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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wow--an amazing eye opener!, May 3, 2005
I finally saw this film recently after reading an editorial that mentioned this film in regards to how the racial stereotypes perpetuated in Minstrel shows continue this day in any rap video you see. This film is a much needed eye opener, a satire with a deeper message. The use of satire is often necessary to bring to people's attention the underlying truth that most cannot accept at face value. This film perfectly draws out on our society's racism and race relations.
A few years ago, I remember coming across an advertisement for a Minstrel show that my church congregation put on in the 1950s. Considering that there are few African American members of my church to begin with, it was a complete shock to me who these nice elderly people could do such a thing. With "Bamboozled", Spike concludes the film with an excellent montage of images from movies, TV shows, cartoons that all featured the worst stereotypes of African Americans as bug-eyed, big lipped, ants-in-pants, cannibalistic animals, who sang and dance, shucked and jived, all kinds of terrible traits. These images were taken from Shirley Temple movies and films with Bing Crosby, Mickey Rooney, and Judy Garland. It was an eye opener. Even Warner Brothers cartoons of my recent youth (1970s) contained racist images in the guise of Bugs Bunny in some of his antics.
I've been meaning to watch all of Spike Lee's films someday, as I like the statements he tries to make in his films. He has amassed an interesting body of work, though some were more successful than others. For me, "Malcolm X" and "Do The Right Thing" are his best works, and this one would be third, ahead of "Jungle Fever". I loved the performance of Michael Rapaport as the cool talking head honcho of CNS Television, who has an expressive way with words and sounds more "black" than the faux intellectual nerdiness of Damon Wayans, who plays Pierre Delacroix, which we learn in the film is a pretentious name he gives himself to distance himself from an embarrassing past. I also liked Jada Pinkett Smith in this film, as Delacroix's assistant who doesn't agree with the direction he's taking with his show idea.
The premise is that Delacroix can't quit his job, so he comes up with a plan to make the most racist show he can imagine that will cause CNS to fire him. He proposed a new Minstrel Show for the New Millennium, featuring two African American street performers (the excellent Tommy Davidson and Savion Glover) in black face make up. Rapaport's Mr. Dunwitty loves the idea and claims that the show would be even bigger than "Friends". They shoot the pilot show to an unsuspecting audience who don't know if its okay to laugh. Tommy Davidson plays "Sleep n Eat" and Savion Glover plays Mantan, the tap dancing idiot. Their variety show features schtick anyone who has ever seen "Hee Haw" would be familiar with...lame brain one liners, idiot people, and exaggerated stereotypes.
The satire is that the studio execs love the show and pick up 12 episodes, and when it airs on TV, it becomes an instant smash show. Soon audiences are showing up each week in black face and proclaiming their pride in being "n------", even though nearly all of them are white. The film is so over the top, poking fun at our double standards (how many claim not to be racist because they listen to rap or watch basketball). The truth is...we expect African Americans to entertain us (in music and sports), but beyond that, we don't take them seriously as people. True, the hip hop community is quite influential in the language and style of our advertising and pop culture, but how many African American CEOs and Mayors and Governors and Senators are there? In the financial matters of our country, we still impose a glass ceiling on anyone not part of the white male demographic...so what is our minstrel show of today? Spike Lee made a point in the commentary track that you don't have to wear black face to have a minstrel show. It goes on without people being aware of it. For that reason, I'm grateful he made this film. Just seeing the disgusting collectibles from the past century (such as the "jolly n----- bank" or the Aunt Jemima dolls) is a reminder of our racist past. We mustn't forget even as we move on to greater inclusion and burying old stereotypes, allowing people to be who they are regardless of race.
I want to give this film 5 stars, but because the film veers into a strange tangent for about 10 minutes near the end of the film, I simply thought Spike Lee got lazy with how he wanted to end this film. It was a cheap and lazy way to go, even though he explains his reason on the commentary track. I disagree, because if done right, his ending would have punched up the meaning of this film. I'm at least glad that the montage at the end saved this film on a somewhat redeeming note. If anything, this film serves as a reminder of our recent history and how overt racism really was. The film succeeds as an awakening to the forms into which the Minstrel Show of the last century has morphed into something a little bit different, but accomplishing the same devastating effect. I know I'll never be able to look at another rap video in the same way again. Thank you Spike Lee!
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Spike Lee tragedy full of symbolism and metaphor, November 20, 2004
I have recently decided to finally expose myself to the work of Spike Lee, putting his entire body of work at the top of my DVD rental list, and Bamboozled was the first one to arrive. I must say that I can not wait for the rest of them to come in. The only negative aspect of this film is something that several others have pointed out...the voice of Damon Wayans' character. Through the film it did begin to grate on me as I heard it, seeming too forced and unreal. However, Wayans did a solid job of portraying a man who, having made a horrible mistake of judgement, slips into denial and ends up rationalizing the error to himself until he believes he actually did the right thing. The supporting cast was also very strong, Savion Glover is a very talented tap dancer, and Tommy Davidson shows that he is more than just a comedic actor. Michael Rappaport pulled off what was a very dangerous role, as it is so easy to play the role of a white man trying to be black and turn it into a cliche of ignorance. Instead, he was very believable and very tasteless and rude, a flawless performance.
