Bamboozled: Spike Lee’s Most Potent Joint Yet

There are no holds barred this time around for film’s most controversial muckraker. In his latest and least subtle social commentary, Bamboozled, Spike Lee wastes no time getting to his point: racism is alive and well in America. And for the remainder of the film, he beats us over the head again and again with the same accusation. This is not to say that it isn’t an enjoyable or at least eye-opening beating. It is. Spike Lee is doing what he does best -- deconstructing issues of race, class, and gender with his trademark humor and style, while at the same time giving us a lesson in Black (and White) history.

The film’s title, Bamboozled, comes from a speech given by Malcolm X and aptly sets the tone for the entire film. Lee creates a modern-day minstrel show: "ManTan: the New Millennium Minstrel Show" to illustrate the U.S. media’s historic and ongoing racist depiction of African Americans. Through the use of raw satire and hyperbolic stereotypes, Lee makes sure that we see things as he sees them, at least for the two hours we are held captive in the theater. Lee is commenting not only on the U.S. media’s history of racism ("It has always been a black man’s job to amuse white people."), but also on the current popularity of black comics in movies and sitcoms, thus raising the question: "Are we laughing with them or at them?"

Lee’s satire is so extreme and his characters so intensely stereotypical that during the course of the film I slowly became accustomed to it’s disturbing content. What at first felt uncomfortable or even offensive became normalized until Lee was putting the most offensive, racist material I have ever seen in front of my eyes and I didn’t even blink. Bamboozled is nothing less than a bombardment of racist images and racist humor. Things that I wouldn’t dare think or say out loud, I soon became intimately familiar with as I sat in the dark theater alone with my Whiteness. As terrible as Lee’s images of racism in America were, at the same time they were cathartic. They allowed me the rare opportunity to think these taboo thoughts, to look them straight in the eye, and laugh at myself and at the world. Whatever flaws this film may have, it is undeniably a powerful statement and excellent fodder for discussion.

Bamboozled’s story line, one of Lee’s most linear, follows the basic plot structure of a morality tale. But, more telling than the story itself are the principles (including the Minstrel Show and it’s audience) each of whom serve to illustrate Lee’s many accusations against White America, Black America, the media complex, gender relations, and class structures.

First there is Dunwitty, the network’s vice-president, a genetically white self-fashioned "black man." He claims to have been raised in the ghetto, is married to a black woman, and has adorned his office with photos of famous African Americans such as Mike Tyson. He feels he has earned the right to use the word "nigger" and even claims to be blacker than the genetically black Delacroix. Dunwitty eloquently represents the convenient co-optation of the black lifestyle by whites.

In contrast, the show’s creator, Pierre Delacroix is a black man who compromises his heritage, selling out in order to gain prestige and credibility in a white dominated media establishment and class system. He is a complex character who on the surface is successful, but on the inside is self-loathing and uncomfortable with his blackness. He may be Harvard-educated and upwardly mobile, but in order to become so he has turned into a "Buppy" -- the stereotypical "white" black man.

As Delacroix becomes more and more intoxicated with his power and success as a result of the Minstrel Show, he decorates his office with antique racist toys and figurines. Delacroix fills his office with these real life "black collectibles" just as Dunwitty had earlier filled his office with images of famous black men. Lee’s use of such antique black collectibles as "The Jolly Nigger Bank" (many from Lee’s own collection) serves as a vivid and painful reminder of the reality and imbeddedness of racial stereotyping and degradation of blacks in America.

Delacroix’s assistant, Sloan, while more true to her black roots than her boss, also sells out. For three-fourths of the movie, Sloan is a (rare for Lee) strong female character. But by the end of the film, she, like all the others, is deconstructed and destroyed. Sloan represents the stereotype of the aggressive woman who, despite her talent and intelligence, sleeps her way to the top.

Sloan’s brother, member of the rap group/gang named the Mau Maus (Mao?) represents the angry and often drunk black man who seeks revolution through violence and crime. The Mau Maus take it upon themselves to create justice, by executing (and making a martyr of) ManTan live on the Internet. Of course, the TV stations make sure to pick up the feed so that viewers won’t miss such an "important event." And ultimately the police come down on them, shooting first and asking questions later. All are killed except for the Mau Maus’ sole white member whose life the police, not ironically, spare.

The stars of the show are ManRay and Womack, dubbed "ManTan" and "Sleep’n Eat" respectively, who go from starving street performers to superstars overnight. Despite the fact that they are black (ManTan, interestingly, is light-skinned), they prostitute themselves for money and fame and, in so doing, become the very representations of racism that they despise.

Lastly, the Minstrel Show itself is a keen vehicle for Lee to illustrate the deep-seated racism embedded in American entertainment. What starts out as Delacroix’s absurd joke, turns into a runaway hit show with both black and white audiences. It is a debacle that carries everyone down with it. This downfall is made clear by the audience’s devolution from taking offense at the show’s content, to their awkward and confused laughter, to fanatical enjoyment and participation in blackface. Ultimately, even Dunwitty and Delacroix appear in blackface illustrating the depths of absurdity and degradation.

The audience of ManTan: the New Millennium Minstrel Show is a mirror into Lee’s own audience of Bamboozled. There is no doubt that Lee intended this parallel. At first we hardly know what to think -- the content of Bamboozled is disturbing and unacceptable by normal politically correct standards. But, slowly we become accustomed to it and begin laughing despite ourselves. Accordingly, our very self-definitions come into question. We are not racists? This is not funny? Then why is it that we are we laughing? The Minstrel Show’s audience is absurd -- we would never go so far as to dress up in blackface ourselves. Or would we? If there is one thing Spike Lee knows how to do, it is to make you think.

A useful analogy here is that of Norman Lear’s 1970’s situation comedy, All in the Family. Like Lee, Lear utilizes hyperbolic and stereotypical characters as vehicles for social commentary. Each of his characters -- Meathead the hippie, Edith the doormat, Archie the bigot -- all go over the top and become caricatures of themselves. Through the veil of humor, sensitive issues are broached and taboos addressed. Lear made it possible for a generation of viewers to let down their guard and laugh at what otherwise might have made them cry. In so doing, he enabled a dialog to occur and opened a channel for difficult issues to be raised.

Also in the late 1970s, Sidney Lumet’s film, Network, exposed the U.S. media industry as a heartless, money-driven machine with little regard for human life. Despite Network’s harsh social commentary, it broke through the silence and got its message across, ultimately winning an Academy Award nomination for best picture in 1977. Lee takes advantage of this film’s accomplishments and through the technique of pastiche, appropriates Network’s famous catch phrase, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" for his own purposes. This is an effective maneuver on Lee’s part whether or not the original context of the quotation is understood.

Throughout Bamboozled, particularly toward the end, Lee successfully employs the technique of montage, pulling from the shocking wealth of racist media images and representations of blacks in television and the movies. Most people do not want to deal with such uncomfortable images. Especially when it is understood that blackface and minstrel shows were the norm -- they were accepted behavior since the very beginnings of film and TV. These real life examples lend tremendous credibility to Lee’s farcical story and force us to look at ourselves. Appropriately, Eric Lott said that blackface (and for our purposes, Lee) "obliges us to confront the process of ‘racial’ construction itself, the historical formation of whites no less than blacks." Each and every one of us is complicit and as far-fetched as "ManTan: the New Millennium Minstrel Show" might be, it certainly seems more plausible by the end of the movie than it did in the beginning.

*****

Joshua Stern 2000