Often credited with birthing the blaxploitation genre, Melvin Van Peebles’ controversial film showed that a black audience would come out in droves for films appealing to their interests, though – outside of the race of the lead – Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song hardly resembles the more populist fare that would follow. Peebles plays Sweetback nearly silent, working as a featured player in a live sex show until being pushed to participate in a police line-up. When the officers arrest and beat on a young black activist, Sweetback brutally attacks them, sending him on a series of encounters as he finds
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