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1st quote inspired the title of Spike Lees Bamboozled: an insightful and incendiary
commentary on racial depiction in the contemporary American media.
2nd quote is from perhaps the most astute and important American writer on race, and
contextualizes what we see dramatized in the film
Protagonist: Pierre De La Croix (Damon Wayans)

Birth name is Peerless Dothan, but he adopts the name Pierre, along with a
stereotypically white speech style

Harvard educated

Only black writer working for CNS

Under pressure to deliver a new show concept after his white boss, Dunwitty,
dismisses Ps ideas, which all concern characters of colour, as being too white
bread

Pierre says that he needs to come up with the most racist show possible in
order to get fired

He hates working for a network that wont allow him to depict

what he calls dignified black people, but hell get sued for
breach of contract if he quits

As a result, he proposes Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show, which

consists entirely of caricatures of black people, is set in a watermelon patch on a
plantation, and prominently features performers in blackface

It becomes a hit
Dunwitty: Michael Rapaport

Uses language and speech patterns typically associated w/ AAVE

Boasts to Pierre that hes blacker than him, since he has a black wife, biracial
children, and posters of black athletes on the wall of his office

Early in the film, he insults Pierre for showing up late to a meeting, degrading
him for running on CP time, or coloured peoples time

Dunwitty embraces Pierres idea enthusiastically, vows to get it on the air ASAP
and gets more excited the more Pierre describes racial stereotypes on the show
Sloan: Jada Pinkett Smith

Pierres assistant

University educated

Bothered by Pierres concept and skeptical of it, but she plays along due to
pressure from him and the possibility that maybe its not that harmful
Manray and Womack: Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson

Two street performers Pierre sees and gives money to on the way to work

Pierre recruits them to star in his show

Manray embraces Pierres concept immediately, saying that hell be happy as long
as he can tap dance and get paid for it

Womack is more skeptical, but he agrees due to the promise of money and new
clothes

On the show, theyll be called Mantan and Sleep N Eat

Mantan refers to Mantan Morland, a black actor who made his name in the
30s and 40s playing demeaning caricatures of people of colour

Sleep N Eat refers to his laziness, characterizing him as an obvious

embodiment of negative black stereotypes
Julius: Mos Def

Sloans older brother

He asks her to call him Big Black Africa, because he says that Julius is his slave
name

Leader of a left-wing rap group, the Mau Maus, who unsuccessfully audition for
Pierres show

They then decide that theyre offended by the content and decide to take
violent action
Four themes from this weeks readings that this film addresses:

Complexity of ruling class dominance, the effect of negative depictions of

marginalized subjects in the media, significance of diversity in the depiction of
marginalized subjects, problems of viewing race as a binary rather than
considering the diverse intersection of identities occurring within a single racial
group
I will argue that Bamboozled illustrates the importance of deconstructing racial binaries
and diversifying media representation through Pierres minstrel show, his daily life
working for CNS, and the variety of experiences of blackness depicted. Thus, the film is
a vital commentary on the intersection of race and media in contemporary American life.

Four main points from the reading I hope to address through the film: complexity
of the state, role of minstrelsy/media in general, particular issue of black
representation, thinking beyond race as a binary/class defining all (towards
intersectionality!)
To fully understand race in America, one must account for the complexity of the system
of racial discrimination (Slide of audience in blackface here)

From Halls discussion of Gramscis continued relevance: War of Position v.

War of manoeuvre (428-9)

WoM: single front of battle; once thats breached, easy to defeat

enemy

In WoP, what counts is the whole structure of society, including

the structures and institutions of civil society (427)

Situation points irrevocably to the increasing complexity

of the interrelationships in modern societies between state
and civil society. Taken together, they form a complex
system which has to be the object of a many-sided type of
political strategy, conducted on several different fronts at
once (429)

Something as complicated as racial discrimination cant be boiled

down to a single point

Not as simple as cops vs. Black people, KKK vs. Black

people, etc.

