film is perhaps the closest analogy to the progressive aims of the then-flourishing Black Arts movement. Indeed, it can be argued that because it was written, produced and directed by an American-born African outside of Hollywood, the film is not truly part of the blaxploitation genre, yet it cannot be denied that it shares certain thematic similarities. The film works best when it follows Sweetback's odyssey from stud boy to proto-nationalist consciousness. Unlike the Horatio Alger-style integrationism propagated in past films about blacks, here we see an outlaw among outlaws, nourished by a community segregated from the mainstream. It is in this disenfranchised community--and not the sterile offices of the NAACP--that he seeks and finds refuge. The sordid sexual trysts, the faux fantasies in the desert are, finally, less interesting than Sweetback's quest for self-realization." Notable reactions Huey P. Newton, devoting an entire issue of The Black Panther to the film's revolutionary implications, celebrated and welcomed the film as "the first truly revolutionary Black film made [...] presented to us by a Black man." Newton wrote that Sweetback "presents the need for unity among all members and institutions within the community of victims," contending that this is evidenced by the opening credits which state the film stars "The Black Community," a collective protagonist engaged in various acts of community solidarity that aid Sweetback in escaping. Newton further argued that "the film demonstrates the importance of unity and love between Black men and women," as demonstrated "in the scene where the woman makes love to the young boy but in fact baptizes him into his true manhood". This is, in fact, the rape scene mentioned in the earlier plot summary. The film became required viewing for members of the Black Panther Party. A few months after the publication of Newton's article, historian Lerone Bennett Jr. responded with an essay on the film in Ebony, titled "The Emancipation Orgasm: Sweetback in Wonderland," in which he discussed the film's "black aesthetic". Bennett argued that the film romanticized the poverty and misery of the ghetto and that "some men foolishly identify the black aesthetic with empty bellies and big bottomed prostitutes." Bennett concluded that the film is "neither revolutionary nor black because it presents the spectator with sterile daydreams and a superhero who is ahistorical, selfishly individualist with no revolutionary program, who acts out of panic and desperation." Bennett described Sweetback's sexual initiation at