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Bamboozled, 2000, 135 minutes, Rated R
By Steven Fullwood
Spike, Spike, Spike. Bamboozled is a brilliant satire about television’s
racism and lack of morality. Your film is particularly welcome since we’ve been
inundated recently with really rotten television shows featuring blacks routinely doing
the monkey for the you-know-who. The horrifying origins of minstrelsy and how Blacks had
to denigrate themselves in order to be seen on stage and in film is a historical reality.
Reduced to playing toms, coons, mulattos, mammies and bucks, as noted historian Donald
Bogle succinctly phrased it. Hence you gave us "Mantan, the New Millennium Minstrel
Show." Marvelous. MORE >>>
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© 2000 New Line Productions, Inc.
Damon Wayans as Pierre Delacroix
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You had a great idea, Spike, not to mention courage. Shooting the most of the film with
hand-held digital cameras and the performance sequences on 16mm film was a great idea.
This technique highlighted the absolutely stunning images of tap sensation Savion Glover
and Tommy Davidson in blackface. The explosive interplay between different camps of
radical, bourgeois and apolitical Blacks was nothing less than brilliant. Great
performances by Tommy Davidson (Sleep & Eat), Mos Def (Big Black) and Michael
Rappaport (Dunwitty) demonstrated the complexities of being Black and those who pimp Black
style. Bamboozled shows how black folks grapple with racism, poverty, education - or the
lack thereof - and how vital it is for us to not only know our troubled past, but also in
some way revere those barefoot and shackled people who made it possible for us to be here
today.
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Humorous, deep-cutting
and extremely heart-breaking, Bamboozled kept me on the edge of my
seat. When members of the studio audience at “Mantan” are asked
“what kind of nigger are you?” the responses were mind-blowing.
Another poignant scene is when Davidson’s character, Sleep &
Eat, does this amazing fiddle imitation with his mouth, while the Mau
Maus, an angry radical black group, watches. One Mau Mau laughs, even
as he’s supposed to be disgusted like his comrades. Reminds one of
how George Jefferson (of television’s The Jeffersons) used to scream
at his neighbors even though we all knew he was a buffoon. Also
welcome Spike was your insight at poking fun at monolithic concepts of
“real blackness.”
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Towards the third act, you seemed to drop
the ball. Let me assure you: Black folks can hang with satire. Hell, we invited it. So
when your characters start to become didactic, we feel slighted, like you
didn’t trust
us enough to go the distance. Don’t lecture us. I won’t spoil the ending for
those who haven’t seen your film, but know that your core audience is capable of
viewing complicated stories that need not be resolved in a scant two hours.
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But that’s all right, Spike. You aren’t afraid
to stumble and we appreciate that. Bamboozled is not your greatest film, but it is the
year’s only film with nerve. You reached into America’s dark past and dredged up
images too long forgotten for new generations to witness and perhaps, if we’re lucky,
not want to appropriate simply for money. Thanks for dusting off those frightening images,
Spike. Their luster is blinding, but ultimately healing.
M
December 2000
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