189 Watermelon Man

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MichaelB
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189 Watermelon Man

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Mar 05, 2020 6:18 am

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(Melvin Van Peebles, 1970)
Release date: 18 May 2020
Pre-order here

Limited Edition Blu-ray (World Blu-ray premiere)

A bigoted, white salesman (played by stand-up comedian Godfrey Cambridge) wakes up one morning to find he has become black. Although it has been somewhat overshadowed by Melvin Van Peebles’ next film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Watermelon Man has never felt more relevant than it does today.


INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• High Definition presentation
• Introduction by Melvin Van Peebles (2004)
• The Guardian Interview with Melvin Van Peebles (1996): archival audio recording of the filmmaker and actor in conversation with broadcaster Darcus Howe at London’s National Film Theatre
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Sergio Mims, a 1970 profile of director Melvin Van Peebles, archival interviews with Van Peebles, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• World premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies
• Extras subject to change

#PHILTD189
BBFC cert: 15
REGION B
EAN: 5060697920543

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knives
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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#2 Post by knives » Thu Mar 05, 2020 8:30 am

If there's a better film released this year it will be a landmark year for bluray. Not only is this in many ways Peebles masterpiece, different from most personal film, but it is also probably the best expression of black male identity on film. All this from around the same time as Finnean's Rainbow! The ending is as powerful a statement as the murder in Do the Right Thing.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#3 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 10, 2020 10:22 am

knives wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 8:30 am
If there's a better film released this year it will be a landmark year for bluray. Not only is this in many ways Peebles masterpiece, different from most personal film, but it is also probably the best expression of black male identity on film. All this from around the same time as Finnean's Rainbow! The ending is as powerful a statement as the murder in Do the Right Thing.
Well, when you’re right you’re right. What starts as a scathing yet comedic portrait of white narcissism, oblivious to one’s own behavior or social surrounding due to privilege, jaggedly transforms into a classist nightmare taking Kafka applied to race to influence the displacement of status, and ultimately acknowledges the importance of ethnicity for identity. I don’t know if there’s been a sneakier gut punch of sobriety to the experience of race and ethnicity as not just related to but integral to existence, disguised as a light hearted comedy, which it is- but there is an inevitable confrontation of social position and racism for the viewer here, all while forcing that experience of the black male onto the audience. If that becomes a nightmare is it a racist reaction or one of realization of one’s own power and what is at stake if those stabilizers are removed, or can it be both and much more? Godfrey Cambridge considers it a nightmare, and says so enough times for us to internalize the same, exploiting the thin veil of facade the self-proclaimed white liberal wears until they feel threatened. I’m not a person of color, so I can't pretend to measure this film's effectiveness beyond my own lens, but I wonder if this exposition hammers in an acute clarity of the thick skin one develops by living in one’s non-white skin. This hits a beautiful rhythm between hilarity and raw recognition of social politics as defined by systems that beget prejudice, and in some ways it's more about the fragility of the white identity and the inaccessibility of placing oneself in the shoes of another than it is a surrogate narrative of being black within a dominant white world. By focusing on that horror of transitioning into a body without the tools or experience to cope, Van Peebles attacks the whites who shrug off race and minimize the divide to argue for sameness on their terms (All Lives Matter?), and simultaneously celebrates people of color for being able to cope with what this character simply cannot. The exaggeration is solely subjective to the character in this way and it becomes like Welles’ The Trial (despite clearly being inspired by Metamorphosis) in this chaotic sense of this disorientation as a product of a lack of comprehension or skills rather than just external circumstance. So Van Peebles does something interesting where the delivery of this idea acknowledges how race fits with ethnicity, and seems to be arguing that it is ethnicity which provides that coating of security and support that Godfrey is displaced from and can't manage in another; and conversely what protects people of color from being psychologically crushed by persecution and abuse to channel into resilience.

Melvin’s compositions, especially during certain scenes (the watermelon one is my favorite), are so intense and surreal in their wild experimentation and ambient layers of mechanical urban noises, overlapping with voices in an incredibly anxious and uncomfortable manner bordering on hallucinatory sound design, that it disorients aggressively as characters respond in ways to make Godfrey doubt his own sanity. This film is much smarter than it appears to be on the surface of satire, and it’ll be a day one purchase for me.

As far as the ending..
SpoilerShow
It's implied that, now that he’s embraced his black identity, Godfrey sees the only way out from oppression to arm himself and join the militant group he used to chastise, targeted at the goal of revolt. The implications of this are ambiguous in an unsettling way. If this was simply his only idea left to protect himself without having the strength of a developed ethnicity, that would be a full-circle joke, but this also assumes that Godfrey has been able to transition into this role with the rest of his new racial group towards fighting as a method of action for people of color as a collective, as a byproduct of racial injustice. This is one last slap in the face in undoing a lot of the subliminal messaging that people of color who have lived in their skin and developed a strong sense of ethnicity are able to cope while Godfrey can not, suggesting that regardless of those strengths and protective factors, this abuse is too great to live with eternally. It's actually quite a sad ending in many ways, with Van Peebles essentially saying, "Yeah we're way stronger and more adaptable than white people, but that doesn't end the pain." I don't know if violence does, but without any tangible options other than to sit in purgatory in a system that isn't changing in its aggressive molestation of black people, Van Peebles shows that this is one of few options of empowerment. All the skills to cope simply aren't enough.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#4 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Mar 10, 2020 10:37 am

Never managed to see this when it was new -- maybe now, at last. ;-)

