the contraction of gonorrhea by filming sex scenes, the stunts performed by the director himself... It eventually presents the problem of the film’s distribution, with its first release in only two theaters in Detroit.

The book shows the hectic context of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’s production and the difficulties at the time to shoot an independent Black movie. With a florid language and sense of humor, Van Peebles provides a view “from within” on the conception, financing, directing, editing and distribution of his movie. Thus replacing the production of the movie in its historical framework, the book comes back to the time when Black people were depicted only through Hollywood paternalistic and racist stereotypes and when everything had to be done for an African American to be completely in control of his work. It is also a testimony of a production phase that revealed itself to be as chaotic as the movie itself.

In this article, Courtney E.J. Bates presents a semiotic analysis of Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Badaasssss Song. The author particularly studies the film’s dichotomy between the mainstream cinematographic style used and the distinctive African American codes of cultural references. The first blaxploitation movie appears indeed to “appropriate” many characteristics of Hollywood (action or Western movies for instance) narrative structure. However, this mainstream origin is “subverted” by the use of typically African American myth features.

She particularly studies the two different classical figures embodied by Sweetback: the Trickster and the Badman. The merging of these two signifying references allows the (anti-)hero to oppose the Man – the Whites in general -, as a mythic figure struggling against oppression. The particular character of Sweetback, ambiguous and amoral, distinguishes thus himself from the unquestionable goods and villains.

The absence of linear structure in Sweet Sweetback’s Badaasssss Song (loose cohesiveness, repetition…) is also a characteristics of African American myth-making and directly contradicts the dominant Hollywood narrative form.

Van Peebles operates thus a reversal from the mainstream clean cinematographic techniques and narrative structures (linearity, typology of characters) to create a really transgressive film which relies on multiple African American storytelling characteristics. All these “signifyings”, combined with mainstream elements, tend to challenge the dominant framework of understanding cinema.

This article presents an in-depth and strongly referenced semiotic analysis of Sweet Sweetback’s Badaasssss Song which goes beyond the mere contextual understanding of the film. By studying the set of African American codes and isolating their different meanings and significances, Bates sheds a new light focused on the film itself and its relationship to African American culture.