In the 20th century, Hollywood offered black Americans very little positive representation. They were portrayed as violent or ignorant, and almost always submissive. Melvin van Peebles challenged that stereotype in 1971 when, in Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song, he created the title character to fight back and claim independence. Here, van Peebles again challenges Hollywood’s representation of black Americans by taking a journey through American cinema. Using a mixture of humor and anger, he talks about how the lack of positive images affected him and how those images have only changed gradually by the 1997 release of this film.