As for Spike Lee? I thoroughly enjoyed his direction. The graininess and edginess of the quality of the cinematography is a beautiful character of his work. It has a distinct style that can be identified as his work immediately. He wrote a very powerful story, showing several sides of the struggle of the black man trying to be successful in this day and age. Sometimes, it seems that the only way to succeed is to sell out in one way or another. In the end, the deaths are metaphorical, symbolizing the cultural death of those who sell out, that they are eventually ostracized from both the white and the black sides of society. The story is a Shakespeare-style tragedy, rife with internal conflicts, a main character with a fatal flaw, and an ending with permanent finality. There really is not a hero, nor is there a villian, as none of the characters are one-dimensional. Their conflicts are never black and white, no pun intended. They are complex problems created from the characters' choices and their circumstances. It is easy to see how their mistakes are made. We can believe that we would not have made the same choices if we were in their position, but that is easy to say from the outside looking in.
In this film, Lee told the tale of several real and human characters, presenting a struggle that he sees every day. He withheld judgement of these people, and did not force his opinion on the viewer, allowing the viewer to decide who was right and who was wrong. I look forward to seeing the rest of his work.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Is you is, or is you ain't? . . .", June 19, 2005
Spike Lee's Bamboozled owes a lot to Paddy Chayefsky's story Network (1976), which owes a lot to writer Budd Schulberg's A Face in the Crowd (1957). All three movies are about TV personalities who become the personification of social or political movements.
In Bamboozled, Spike Lee makes his debt to Network explicit by having a black TV announcer tell his TV audience to go to their windows, open them, and shout to the world that they're "not going to take it any more," just as Peter Finch's Edward R. Murrow-type news anchor did in Network. Then the star of the TV show in Bamboozled collapses, like the news anchor.
In Bamboozled, the black dancer who stars in The New Millennium Minstrel Show loses his identity and becomes a stereotype. The network changes his name from Manray (an artist, like Man Ray?) to Mantan (after Mantan Moreland, the bulgy-eyed comic in old movies).
When Network first came out, everything it predicted was outrageous, but it's all reality (or reality TV) now. TV news departments are no longer subsidized by entertainment divisions - - news departments ARE entertainment divisions, or more precisely, news IS entertainment. Sibyl the Soothsayer in Network has become John Edward, crossing over between the spirit world and a country that finds superstition more comforting than science. (We're desperate not to be Left Behind.)
In an interview in Cineaste magazine (vol. XXVI, no. 2, 2001), Spike Lee tells why he dedicated Bamboozled to Budd Schulberg, the writer of A Face in the Crowd, the movie that made Andy Griffith a star.
Andy Griffith is like John Wayne. He only played one character on film and TV - - himself - - and Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd is like Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. The cruelty in Ethan Edwards and Lonesome Rhodes is also there in every other character the two actors ever played, but we didn't want to see it. And after his success in A Face in the Crowd, Griffith never again dared showed the kind of contempt that Sheriff Andy Taylor must have had for the citizens of Mayberry. Giving us a glimpse of the monster is one thing, but Griffith knew America couldn't stand to see him every week. Exasperation with with Barney was as bad as it got.
So we got the phony Mayberry smile - - a kind of whiteface, another mask.
That issue of Cineaste is worth tracking down for articles on the reaction to Bamboozled and for Spike Lee's interview. Lee talks about what he calls the "magical n****r" in movies, "magical Negroes who appear out of nowhere" and use their powers "for the benefit of the white stars of the movies." Films like The Green Mile, The Family Man, and The Legend of Bagger Vance.
Now we're all tuned in to the Network and it's picked out A Face in the Crowd for us.
Everybody likes him when they meet him (God knows why, since he's such an obvious bully to people around him). He used to drink too much and got into some trouble, but he's turned his life around and, with the support of friends with money, he's become a national leader. The people who warn he's a fascist are just left-wingers "out of the mainstream" who hate America anyway.
Forget the Matrix, the United States has become Network. No definite article is needed to describe the all-embracing global corporate entity that is the military-industrial-entertainment complex. (Ned Beatty tries to explain this epiphany to Peter Finch at the end of the movie Network.)
And the United States is on its way to becoming the minstrel show Spike Lee shows in Bamboozled.
In Bamboozled, white people, Hispanics, and blacks all wear blackface to be in the audience and all answer yes to the question, "Is you a n****r?" Maybe the non-blacks are just "appropriating" a culture they have no right to, but it might be a good thing for people to realize they all have something in common.
Everybody's being bamboozled.
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