Bamboozled
is a 2000 satirical film written and directed by Spike Lee about a modern televised minstrel show featuring black actors donning blackface makeup and the violent fall-out from the show's success. The film was given a limited release by New Line Cinema during the fall of 2000, and was released on DVD the following year.
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BAMBOOZLED TICKETS
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Overview
The content is intended as
satirical, with its
show within a show featuring its characters, all in
blackface, performing in a
watermelon patch.
The Roots, a
hip-hop band from
Philadelphia, have a role as the show's house band, The Alabama Porch Monkeys. The audiences within the movie, initially baffled, come to love the show, and after a few episodes even elderly white women show up in blackface and proclaim themselves "
niggers".
One of Lee's tricks on the audience for his movie is that the performances of the show within a show are rendered with excellent musicianship, sharp timing, exciting dancing, all within the most stereotypical settings of
cotton fields and watermelon feasts.
The script expresses rage and grief at media representations of black people, largely through the eyes of its moral center, Sloan Hopkins (
Jada Pinkett Smith). It also satirizes many icons of black culture including
Ving Rhames,
Will Smith (real-life husband of Jada Pinkett Smith),
Johnnie Cochran, and
Al Sharpton (Cochran and Sharpton appear as themselves in the film, protesting against the television series).
The movie also stars
Savion Glover as "Manray" (stage name Mantan, after
Mantan Moreland),
Tommy Davidson as Womack (stage name Sleep n' Eat, after
Willie Best),
Thomas Jefferson Byrd as Honeycutt, and
Mos Def,
Canibus,
MC Serch and
Charli Baltimore as four of the activist/
hip hop group The
Mau Maus. Mos Def's character, who calls himself "Big Blak Afrika" (refusing to spell the word "black" with the "c" because "they don't even pronounce that shit!") is also Sloan's unemployed older brother, Julius.
In some ways,
Bamboozled
is an homage to the 1976 Oscar-winning film
Network
which is also about the frustrated employee of a television network who in an act of desperation creates a controversial television show. In both films, the show becomes extremely popular but begins a chain of events which spins violently out of control.
Synopsis
Pierre Delacroix, (whose real name is Peerless Dothan) (
Damon Wayans) is an uptight,
Harvard-educated black man, working for a television network know as
The CNS
that routinely rejects his proposals for what he sees as intelligent shows involving black people. He is further tormented by his boss Thomas Dunwitty (
Michael Rapaport), a tactless, boorish white man. Not only does Dunwitty talk like an urban black male, and use the N-word repeatedly in conversations, he also proudly proclaims that he is more black than Delacroix and that he can use the word "
nigga" since he is married to a black woman.
Facing the necessity of either coming up with a hit black-centric show or being fired, Delacroix decides to aim for the latter, since quitting would violate his contract, but getting fired would release him from it, allowing him to seek work at another network. With help from his female personal assistant, Sloan Hopkins (
Jada Pinkett Smith), Delacroix decides to pitch a
minstrel show, known as
Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show
, complete with black actors in
blackface, extremely racist jokes and puns, and even offensively stereotyped
CGI animated cartoons that caricature the leading stars of the new show; in the belief that the network will reject such over-the-top
racism and fire him right on the spot.
Delacroix and Hopkins recruit two impoverished street performers, Manray (
Savion Glover) and Womack (
Tommy Davidson), (who also happen to perform outside the studio), to star in the stage show. While Womack is horrified when Delacroix tells him about the show, Manray willfully agrees to star in the show, seeing it as his big chance to become rich and famous.
To Delacroix's horror, not only does Dunwitty enthusiastically endorse the show, it also becomes hugely successful. As soon as the show premieres on Television Manray and Womack end up becoming big stars while Delacroix, contrary to his original stated intent, defends the show as being satirical. Delacroix quickly embraces the show and his newfound fame; he even wins awards for creating and writing the show, while Sloan becomes horrified at the racist nightmare she has helped to unleash. In the meantime, a frustrated rap group called the Mau Maus, led by "Big Blak Afrika" (
Mos Def), (who is also Sloan's big brother), becomes increasingly angry at the content of the show, and he and his group plan to bring the show down using violence. Eventually, Womack quits, fed up with the show and Manray's increasing
ego. Manray and Sloan thus grow closer, which angers Delacroix. Delacroix tries to break up Manray's relationship with Sloan by accusing her of sleeping with Manray to further her career. Delacroix reveals that Hopkins only got her position as his assistant by sleeping with him.
The move backfires and drives Manray and Sloan even closer together. Sloan creates a tape of racist footage culled from assorted movies, cartoons, television shows, and newsreels to try to shame Delacroix into stopping production of the show, but he refuses to view the tape. After an argument with Delacroix over all these differences, as well as realizing he is being exploited, Manray defiantly announces that he will no longer wear blackface. He appears in front of the studio audience, who are all in blackface, during a TV taping and does his dance number in his regular clothing. The network executives immediately turn against Manray, and Dunwitty (who is also in blackface), personally fires him from the show and throws him out of the studio.
After the studio kicks Manray out, the Mau Maus kidnap him. They then announce a plan to publicly execute Manray on a live
webcast. The authorities work feverishly to track down the source of the
internet feed, but Manray is nevertheless assassinated while doing his famous tap dancing (as a sort of sacrificial figure at his death). The police quickly catch The Mau Maus, shooting them down in a hail of bullets. They leave only one survivor, a white member known as "One-Sixteenth Black", who tearfully proclaims that he is "black" and demands to die with the rest of his group instead of being arrested. Furious, Sloan confronts Delacroix at gunpoint and demands that he watch the tape she prepared for him. Delacroix refuses and tries to get the gun, but is shot in the stomach. Sloan, horrified, flees while proclaiming that it was Delacroix's own fault that he got shot. Delacroix, after positioning the gun to make the wound appear self-inflicted, watches the tape as he lies dying on the floor.
The film concludes with a long
montage of racially insensitive and demeaning clips of black characters from
Hollywood films of the first half of the 20th century. Among the films used in the sequence are
The Birth of a Nation
,
The Jazz Singer
,
Gone with the Wind
,
Babes in Arms
,
Holiday Inn
,
Ub Iwerks' cartoon
Little Black Sambo
,
Walter Lantz's cartoon
Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat
, the
Merrie Melodies short
All This and Rabbit Stew
, and, from the
Hal Roach comedy
School's Out
,
Our Gang
kids
Allen "Farina" Hoskins and
Matthew "Stymie" Beard.
Film production
Most of the movie was shot on
Mini DV digital video using the
Sony VX 1000 camera. This kept the budget to $10 million USD. The "Mantan Show" sequences are shot in
Super 16 film stock, which makes them appear to have a vastly more digestible look than the rest of the film.
See also
- Mau Mau (disambiguation)
- Color Adjustment
- a documentary film by Marlon Riggs about the portrayal of blacks in television
- Classified X - a 1998 documentary film by Mark Daniels and Melvin Van Peebles about the history of blacks in cinema.
References