Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song



Trope Maker/Ur Example of the Blaxploitation genre (though it is not an Exploitation Film in of itself).

Opening with the dedication: "This film is dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man"; a young African American orphan (played by Melvin Van Peebles' son, Mario) is taken in by the proprietor of a brothel in Los Angeles in the 1940s. One of the prostitutes there entices him to lose his virginity to her, and due to his sexual prowess and large penis, she nicknames him "Sweet Sweetback" (we later learn his birth name is ). Sweetback grows up, and now played by Melvin himself; he has become the brothel's most celebrated sex-performer. After his show one night, two crooked cops arrest him. On their way to the station, the two also arrest a black panther named MuMu, and handcuff him to Sweetback. MuMu insults the officers, so the two stop and beat him up. Sweetback is angered, and attacks the officers. With the police after him, Sweetback flees to Mexico, aided on his way by the entire black community as well as by a biker gang who he impresses the female leader of by having sex with her. Does Sweetback make it? Yes, he does. That was part of what made the film so revolutionary.

Director Melvin was fresh off directing the race-reversal comedy Watermelon Man when he developed the idea for this film when he stopped his car out in the Mojave Desert one day. Because no studio would finance it, he directed, wrote, produced, scored and acted in the whole thing himself, up to and including doing his own stunt work. He was, however, able to score a $50,000 dollar loan from Bill Cosby. When the film was finished, it was rated X by the MPAA, inspiring the Tagline seen in this poster: "Rated X by an all-white jury". Because of this rating, it couldn't be advertised in newspapers, so Melvin did the promoting for it himself too. What's more, only two theaters would play it. But despite all this, Melvin's hopes were not in vain. The film became a runaway success, grossing $4,100,000. It became required viewing of the Black Panthers. Because of its success, filmakers started seeing the potential for profit in directing films catered to black audiences, and thus was born blaxploitation. All-in-all, this film is essential viewing for anyone interested in either film history or black history.

In 2004, the aforementioned son, Mario, wrote, directed and starred in Baadasssss, which dramatized the film's production and release.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was added to the National Film Registry in 2020.

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 * Angry Black Man: Well obviously.
 * Badass: Likely the trope namer.
 * B-Movie: One of the most important ever made.
 * Bigger Is Better in Bed: Implied
 * Biker Babe
 * Blaxploitation
 * My Friends and Zoidberg: "Starring the Black Community... And Brer Soul."
 * Only a Flesh Wound: Sweetback gets hit in the stomach by a swarm of buckshot while being pursued by cops through a desert. He tears a section of fabric from his shirt, pisses on it, rolls it in sand and uses it to patch up his wound.
 * Pimp Duds
 * The Pornomancer: Sweetback seems to have sex with just about every woman he encounters.
 * The Quiet One: Sweetback himself, who has about ten lines of dialogue in the entire film.
 * Shotacon: On account of the opening sex scene in which a young Mario Van Peebles performs simulated sex with an older woman.
 * Run for the Border
 * Soul Brotha: Sweetback.
 * Steel Ear Drums: Averted. The police torture one of Sweetback's associates for Sweetback's location (information the man does not have) by firing a pistol next to his ears, which destroys his hearing.
 * You Are a Credit to Your Race: A police chief makes a speech where he rants about how Sweetback escaping will cause "niggers" to uprise. He then apologizes to the two African-American detectives in his audience, and says that if they catch Sweetback, they'll be a tribute to their race.