Watermelon Man was based on a gimmick: a bigoted white insurance salesman wakes up one morning to discover he's turned Black. Van Peebles's direction was lackluster. The film is by turns dull and annoying. One has the sense that … [Van Peebles was not] particularly happy bringing this fantasy to life. But as a "career move," Watermelon Man was smart. (p. 200)

Sweet Sweetback is not an easy film to admire: it's violent, even sadistic, obscene, frenzied, painful. Critics who disliked the film condemned it for trading on a classic Black stereotype, the buck. On the surface, the film has all the most extreme elements of the most cynical Blaxploitation ripoffs. But Van Peebles, I think, is using these elements, commenting upon them.

The images of the film fall quite neatly into three classic categories, elemental actions that triangulate (and strangulate) ghetto life in the U.S.:

• People run. ("Keep...