The Van Peebleses prowl through the Panthers' history

American Visions, April-May, 1995 by Michael Robinson

From the day they strode through the halls of the California State Capitol in 1967, shotguns and pistols in hand, members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense captured the attention of a nation. With their black berets and leather jackets, their guns and their revolutionary slogans, their courage and their community service programs, they did more than underscore the right of black people to protect themselves; they embodied self-empowerment. Now, almost 30 years later, largely ignored by the history books, the Black Panther Party has faded into the outer recesses of our nation's consciousness.

Here to restore that forgotten legacy is Panther (Gramercy, May release), a fictionalized account of the early years of the Black Panther Party, written and directed, respectively, by father-and-son team Melvin and Mario Van Peebles. Panther details the genesis of the revolutionary organization formed on the streets of Oakland, Calif., by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. It glorifies an organization that then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called "the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States."

From the film's opening shots of grainy newsreel footage of speeches by John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X--each clip followed by the loud echo of a gunshot, signifying each man's assassination-Panther grabs you, holds you and refuses to let go. In scene after scene, the Van Peebleses teach without being didactic, successfully drawing parallels between the conditions of the 1960s and those of the present.

Given Mario's track record as the director of the urban drama New Jack City and the less successful black western Posse, his embrace of a subject as controversial and political as black revolutionaries will surprise some. This is the same Van Peebles excoriated by Harry Belafonte in a recent interview. "I don't like pictures that glorify black villainy," Belafonte told the New York Times. "Why should millions of young people find something heroic in a character who's a cocaine pusher, only because he's doing war against evil white society.?"

Mario speaks of his past film credits as if they were guerrilla tactics. "Everybody has their own way of doing what they're going to do," he says. "If the objective is, we as revolutionaries want to blow up this bank, I know some brothers will wear a red, black and green jumpsuit and get shot by the security guard at the door. But I'll put on a three-piece suit, open an account and eventually own that bank. You have to decide what's the best way to get there, as long you don't forget your political objectives once you're there.

"I've been in America's homes. I'm user friendly on that level, and that's allowed me, in some sense, to get behind enemy lines, to the point where they would let me do the Panther movie--key point; let my company, M.V.P. Films, produce it--key point; and let us have final cut--key point." The result is a truly inspirational film that illumines a history that hasn't been taught to young people, while reminding older audiences of what their generation accomplished with its protests. "It wasn't just me coming at the Panthers as a young brother of this generation, saying, `I wasn't there, but I've read a lot,'" says Mario. "I came with my father, who was there and who was embraced by the Panthers."

So enamored was Newton with Melvin Van Peebles' film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, a story of a hustler turned revolutionary, that he made its viewing mandatory for party members. Though never a party member himself, Melvin had a close relationship with its leadership and held numerous benefit concerts on the party's behalf. Panther's script comes from a novel on which he has been working for more than 15 years.

By focusing on the party's genesis, the Van Peebleses have created readily identifiable heroes for a young generation that is sorely in need of direction; a generation frustrated, yet complacent; a generation that doesn't know how to protest. "Our youth have been injected with a false sense of power," says Melvin. "They mistake, many times, yelling into a microphone as actual political empowerment. ... Our message is that you can change things. You don't have to take it. And here's some people who did change things," he adds, referring to Newton and Seale.

In their desire to create heroes, the Van Peebleses tend to oversimplify. Huey Newton (newcomer Marcus Chong) is fearless; always armed with his shotgun, he faces down the Oakland police department. But his complexity and his intellectual prowess are downplayed. Also, the Black Panther Party as portrayed in the film is nonsexist. The unfortunate reality, as former Panther leader Elaine Brown wrote in her memoir, A Taste of Power, was that a woman "was considered, at best, irrelevant."

In their rush to draw parallels with the 1990s, the Van Peebleses also gloss over the political philosophy of the Black Panther Party. The organization depicted in the film is a dedicated, community-based group built around the issue of police brutality. This picture is not inaccurate, but it is an inadequate portrayal of the Panthers' revolutionary nature. Nowhere in the film is it even suggested that the Panthers were committed to the overthrow of capitalism. The writings of Mao Tse-tung crop up in the film, not as part of the intellectual foundation of the movement, but as booklets to sell to get money for guns.