My mom and I watched this movie together last weekend and it was so socially aware yet managed to be hilarious at the same time. Estelle Parsons (you might remember her as the neurotic mother from Roseanne) and Godfrey Cambridge star in this movie with Erin Moran & Scott Garrett as a middle-class Caucasian family in the 1960s. Cambridge plays the lead character, Jeff Gerber, (in an interesting role as a whiteface character for the beginning of the film) as an extremely bigoted insurance salesman. He does not realize how much of a bigot he is, but his wife Althea (Parsons) sees it and despite this and other inane things he says and does (he also chases the city bus on his way to work, much to the embarrassment of his children) she looks the other way out of her love for him. In general, he's not a very likeable person; he gives off a Ralph Kramden vibe to me in his interactions with his wife--very loud, rather obnoxious. This obnoxious trait comes out more often when he is around his female co-workers, generally behaving and speaking in a very chauvinistic, borderline sexually harassing, degrading way toward them. He is especially unforgiving to Blacks and their struggles and makes no apologies about it.
So it is a huge surprise when, the next morning, he wakes up Black. Logically speaking, that's not even possible and Jeff knows this. Upon seeing him his wife screams, causing Jeff to tell her something along the lines of, "Don't call the cops; I'm the Negro in your bathroom." The hijinks that ensue are priceless and this is where I feel the movie really begins to shine. Ralph--er, Jeff--tries to think of ways to "take the Black away" throughout the first two days that follow, vowing not to leave the house except for a Black beauty supply store where he buys more products than I can name to try and lighten his skin. He finally accepts that his skin has in fact 'turned' Black and after finding an excuse he can deal with, he eventually goes back to work. Various stigmas that Blacks even today have to deal with are explored in this film as Gerber tries to carry on the way he always did, except he soon comes to realize that he cannot. A new journey opens up for Jeff due to his new pigment and without giving a spoiler alert, the movie ends quite nicely.
The movie somehow allows Jeff to be both the protagonist & sort of an antagonist at the same time, therefore not making him a hated character. I'd rather not spoil anymore of the movie for you in case you're interested, but in short the movie was so socially aware of the troubles facing Blacks in the 1960s and the problems, stereotypes and segregation going on then are still relevant in some places today. The delivery of the jokes in this movie, most of which were by Cambridge's Jeff or Parsons' Althea, are hilarious and well-timed. It's a smaller known fact that Melvin Van Peebles, Mario's father, is the director behind this movie; it being his only major motion picture. He was originally contracted for 3 movies but for various reasons, Watermelon Man was the only one that came out of the deal.
The movie was not designed to further segregate Whites and Blacks and the fact that a Black man had to do the reverse and go whiteface for this movie shows as much. Originally, Jack Lemmon was one of the names tossed around to play the beginning portions of the movie but Van Peebles vetoed that in favor of allowing Cambridge to play the white portions as well, which I felt was rather tongue-in-cheek, especially once the White character begun to make the jokes and stereotypical remarks. It shows that Blacks knew even then what bigots were saying about them and purposely went all in to display those things. Now this film was released in 1970, so it should be said that the makeup is quite awful by today's standards. Cambridge was a rather dark man, so the makeup is pretty unconvincing, but it does the job. I think the karmic concept of the movie was ingenious, after all how many bigots expect to wake up Black? The fact that they acknowledged that these things don't happen normally made it even funnier--on no planet is this even remotely possible, yet it happened to Jeff Gerber. It is much harder to be a bigot of a certain race once you have walked in their shoes, from the good to the bad, and Gerber eventually sees how his own bigotry later plays in the segregation & difference in the treatment he himself was subjected to as a Black man and I think it was a good call on the movie's half to show both sides. They toed the line a little I will say; Gerber was very prejudiced even after he 'woke up Black' and maintained some of his ridiculous viewpoints and racial jokes throughout the film; it didn't take 10 minutes for him to come to terms with himself afterward and I enjoyed that. There was a realistic shift in his mentality at some point in the movie and even though the concept has no basis in reality, changing the way one views a certain race or background because understanding was gained is very realistic and I believe that's one of the things that made the film enjoyable. What better way to gain understanding than to have to walk in someone else's shoes and have everything that happens to them happen to you? Most times when others gain understanding its because they got to see the experience firsthand, but they do not get to experience it. If they do, its by choice and can end whenever they like. Not only did Gerber not originally want to gain understanding, it was definitely not by choice and did not end when he got ready for it to. The resulting understanding he came into was genuine and authentic. I enjoyed that too.
If you want a hilarious take on the world of a Black man through the eyes of a bigot who has to come into his own understanding through the course of this movie, then take a look at Watermelon Man. It's funny, still socially relevant & even though the character is a grade-A ass for the majority of the movie, it's hard not to root for him at the end. I loved it.
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