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knives
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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#5 Post by knives » Tue Mar 10, 2020 8:55 pm

endingShow
van Peebles has talked about this, but the original script had him turning back into a white man. He naturally disagreed with that arguing that it would make blackness seem like a punishment with whiteness as a reward. He instead wanted the blackness just to be a part of life. To paraphrase The Fly Cambridge was always a black man, but one who dreamed he was a man. Even the casting of Cambridge highlights this. Originally the studio wanted a white actor, but van Peebles argued that a black actor was necessary for thematic reasons (as well saving the studio in makeup). So while the film is a very explicit call to action I'd argue it is thematically a best case scenario as it shows that acceptance of black identity is possible even for all of its difficulties. Cambridge, who gives an amazing performance that most actors couldn't balance, allows his character to end the film with a pride in place of the arrogance.
I'm really glad to see one other, hopefully soon to be two, supporter of this magical film. van Peebles is probably best known nowadays for Sweetback which despite being a film I like does his reputation few favours for how it feeds into expectations of black cinema. If this and Story of a 3-Day Pass or his literature was better known I'd imagine he would be treated with more respect. It's hard to think of a more radical narrative American filmmaker from his generation.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:23 pm

SpoilerShow
That’s a solid reading as one of not just acceptance but embrace, which fits after his phone calls in the penultimate scene. I guess I can’t ignore the actualities of the struggle that this final scene represents, and see it as more of a murky complicated presentation than an explicit call to arms, validating this as a dignified solution only possible in leaving it so ambiguous since he’s spent an entire film detailing a very real and traumatizing problem. I don’t see it quite so clean cut and think Van Peebles is calling a spade a spade, showing the sad struggle while also empowering through that best case acceptance transformed into positivity through ethnic identity supports outside of race.

That leap from race to ethnicity feels like the key to the jump from depression which would be harmful, to that grey space of stark truth which leaves room for optimism. I think this is basically what you’re saying, though I suppose I don’t read it quite so skewed to the positive, but the beauty of the ending is that in its ambivalence over what to feel and in forcing that hazy space to stew in, we choose to interpret the degrees on either side of the middle based on our own perspective in how we think of identity development in context of the limitations on power, be them socially, politically, and naturally. Even though this is clearly specific around race and oppressed populations, it draws a lot of broad relatability to the human experience of the difficult path to self-actualization, namely self-acceptance, acknowledgement of position, lack of power in control, and emancipation over where one can have the freedom to issue control: essentially the serenity prayer.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#7 Post by knives » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:38 pm

I suppose I'm also an optimist on the subject which probably doesn't hurt our small difference in reading if there is even really one.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#8 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:52 pm

I don’t think there is one, but that flexibility in the reading is a strength of the film to allow a personalized relationship to exist along with the intended one(s), and this conversation has only made me appreciate it more

Also I agree this is miiiles better than Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#9 Post by knives » Tue Mar 10, 2020 9:59 pm

Image

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#10 Post by MichaelB » Wed Apr 22, 2020 4:44 pm

Full specs confirmed:

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#11 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Apr 22, 2020 5:27 pm

Of all the Indicator releases this one seems to demand the most supplemental material, but hopefully that 71-minute interview is rich.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#12 Post by MichaelB » Mon May 11, 2020 2:42 pm

Watermelon Beaver.

(Or Beavermelon Man, but that doesn't sound any less filthy.)

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#13 Post by knives » Mon May 11, 2020 2:56 pm

I thought Indicator wouldn't release Taiwanese films.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#14 Post by MichaelB » Wed May 20, 2020 9:35 am


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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#15 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:29 pm

Went through the Guardian interview supplement (as well as the intro- that just explains monotonously how Van Peebles got the studio to agree to a black actor in the lead), which played like a commentary over the film, or 70ish minutes of it. It focuses more on Van Peebles' life, career, experiences in the industry as a black man, and some thoughts (ranging from superficial questions like favorite films to racial politics). The most interesting part is when he gives thoughts on blaxploitation films and what he is attempting with his art, but overall most of the program was pretty much fluff and I left wanting more- both on this film specifically as well as Van Peebles' deeper feelings on racial politics at the time. He gets into it, but the conversations seem to fizzle out quick without saying too much. Pretty disappointing considering this is the only supplement on the disc. I'm wondering what stopped Indicator from getting more, especially on a film so ripe for analysis.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#16 Post by Drucker » Mon Jun 08, 2020 4:17 pm

Does this film have any relationship to Watermelon Woman or just a coincidence in the name? I keep seeing that film being promoted as another great example of black cinema in our current moment, so just curious.

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knives
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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#17 Post by knives » Mon Jun 08, 2020 4:19 pm

They have no relationship. The use of watermelon is in reference to a common stereotype that black people love watermelon.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#18 Post by swo17 » Mon Jun 08, 2020 4:23 pm

I expect the latter film was hoping to ride a little on this one's coattails

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#19 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jun 10, 2020 1:01 am


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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#20 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 13, 2021 6:39 am

Very belatedly, Blu-ray.com - with an accompanying mystery; it's credited to Svet Atanasov but doesn't remotely read like him.

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Re: 189 Watermelon Man

#21 Post by tenia » Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:05 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Wed Jan 13, 2021 6:39 am
Very belatedly, Blu-ray.com - with an accompanying mystery; it's credited to Svet Atanasov but doesn't remotely read like him.
Probably another title he received and never bothered to review to the point somebody else had to do it.
It indeed doesn't look at all like his usual phrasing.

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