Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song was the first Blaxploitation movie I watched, and it wasn’t what I expected. I’d expected bravado and swaggering and all of the cool of the ‘70s—all of that tough kind of masculinity that is perhaps less rigid than the decades that came before it, but still not as open, as flexible, as a more balanced emotional life would be. 

I was expecting Sweetback to be like Super Fly or like Shaft, a baaad motherfucker with a chip on his shoulder and a gun in his hand (and probably a White woman somewhere nearby). I don’t necessarily think it’s bad to explore all of this in art, and in fact, after the ‘60s, I think this kind of representation of Black men was probably healing for a lot of people, this alternative reality where they could not only fight back but win. I think it doesn’t leave much room for women or for queer people, and for that reason and others, I don’t think it’s a sustainable way to be a Black man in the world, but I can see how—at the time and looking back—this kind of representation was important for some. 

Sweetback does probably self-identify as a baaaad motherfucker, but his style of masculinity reminds me more of Django from Django Unchained. He is not baaad for baaad’s sake—he’s bad because he lives in a world that constantly requires him to defend himself, to be on the run, and even as a man with less need for bravado, he does what he has to do. 

I like how little dialogue there is in this movie, and how the dialogue you do get is collage-like, people saying things that could stand alone in a museum, running on a loop, like the artsy young preacher who pauses the funeral he’s hosting to tell Sweetback, “I’m gonna say a Black Ave Maria for you.” Or the woman who, when questioned about whether or not she knows Sweetback, says, “I might’ve had a Leroy once but I can’t rightly remember… When the kids get older and bad, they usually take them away from me.” The dialogue is repeated and then repeated again until the words become a mantra, just as much prayer as they are storytelling.

I love the queerness of the film too, something else I didn’t expect. Sweetback, a sex worker, flows between gender in moments that are stunning, the other sex workers too. And then, among the Black people asked by the cops if they’d seen him, a group of queer people says that they haven’t, and then one says, “I’m a militant queen. Won’t I do, officer?” The movie gives us images of people who live in-between the slots they’re given, moving so quickly between them that the audience doesn’t have time to pin them down, force them to choose between seemingly opposite things like “militant” and “queen.”

The movie is dizzying the whole way through, even at the very start, which shows a row of Black women watching something, some smiling, some looking concerned. They’re looking at a young Sweetback, his hair matted, as he hurriedly eats some food. Later, he’s called into one of the women’s rooms and made to have sex with her—this within the first five minutes of the film. The first time I watched it, I almost turned it off—as he—a child—is having sex with this grown woman, and she’s calling him Sweetback, and then, suddenly, he’s a grown man having sex with her, and we’re left to wonder, What exactly does this mean? 

A lot of the film feels like that: What exactly does this mean? Except then there are moments that are very decisive in their meaning, like Sweetback, handcuffed to a Black kid that the cops are beating up. Sweetback isn’t in trouble, just along for the ride, so one of the cops—realizing he’s tied to the kid, his arm jostling as they beat him—says, “I’m sorry, man. I forgot you two were attached together. Let’s see if we can get a little air between ya.”

Instead of standing by, watching the Black kid getting beaten (maybe killed) by these policemen, Sweetback protects the boy. Then, because this protection requires violence against cops, he’s on the run. But this run is not action-packed, and it’s not particularly emotional, and though—abstractly—you know the stakes are high, you are almost relaxed watching him because most of the time, there is no one close by to catch him. He’s just running and running, and the music is playing, and now he’s running in the desert, and now he’s passed out, and now he’s at it again. 

And between the shots of him running are shots of Black people saying they’ve never heard of him or they haven’t seen him or they have no idea where he is. When one man’s shown a dead body and asked if it’s Sweetback, his smile grows when he sees that it isn’t. 

Sweetbacks runs, and he runs, and he isn’t caught, and this is healing to watch. It’s healing not because of the violence he enacted but because of the violence he is spared. I think it’s common knowledge that Black and brown bodies are not valued as much as White bodies, and when they die, there is rarely as much concern from the world. Early and violent death is assumed to be part of the Black and brown experience, and so we are asked not to be shocked when it happens, to get over it quickly, and to treat White death like the real and urgent tragedy. 

Every early death is a tragedy—Black, brown or White—and what I really like about this movie is how precious Black life is. It is so precious as to be protected all the way through, Sweetback defeating the odds and making it to a place where they can no longer catch him, walking off screen tired but very much alive. Maybe our restlessness is just a desire to see more of this: the ones whose lives are expected to be cut short somehow living on. 

Image: Cinemation Industries