tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934787162311039470.post2174682641047841120..comments2024-03-16T12:05:20.781+01:00Comments on A Wasted Life: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (USA, 1971)Abrahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15126027036169180235noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934787162311039470.post-68122511565792329722018-07-09T12:31:30.902+02:002018-07-09T12:31:30.902+02:00Perhaps because the topic really has nothing to do...Perhaps because the topic really has nothing to do with the movie on the whole? <br />But to look at your points as valid ("People are talking about it…"): In regard to the first point you make, we would argue that you're absolutely right about "perhaps charges of child pornography are not as credible if the scenes involve children of color since young black men are rarely looked upon as innocent and vulnerable." (Hell, much of the US doesn't care what happens to Black people in general, since what happens is obviously their own fault. [Not.]) But you completely overlook other relevant aspects of the two productions. <br />For one, Sweet Sweetback was an independent movie with no name stars and for a minority audience, and of no major importance to the mainstream press or white America. Pretty Baby, on the other hand, was a Hollywood film by a name director with name stars that could and did court mainstream controversy and press — hell, they even went for a layout in Playboy. Shields' nudity was a selling point, unlike Peebles'. So of course Pretty Baby made and got the attention & controversy.<br />Alone the use of nude children also is time-dictated: the unquestionable social mores of the US today dictate no kiddies nude, but back then the argument "a crime without a victim" was, illogically, still considered something "people are talking about". (Once upon a time, The Birth of a Nation was also not considered a racist movie. Times, and what's considered acceptable, change…. And, going by our current government, also change back.) That said, "child pornography" requires a bit more than simulated sex in which only a youth's backside and the saggy boobs of a skanky extra are seen. In that sense, Pretty Baby, with its underage full frontals, is closer to "porn" than Sweetback — especially, since, again: Shields' nudity was a selling point, unlike Peebles'. <br />We're not sure why jr.'s "admission" (were "statement" not the more appropriate word?) "rings hollow", but then we haven't read the interview(s) you speak of. In any event, he doesn't seem to have been damaged by the event. And who knows what the Peebles family background was like? We ourselves had a nudist-camp owner in ours, and thus nudity already fazed us far less than most people we knew in the US long before three decades of living in Europe inured us even more. <br />"Even grown men are scared to drop trou[sers] in front of the crew and everybody during a sex scene." But men are known to show wiener anyways, if rarely — Ghost Story (frontal) and Short Cuts come promptly to mind, sticking to US major studio productions (both old, we note). But we also shouldn't forget: the American mainstream society is a deeply penis-phobic one in which the sight of a penis turns innocents into perverts and sex monsters. A visible penis also moves the movie into an R-rating quicker than a flash of boob. Most producers, male and straight, also prefer the flash of boob to limp sausage. (We doubt, for example, that Weinstein ever said "You got to put a naked man into your movie.") And what movie star wants it revealed to the world that they don't measure up? (Not many can swing in the wind as impressively as Liam Neeson.) <br />But we digress. In the end: nudity alone does not make pornography, intention does. Pretty Baby got the hue and cry because they wanted it. "Intention" is far more present in that movie than Sweet Sweetback, which is definitely not pornographic — and that despite the big, stiff adult wiener one sees for all of a split second when Peebles Senior is earning rent money doing a sex show.Abrahamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15126027036169180235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2934787162311039470.post-81933054133338344982018-06-27T19:45:16.896+02:002018-06-27T19:45:16.896+02:00when discussing this movie, no reviewer ever expla...when discussing this movie, no reviewer ever explains how van peebles got away with using a child in an explicit sex scene, his son no less, when there was such a hue and a cry four years later when ten year old brooke shields was depicted in a non-sexual scene emerging from the bath in pretty baby.<br /><br />on the one hand, perhaps van peebles thought if anyone was going to use his thirteen year old son in a nude scene, and it should be added that the kid looks way younger than thirteen, then it should be he who does it. perhaps charges of child pornography are not as credible if the scenes involve children of color since young black men are rarely looked upon as innocent and vulnerable.<br /><br />then again, the junior van peebles has raved in more than one interview that the scene was the best moment of his life. somehow that admission rings hollow. even grown men are scared to drop trou in front of the crew an everybody during a sex scene. which explains why for every ten thousand A or B movies which feature countless barely legal nude women, there are only a couple of films featuring shadowy, poorly lit scenes of a couple of male behinds.petercox97https://www.blogger.com/profile/05818754297522029991noreply@blogger.com