A long time ago I remember seeing Director Melvin Van Peebles film, 'The Watermelon Man' on some backwater channel. I was a kid at the time but even then I could understand the context of the story. I got the chance to watch it again as an adult and I'm ashamed to say that the film still rings true today.
The film opens with middle-aged and middle-class white male Jeff Gerber performing his daily exercise routine which at first seems admirable until he starts spouting racial cracks about Boxer Muhammad Ali when the speed bag starts getting the better of him. After that, there isn't a moment in which Gerber doesn't spew a racial or misogynistic insult from breakfast until bedtime. About 'bedtime'. After a long day of being the most obnoxious and racist person he could possibly be, Gerber goes to sleep. When he wakes up to do the business in the middle of the night, something new has been added. He has been mysteriously transformed into a Black Man!
As Gerber attempts to calm himself and his white wife of many years, he futilely tries to 'bleach himself' back to normal via various concoctions purchased from the 'Negro Pharmacy'. From there, his life begins to spiral out of control as he is accosted by police for merely running for the bus to work, is barred from his own social club and has trouble at work as he is singled out to get the new 'Negro Insurance Market'.
Throughout the film, Jeff Gerber begins to find out the hard way what life for a black person in his city is like and the attitudes of the people he called friends turn dangerously negative. All while the life he once knew is circling the drain, the one thing Jeff Gerber gains is... perspective.
"The Watermelon Man' (Full Film)
Starring Geoffrey Cambridge
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