How
does one even begin to approach a film like Bamboozled? Moreover, how does one attempt to
contextualize or critically examine it in so few words? This shocking, disturbing film by Spike Lee lives
up to its name, leaving a white female viewer, like myself, feeling exactly
what the title foreshadows: perplexed and bewildered. Lee’s attempt to portray every conceivable stereotype
about African-Americans and many of the entertainment business, and the power
struggle inherent in both is at the core of the piece. He critically and explicitly examines the
role of oppressor that Fanon so clearly scrutinized in his writing. Fanon states that: “the oppressor does not
manage to convince himself of the objective non-existence of the oppressed nation
and its culture. Every effort is made to
bring the colonized person to admit the inferiority of his culture, which has
been transformed into instinctive patterns of behavior…” (45)
This
turmoil or inferiority and its accompanied patters of behavior is surrounding
Pierre Delacroix (De La). A man who
greets and is rarely greeted attempts to construct a “combat literature” of his
own to fight for his creative freedom. Try
as he might, De La cannot get the executives at his company excited about his ideas
of middle class African-Americans as the central characters of a new television
show. Tired of the Cosby show routine, these
white industry leaders want something more urban – their projected vision of
what African-Americans are. Realizing
that he won’t win, he decided to create a show that is so offensive, it will
get him fired. While his early work
centered around making his bosses happy, his new work was point-driven. Hoping to speak to an audience of his own people
and riot them up, he creates Mantan, and
The New Millennium Minstrel Show. Fanon
clarifies the need for such a quest, stating: “while at the beginning the
native intellectual used to produce his work to be read exclusively by the oppressor…now
the native writer progressively takes on the habit of addressing his own
people.” (47) De La becomes consumed
with African American “Coon” Artifacts and texts in his attempt to make a
statement. Although when things don’t
work out the way he initially planned and bosses, critics, and audiences alike
go wild for this new minstrel show, he actually joins the side of the oppressors,
cutting down anything and anyone who stands in the way of his success and his
story.
There
are a number of storytellers involved with this film. While several of actor portrayals are exceptional
examples of this, looking into a few distinct archetypes aids our understanding
of the piece. First, one could certainly
call Manray a storyteller, as a performer and especially as a dancer. His face and reluctance as he smears on the blackface
paint or the sweat pouring down from it as he attempts to smile at the
ridiculousness that he performed onstage betrays a deeply conflicted man who is
torn between his fame and success and the puppet for the oppressor that he
knows he has become. The way he taps in
the beginning of the film, to scrape by enough to eat, to the entertainment hokey-style
done onstage in the variety show, to his tapping as bullets explode around his
feet, are clear illustrations of the trapped native. Second, we have De La; a man whose job it is
to be a storyteller who seems to be hiding behind his own story. An educated African-American man, he adopts a
ridiculous accent in a botched attempt to fit in with the dominate ruling oppressor
class. He and Sloan are the only black
individuals working as writers for an expressly black entertainment
network. Even his boss, aptly named Dunwitty,
“acts” and claims to be blacker than the narrator. Only once De La speaks the language that the
white bosses expect him to speak and embrace their version of his culture,
complete with dim and lazy caricatures of African-Americans, can he be recognized
for his work. And his work starts to
unite his culture in a way that he didn’t initially want or think
possible.
Fanon
discusses the power of the story teller.
He notes that in combat literature, “the public, which was once formally
scattered, becomes compact.” And that as
the “storyteller relates a fresh episode to his public, he presides over a real
invocation. The existence of a new type
of man is revealed to the public…spread out for all to see”…and thereby he
creates “a work of art.” (48) But
perhaps the prime example of the unification that comes through story and art
is the director, Spike Lee. This auteur
director is most didactic in his quest to sting the audience with the dangers
of oppression and stereotyping. In fact
that he creates incredibly flawed characters, detestable in their own right for
some action or another; stressing explicit attention on the blackface worn
initially by the black entertainers, to make them blacker, and then on the
blackface of the African-Americans in the audience and finally on the equally
repulsive white characters in the audience (and Dunwitty) that don blackface
and claim to be a n*****. But he doesn’t
stop there; he dresses the set with stereotypical images of “great” black
athletes and early blackface entertainment artifacts. Doing this sheds light on the broad and
offensive history of the way black entertainers have been treated and depicted
in film.
Lee
shows multiple facets of the racial stereotyping in his film within a film –
the glittery and expensive (look at the quality of 16mm film used there) world
of a watermelon patch, the violence and rage, as expressed through the Mau-Maus,
and the crass white characters who try to place a culture on a people who don’t
want to solely be known for their “otherness.”
Metaphorically, the constructed
image of black people putting on blackface is merely a depiction of them
dressing themselves in the image that white people have created for them. Moreover, as the white characters don the
blackface, they are more than merely making fools of themselves. They are also reinforcing the power structure,
urging further conformity to the desired depiction of the African-American
culture. The power structure is further
exhibited in the camera angles Lee chooses to use with De La and Dunwitty. Up until Dunwitty fully buys into De la’s
extravagant plan, the shots are always of Dunwitty looking down on De La; who
is permanently stuck looking up anxiously at his boss.
Both
Lee and his main character focus on the importance of satire when you must “feed
the idiot box.” Though their show within
a show was clearly comedic, and others (though likely not white people) might
comment similarly on Bamboozled,
there is a harsh overtone of obligation toward cleaning up and clearing out the
old notions that have bound this culture.
Perhaps Fanon captured what Spike Lee is attempting to do when he wrote:
“As soon as the Negro comes to an understanding of himself…when he gives birth
to hope and forces back the racist universe, it is clear that his trumpet
sounds more clearly and his voice less hoarsely.” (49) As he lay bleeding on the floor at the end of
the film, De La observes the validity of the “great negro James Baldwin” who
wrote: “People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed
themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.” The film concludes, displaying the array of
artifacts once more; a final attempt to make the audience think and reflect on
their lives and what they become when they allow racist construction and
stereotyping to overwhelm the possibilities and necessity of a national
culture.
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