Blaxploitation???... start with "Watermelon Man"

It's rare that a movie makes me laugh hard through half of it!!! Melvin Van Peebles made "Watermelon Man" as a biting racial satire released in 1970. It still stands up to time though. It's just as scathing as "Raisin In the Sun", but more surreal. A white bigot wakes up to find he is black. That simple premise allows Peebles to let the camera watch the community around him change from a Norman Rockwell ideal to spewing racists. The movie feels like a Carnival mirror though, as the transformation is made funny by the absurdity Peebles uses. "Watermelon Man" was made before "Baddass", so as a director he is more remembered for the latter. "Watermelon Man" is the more unsettling though.

Posted by Timothy Washington on 2004.12.10| Original post

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