Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (film)

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (film)
Year Released:	1971
MPAA Rating (USA):	X
Director:	Melvin Van Peebles
Starring:	Melvin Van Peebles Hubert Scales John Dullaghan Mario Van Peebles

With Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) director Melvin Van Peebles(Aug. 21, 1932 - Sep. 21, 2021) created the "Blaxploitation" genre. The low budget was eked out by Van Peebles writing, co-producing, scoring, editing, directing and starring in the film, including performing his own stunts and sex scenes, some of which were not simulated. Van Peebles' then thirteen-year-old son Mario plays the young version of his father, including full nudity and simulated sex. Assistant editor Jeremy Hoeneck would go on to edit the 1972 The Genesis Children. The film was shot over 19 days, with Van Peebles presenting it as a Negro porn flick to evade union regulations. The director financed the film with his own money and a $50,000 loan from Bill Cosby, and the film went on to gross over $15 million.

With full nudity and simulated sex by a minor boy, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was treated more leniently than the nearly contemporaneous The Genesis Children, which had only simple nudity, and which shared at least one production person, and likely a similar budget. Sweetback had its initial "X" rating reduced to an "R" three years after release. Sweetback appears in a 2019 reference book published by the Museum of Modern Art to commemorate key works of art in its collection. It is also included in The Criterion Collection of "important classic and contemporary films." The Genesis Children DVD and VHS appeared as two of the top ten best-selling films at Insider Video Club, raided by the Postal Inspection Service.

Juvenile sex scene

An IMDB review describes the sex scene:

In the opening scene a 13 year old boy, played by Peebles' son Mario, makes love with a hooker. This scene runs 3½ minutes. The boy is shown nude primarily from the rear, much of this time on top of the woman. Split-second views of male frontal nudity occurs a couple of times. The hooker is shown fully nude, front and back, but her pubic hair is visible only briefly.

The younger Sweetback character is described in the online Criterion Collection notes as "Mario Van Peebles ... Sweetback, age ten". Current obscenity law can criminalize visual representations that "appear to depict minors", lending importance to the character's age, and not only the actor's.

Mario Van Peebles had previous acting credits, including the soap opera 'One Life to Live', and while he did no acting for a decade after 'Sweet Sweetback', he did get a BA in Economics from Colombia in 1978, and went on to forty years of uninterrupted work in Hollywood.

The scene appears in a number of lists of controversial sex scenes, reviewers variously giving Mario's age as 11, 13, or 14. As the scene was filmed in 1970 and the younger Peebles was born in January, 1957, the calendar favors 13. One review puts the actress who shared the scene as in her 40s. Mario is sometimes described as being "practically forced" to perform the role. Mario has stated that the scene was not real but simulated. (needs source).

Actor's docudrama and homage

In 2003 Mario van Peebles filmed Baadasssss!, originally titled, How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass, a "half-documentary/half-homage to his father Melvin Van Peebles' movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971).", in which Mario plays his father. An IMDB review claims:

Mario's reluctance about being forced to be in a "sex scene" in his dad's movie is one of the film's highlights. The moment works thanks to a nicely subdued and thoughtful performance by Khleo Thomas as the young Mario.

Possibly Mario presented himself as being only 11 at the time he filmed the sex scene. Screen caps show Khleo been made up to appear as Mario did in Sweet Sweetback, including dyed and mangy hair, but another review informs that the scene was not re-enacted in Baadasssss!, the documentary jumping from preparation to watching the 1970 scenes on a video monitor.

Baadasssss! is an adult's perspective on his father's groundbreaking work - and on his own participation at the age of thirteen in an adult/minor sex scene in front of the cameras.

Melvin Van Peebles cast his son in another film, the 1989 “Identity Crisis,” in which his Mario plays a rap singer who assumes the body of a middle-aged gay fashion designer.

Rating

Van Peebles released the film with the slogan, "Rated X by an all-white jury", though sources vary as to whether he self-rated the film, submitted the film for rating, or whether the MPAA rated it without it being submitted. The MPAA database shows only that the film was rated "R" in 1974.. For other films where the rating changed, such as the contemporaneous "Midnight Cowboy", only the final rating appears in the database.

Wikipedia claims of a 2005 British DVD edition, "The Region 2 DVD release from BFI Video has the opening sex sequences altered. A notice at the beginning of the DVD states "In order to comply with UK law (the Protection of Children Act 1978), a number of images in the opening sequence of this film have been obscured."

Other ratings include: Australia:R Canada:R Canada:R (Alberta) Canada:(Banned) (Nova Scotia) Canada:16+ (Quebec) Germany:Not Rated Netherlands:18 (original rating) New Zealand:R18 United Kingdom:18 (video) United States:R (1974) United States:X (1971)

Success

The film was a success financially, as one of the highest-grossing independent films of all time; politically, as Huey P. Newton devoted an entire issue of 'The Black Panther' to the film; culturally, as its success paved the way for the 1970s Blaxploitation genre; and artistically, as it has entered museum collections, and been restored and shown at festivals.

The New York Times "New Movies in Town" column on May 2, 1971, which also mentioned Johnny Minotaur, summarized the film as

SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG is film maker Melvin Van Peebles' “third and worst feature,” says Roger Greenspan. “Sweet Sweetback (played almost without dialogue by Van Peebles himself) performs in a black Southern California brothel until he is routinely picked up by the police one night and, driven by what they do to one of his brothers, he assaults a couple of cops and runs away. The subject, then, is Sweetback's flight to the border, and his adventures during flight; and at one level of artiness or another, it is almost all predictable formula material.”

Editing

Critics were forgiving of the chaotic, non-linear structure of Sweet Sweetback For example, Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Thomas discussed the film in an article on a 1992 Van Peebles retrospective:

Without a doubt, the key Van Peebles film is his corrosive 1971 tour de force, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” (screening Saturday at 7 p.m.). So abstract is “Sweet Sweetback” that all you can say for sure of the plot is that it’s about a pimp (Van Peebles) on the lam after being involved in the killing of a brutal cop. As the picture progresses, you worry less and less about keeping track of the story line (an impossible task anyway) because its incoherence, intended or otherwise, becomes so expressive of Sweetback’s predicament and induces identification with him.

Marvin Van Peebles is credited as editor, with Jeremy Hoeneck as assistant editor. Hoeneck would go on to edit The Genesis Children and three other films, however he has no editing credits after 1974 except for a 1978 film where he is also director and producer, but IMDB list 253 credits in sound through 2018.