Reid (78) suggests that Sweetback's sexuality and his "controlled" violence are important elements when it comes to his escape. Prior to this film, Reid (78) points out that black male sexuality was portrayed as being "animalistic and instinctively violent," however, Van Peebles depiction of such a sexual being with "a controlled and motivated violence" was a "heroic idea" that certainly was different than anything the African-American community had seen before in its portrayal of sexual black men.

All three of the "road films" -- Easy Rider, Stroszek, and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song -- are films about taking to the road in search of something or as a means to escape...

All of the characters in the collective films -- Billy, Wyatt, Stroszek, and Sweet Sweetback -- are trying to escape some type of disillusionment, whether it is disillusionment with the government, disillusionment with life, or a disillusionment caused by being oppressed. What is significant about all the films, written and directed by filmmakers from three completely different backgrounds, is that they all share the same human desire: to have the freedom to go in search of a better life -- a "vida pura."
Works Cited

Hill, Lee. Easy Rider (BFI Modern Classics). British Film Institute, 1996.

Peuker, Brigitte. "Werner Herzog: In Quest of the Sublime." From Klaus Philips Ed.

New German Filmmakers. NY: Frederick Unger Co., 1984.

Reid, NAME, PUBLISHER, DATE?

Sieglohr, Ulrike. "New German…