|
"Die Verwandlung," as has been noted, Melvin Van Peebles follows Nabokov with his own splenetic lecture. "Aren't you concerned with the civil rights issue?" Mere television noise to the white suburban loudmouth, who kicks off his mornings by racing the bus because he's got no other problems. (Putting Godfrey Cambridge in bleached greasepaint is key to the revision of Lerner's Black Like Me.) Insurance is his métier, pigmentation transfiguration occurs in the middle of the night with ebony buttocks popping out of striped pajamas, "sure is an even tan." No sunlamps or soy sauce to blame, no cure from bathtubs of milk. His physician is flummoxed: "It's quite possible that somewhere in your lineage, there is a Negro strain." "You're looking at a strained Negro right now, doc!" Van Peebles in Hollywood, imploding racial constructs, splintering sitcom aesthetics. Enlightenment of the "king-size smartass," suddenly the police detain him for running ("He stole something, we don't know what it is yet") and the liberal wife (Estelle Parsons) needs space ("I had no idea it was going to be an interracial thing"). The neighbors are mainly concerned about property devaluation, might as well screw them out of a fortune before moving out. Keen Tashlin studies in the workplace, the boss (Howard Caine) hopes for an untapped market, the Nordic secretary (Kay Kimberly) is inflamed by the exotic new specimen. "Such a great bang... but you're a bigot." The upshot is the fellow at last comfortable in his skin and ready for war, and along the way there's Mantan Moreland at the diner counter with a subtle deconstruction of his signature roles. "Be a credit to your race." Cohen in Bone swiftly pursues the line of thought. With D'Urville Martin, Kay E. Kuter, Irving Selbst, Emil Sitka, and Paul Williams.
--- Fernando F. Croce |