Sweetback’s Slinging Dick Saga Ain’t Worth A Fuck

When Brother Melvin (Melvin Van Peebles for the squares that don’t know) died in 2021, it was a blow. For better or worse, as an independent artist, he is a pioneer, a mentor and example of what you can accomplish if you DIY until the wheels fall off. A lot of people by now know the story of how he made Sweet Sweetback’s Badassssss Song including making SAG think he was doing a porn, doing real unsimulated sex, the folklore of Melvin Van Peebles catching VD fucking for real on set and getting workman’s compensation after lying about it being a pornography, though it was a fruitless effort that wasn’t worth it in the end. Oh, and there is the child sex abuse thing that is always glossed over when he had his then 13 year old son Mario Van Peebles, do simulated sex half naked playing the younger Sweetback which obviously didn’t age well.

But that’s all another discussion. I’m here to discuss his written work.

Now I had a choice – review the Sweetback novel or his other book A Bear For The FBI, since I’ve read both time ago. Well, if you’re hear you know damn well which one I picked.

After careful review and all these years since I first read it, it’s still a piece of shit.

No, I’m not offended by the pornographic bent of the book (which is far more prevalent in the film). If people want to fuck badly on paper or in the shit movie that’s their business considering I’m pro erotica. I can live with his fucked up artistic choices fine. It’s the entire plot, or lack thereof, that makes this one of thee most over rated books to ever be released.

Like I get it, Sweetback’s shtick is “sticking it to the man” literally. This book just takes it there, especially in the beginning. How the fuck are we supposed to, in good conscious no matter what decade this was made, think the homeless kid taken in by a brothel of cringed hoes somehow has such a big black dick at such an early age that women molest and rape him as a young boy (totally ignoring statutory rape and child abuse committed against him by whores that probably had more venereal diseases than groupies at a Van Halen concert) and will be stalking him for his appendage until he dies? Beat us over the head why don’t you that Sweetback has won the big dick lottery and is blessed, yet totally ignoring a big dick doesn’t mean you can fuck, even when trained, as a fucking baby, by hoes.

And yet this is a tale as old as time and an American legend of young men getting their innocence taken by older women.

Sweetback though adds a new revolutionary dynamic. The big black dick is so well trained that from the time we see Sweetback as an adult, he is now a political activist, since the power of his big black dick compels him into sticking it to the oppressive whites riding him and keeping him from 100% of his money performing sex shows with a drag queen master of ceremonies definitely shouts REVOLUTION in the wee hours of the morning. But it is unforgivable that Sweetback’s entire motivation is to stay one step ahead of the law after running afoul of them for not staying in his nigger place, and the only way he seems to be able to do that is fucking with his big black dick every time a white biker offers up his slut. He lives, because his big black dick has more whites to put in their place.

And that literally is this fucking book. Ugh.

The cops that are hunting them surely went on to retire and totally switch careers becoming cuckolds upon retirement because they are more obsessed with his big black dick than the women are. That seems to be a subplot of the book, white cops feelings and their obsession with killing a big black dick like it’s a big black snake slithering in the yard. And that’s the fucking book. The big black dick of Sweetback slithering to the next hide out, getting betrayed, getting fucked, getting the man off his back, being rated X by an all white jury because the big black dick is the only sword one needs to fight.

Hey, it worked for the white women protesting for George Floyd’s murder after they saw his porn film so I guess that’s the demographic that bought this fucking book, which is serendipitous a collector’s item now.

I like Melvin Van Peebles as a screenwriter in some cases, as a director in all cases, but as a novelist, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST he is terrible. Maybe because it is an independent adaptation and he’s too close to the source material he just couldn’t tell a good story. This reads more like bullet outline points of fucking with whitey at a Charlie Kirk rally. Most of Black America of the generation this book was released have tied Sweetback into a weird cult of black militancy in America because a manhunt of slinging dick and potentially leaving behind child support mouths to feed pillar to post is being mad as hell and not taking it any more. And the irony that this book and it’s sourced film are a major part of that is not over my head, since this film got more cred and attention than the far superior The Spook Who Sat By The Door.

Not a fan of the film. Not a fan of the book adaptation. Probably one of thee most overrated film/book combos of all time solely because the Black Panthers made this required viewing instead of The Spook Who Sat By The Door. I just can’t believe fifty years later this book is a “classic” when it is so one dimensional and perpetuates the stereotype that a black revolution is completely dependent on how well black men lay pipe. Sweet Sweetback is as entertaining as a prostate exam after eating White Castle. Melvin Van Peebles could have done a hell of a lot better than a dick slinging pamphlet on fucking with the white man.

The 1970s were on a hell of a lot of drugs, weren’t it?