Queer Oedipal Drag in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Baadasssss!

This article argues that the appearance of Mario Van Peebles in the films Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song and Baadasssss! performs a kind of “queer Oedipal drag” that complicates notions of sexuality and time in both films. Mario appears first as a young Sweetback, the iconic revolutionary, whose sexual initiation serves as the opening of Sweetback and then later as his father, Melvin, in Baadasssss!, a biopic that tells the story of the Sweetback’s production.