Bamboozled
The days of blackface minstrel troupes may seem like ancient history to most Americans, but Spike Lee wants to refresh our memory. Spike Lee is onto something when he looks to the days of blackface minstrel troupes to help us understand race in today's America. With Bamboozled, Hollywood's most reliable provocateur is saying we haven't come as far as we think. In Bamboozled, Damon Wayans plays well-mannered Harvard alumni Pierre Delacroix, a black TV writer whose ratings-hungry boss (Michael Rapaport) delivers an ultimatum: give me a hit show or clean out your desk. His response is the show "Mantan," a revival one of the most popular and most degrading forms of entertainment in nineteenth-century America: blackface minstrelsy. Delacroix developed the program as a rage-driven stunt but it turns into an unexpected hit, apparently able to indulge a racist format largely because the actors using burnt cork to blacken their faces happen to be African Americans. In the movie, Pierre Delacroix is late for a meeting he wasn't told about. He reprimands his assistant Sloan Hopkins, who hadn't received any info about the meeting to begin with. This scene makes clear that if one wants to succeed in that company, one can't
count on simple procedures like memos, but has to run after the info -- that is if one happens to be black. Delacroix is tired of the pressure and the repeated rejection of both his numerous ideas for new shows centering on ethnic minorities and his request to hire at least one more writer of color. He won't simply quit; he wants to get fired instead. In order to achieve this, he pitches his idea for "The New Millennium Minstrel Show" to the station. However his Caucasian boss Dunwitty considers himself black because he has a black wife and was raised with black people. However, he still exhibits the same ignorant racism as in the first film. European characters anger us and intimidate us with their strange accents and plans of world domination. In order to achieve unity Afrcan- Americans must be more me more willing to help each other out, instead of being so quick to shoot each other down. However, black people aren't the only people that get stereotyped. Delacroix attempts to put together the most outrageous variety show that he can. Not only was Man Tan thrown out by the white execs, but also killed by his own people. Delacroix is the only person of color in the creative team of the TV station. Now he is the boss, an entire company is at his disposal. I think that Spike Lee did this purposely to show that racism rears its ugly head in many forms. Pierre hires the homeless tap dancers Manray and Womack, renames them Mantan and Sleep 'N Eat, and makes their act the center of the show.
Common topics in this essay:
Mantan Sleep,
Spike Lee,
Sloan Hopkins,
Michael Rapaport,
Millennium Minstrel,
Michael Rappaport,
Black Americans,
Pierre Delacroix,
,
Afrcan- Americans,
spike lee,
minstrel troupes,
pierre delacroix,
black community,
blackface minstrel,
days blackface,
days blackface minstrel,
blackface minstrel troupes,
black people,
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Acceptance Essays
