He was a Baadass for All the Wrong Reasons. That’s Because America Failed Him.
The raconteur, the Baadassss, another giant of a man America failed, Melvin Van Peebles, has died.
If you were born a Black genius in 1932, as Walter Mosley aptly describes Melvin Van Peebles, in his book Black Genius, you amassed a war chest of suffering, rejection, and anger from the fight to shore up your place in the world and to live with dignity. The tools of that war chest, however, were the very things that shaped who you became. And shaped him it did.
At his passing, I read all the rehashed articles, as I had been doing over the past 32 years, and wondered if anyone had ever cared to look beyond the solidly molded iron mask of the man called MVP. Did they really believe the gibberish and carefully crafted persona he had created? The tired old lines repeated and repeated until they bounced off walls and floors or the “Sweetback” of the man so many ‘wink-wink’, talked about?”
At first, I wondered who they were talking about. Was this the same man I knew, and if so, what in the world were they saying? Then little by little, I began to understand that what the world saw and what Melvin wanted them to see and experience, was the carefully and expertly curated projection of a man willing to sacrifice his life for the progress of his people. One who was willing to take all the arrows in his back as a pioneer and one who had steeled and sealed himself off from the brutality inherent in his race. Shutting the door on himself was a necessary part of the equation. The truth that Melvin was determined to engage and enrage, if necessary, was to get the world to understand all the baggage a Black man carried in America. That would prove too uncomfortable for the not-so United States. But Melvin was relentless in serving up discomfort, fierceness, radicalism, and in-your-face art in a way that his America could understand, even as the other America called him a radical, angry Blackman.
Melvin was not delusional. He knew exactly what he had to do, and gracefully if painfully, took the slings, the arrows, and the crown of thorns, in their place passing on a torch that lit the way for the host of talented geniuses who kept and keeps coming, marching up the hill with resounding echo and confidence toward their inalienable right of dignity and freedom.
Many, I’ve read, have called him scrappy. Melvin Van Peebles was all but. His shtick was a well-crafted and well-rehearsed dance with the devil that is racist America. Inevitably, however, the devil must get paid and greedily wants to eat you whole. Unapologetic and armed with what he called his P to the second power necessary for walking the ‘dark side,’ the man and his dance accomplished what many will never be able to do in a million lifetimes: filmmaker, actor, writer, playwright, composer, Wall Street Trader, and a true total Baadasss who took all prisoners.
But Melvin, MVP, Baadasss, Sweetback, or whatever other cliched monikers he’s been called, paid an enormous personal price for being a Black genius in America. With a creative need that was unstoppable but could never be realized without radicalism, he unselfishly ‘gave up’ his life, knowing fully well that those in solidarity would understand.
At the core of this great man was a real Melvin. The Melvin Van Peebles I knew. One almost no one ever saw, and one, that thank God, I had the privilege of being privy to for so many years. The man I knew was a gentle giant, a lionized teddy bear who not one day was free to find joy in just being human. Up close and personal, this brilliant man had a love story to be told. I’m sure he’ll tell it in his next life. I bid Sir Melvin Van Peebles (awarded Chevalier in 2000 by France) goodnight and a well-deserved rest.
