This year, 2009, marks
the 30th anniversary of 40 Acres And A Mule Filmworks, the production company
started by Spike Lee. Periodically, reviews of some of Mr. Lee's films
over the course of his ongoing 24-year feature film and documentary directing
career will appear here at The Popcorn Reel. Below is a review of
"Bamboozled", which opened on October 6, 2000 and made just $2.1 million in the
U.S. and Canada (it was in very limited release and for a brief time).
MOVIE REVIEW
Bamboozled
Damon Wayans as Pierre Delacroix, looking at a
racist caricature during Spike Lee's film "Bamboozled", which opened in select
cities in the U.S. and Canada today.
(Photo: David Lee/New Line Cinema)
The Black Box: Tearing Open The Salty
Wounds Of
Racist Imagery In American Television (And Film) Entertainment
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Friday, October 6, 2000
Astounding in its ability to shock, disturb and make you think about racist
imagery and stereotypes in American television and film, "Bamboozled", which
opened in select cities across the U.S. and Canada today, is Spike Lee's most
powerful and scorching film so far, in fact it's his best. Inspired by the
films "A Face In The Crowd" (1957) directed by Elia Kazan and "Network" (1976)
directed by Sidney Lumet, "Bamboozled" is a bitterly abrasive in-your-face
satire, sparing no prisoners, black or white, as it takes on the cottage
industry of racist imagery of blacks in television, both historic and
contemporary.
Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is a pretentious man who is the sole black
writer in a white writing team at CNS (Continental Network System), a national
broadcast television company based in New York City. Pierre, whose birth
name is Peerless Dothan, has had enough of not getting credit for great ideas
and is fed up of being ignored and talked around. Desperate to be fired in
order to collect severance pay from his contract with CNS, he devises a show to
combat the network's flagging ratings believing that his idea will be so
offensive and ratings will plunge further. Pierre's idea: put blackface
make up and boot polish on black people on the television show and call it "Mantan:
The New Millennium Minstrel Show". Recruiting a homeless but talented duo
in Manray (Savion Glover) and Womack (Tommy Davidson) to be the show's principal
stars, Pierre is sure that outrage not popularity, will secure the show's
demise.
Of course the "Mantan" show is an overnight ratings sensation ala the
"Springtime For Hitler" musical number in Mel Brooks' film "The Producers", and
the train of racial insults, epithets and dehumanizing of blacks careens out of
control, gaining popularity across America. Michael Rapaport is terrific
here as CNS senior vice president Thomas Dunwitty, who declares that he can use
the "n"-word because he's blacker than Pierre is and has a black wife and two
biracial kids. He seems to know more about aspects of black popular
culture than Pierre, who has a mild contempt for it or at least a complex over
his own identity as a black man, displaying a haughtiness with the
nasally-pitched voice that he uses, perhaps passing himself of as some kind of
fancy bourgeois. But whether Thomas's knowledge legitimizes his right to
be racist or espouse racist language is quite another story.
Sloan Hopkins (an excellent Jada Pinkett-Smith in arguably her best role) tries
to warn Pierre about what he is setting in motion. The film's weak point
is the awkward romances between Sloan and Pierre (largely implied) and Sloan and
Manray (loosely defined), and both situations suddenly escalate in the third
act, which attempts to hastily wrap things up. Mr. Lee doesn't finish
strong in some of his films but this one packs one hell of a punch to the gut.
Some characters' actions in the third act are dramatically at odds with what
they did just three or four minutes prior, with the overall tone of the film in
the final act plunging into melodrama in precipitous fashion. Filmed
mostly with hand-held high-definition cameras, "Bamboozled" has the feel of a
television show, and it throws in additional characters such as the Mau Maus, a
black liberation rap group who want a show of their own. Mos Def plays the
leader of the Mau Maus -- he's great here as Big Black Africa aka Julius,
Sloan's older brother.
Mr. Lee's film features the legendary Stevie Wonder, who provides two songs for
the film, and highly effective composing by Terence Blanchard, whose music score
is both seductive and sorrowful, notably the latter, in one scene in which Sloan
tells Pierre about why she has a collection of racially offensive and demeaning
caricatured sculptures. There are also some jaw-dropping funny skits and
excellent tap dancing from Mr. Glover, who choreographed the dancing in the
film. And the cinematography of Ellen Kuras is impressive, capturing the
depths of the tone, pain and mental anguish of the characters, all of whom are
anything but innocent bystanders.
When a montage of unforgettable and repulsive images of blacks from American
films and television eventually flash across the screen for about three minutes
they are heartbreaking and alarming. Some will be offended, others deeply
saddened or angered. Others still will be astonished to know that this
long history of racist imagery in American television, including in Bugs Bunny
cartoons and in many Hollywood films considered classics (right up into the
1950s and beyond), existed at all. Blackface arguably persists today
albeit in more subtle (or not so subtle forms). Mr. Lee argues that
today's gangster rap is part of the ongoing blackface minstrelsy, and might
point to some of Tyler Perry's films as conduits of the same. (Just 22
years ago in England, the BBC aired its final edition of "The Black And White
Minstrel Show" on television.)
There will be others, those who loved and laughed along with and at the hapless
nitwits and racists in Mr. Brooks' film "Blazing Saddles" who will find
themselves having very little to laugh at here, although Mr. Lee's film is very
funny in the most uncomfortable places -- and there are many of those.
Even so, "Bamboozled" offers us a painful history lesson that is highly
necessary viewing, even if it is far from pretty.
"Bamboozled" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for
strong language and some violence. The film's duration is two hours and 15
minutes.
Copyright Omar P.L. Moore. 2000. All Rights Reserved.