War of position has a multiplicity of fronts

TV is the particular front of the system addressed in the

film (I.e. Minstrel show influences peoples thinking)

Through Mantan, Pierre and Dunwitty are

promoting discrimination against black people

Reinforcing stereotypes, and normalizing racial

discrimination

Image of people in blackface shows how they are

accepting the racist ideology promoted by Pierres
show

People of a variety of races and ethnicities

are helping to fight the WoP against blacks

In the scene this image comes from, Honeycutt,

who hosts Mantan, goes through audience gleefully
reciting racial slurs w/ them

WoP is being lost by blacks, in part through

examples such as this

Viewers dont wear blackface in the

early performances, but by the end
the entire audience does

Gradual winning of the WoP

against racially marginalized
subjects

Mantan may seem excessive or overtly satirical, but Lee sees this as reflective of
contemporary depiction of blacks in the media

Lee: Thats not a satire

Mention Insecure character

War of position is being fought constantly, and television is one

particularly crucial point of struggle
Last section discusses situation were faced with, now move to specific attacks being
waged in WoP

Slide is from Birth of a Nation

Explain context of image

BoaN, like Mantan, exemplifies the WoP being conducted against black people in
the media

This image illustrates scope and pervasiveness of the philosophy Lees

addressing: the Effect of a front of cultural struggle such as TV

Goes back as far as something like BoaN, and much longer, and
continues in the present day, over a century later

To be effective, philosophy must enter into, modify and transform the practical,
everyday consciousness or popular thought of the masses (432) (I.e. Common
sense)

Media such as this contributes heavily to the creation of common sense

Common sense is where our preconceptions/awareness of

the world comes in

Williams: Hegemony is negotiated

It thus requires an extensive cultural and ideological struggle to

bring about or effect the intellectual and ethical unity which is
essential to the forging of hegemony (432)

Minstrelsy in film, and real-world analogues outside of it,

forge the hegemonic, negative view of blackness
From Halls New Ethnicities:

Just as masculinity always constructs femininity as double

simultaneously Madonna and Whoreso racism constructs the black
subject, noble savage and violent avenger. And in the doubling, fear and
desire double for another and play across the structures of otherness,
complicating its politics (445)

Role of blackface - simplifying the subject into binary

Dehumanizing black subject and replacing (constructing)

her with dominant societys caricature

Gus from BoaN shows the violent avenger, and the

minstrel show of Mantan shows the noble savage
conception

Leads to the fear and desire these images

conjure in the audience, and degrading and
creating boundaries for blacks in society

Dunwitty is an example of what happens when someone accepts

common sense: hes internalized hegemonic view of blackness,
and his ability to embody a version of it makes him think he is
immune from racism (CLIP: 47:15)

Civil human beings

He disrespects black people to the point where he says that

he knows black culture better than Pierre

Dunwitty accepts the savage/avenger dichotomy of

blackness, and cant tolerate black men (I.e. Pierre and Al
Sharpton) when they dont fit within the model

Dunwitty likes Pierre as long as hes willing to play

along with what he wants, but he cant handle a
black man challenging him

Pierres certainly no saint here, either: he

proposes minstrel show, setting, and initial
stereotypes

No clarification as to what Dunwitty

changes in his revision of the pilot
script, but we do know that even
Pierres version is loaded w/ material
that fights the WoP against black
people by spreading common sense

But Pierres actions in no

way excuse or forgive
Dunwittys behaviour

Through Dunwitty, we see an example of someone

whos internalized common sense notions of black
inferiority and contributes to their reproduction
Effect of these depictions (I.e. Through Dunwitty and treatment of Pierre) engenders an
inexorable interrogation of representations of race in the media

Isaac Julien & Kobena Mercer: Marginality circumscribes the enunciative

modalities of black film as cinematic discourse and imposes a double bind on
black subjects who speak in the public sphere: if only one voice is given the right
to speak, that voice will be heard, by the majority culture, as speaking for the
many who are excluded or marginalized from access to the means of
representation (455)

Within CNS, Pierre is the only black voice whos allowed to speak (37:00)

As a result, hes seen as representative of black people as a whole,

even though his ideas and voice may be very contrary to their
interests

Example: Pierre pitching show idea to a room of white

writers

Assistant, Sloan, is in the room, but shes not given

a voice in this context

Gendered implications of this are certainly

relevant and an important concept from the
readings, but Im saving this for the final
section on thinking beyond race as a binary
and recognizing the intersectionality of
identity
Key things from that scene:

Pierres given authority to have show, but

not to hire black people

Crack pipe joke: Pierre riffs on a toxic

racial stereotype, which *should* make
people question him right away as the sole
voice of black culture

Not that any one voice could

represent an entire group, but
Pierres particularly ill-qualified

White writers cultural references show their

comfort with identifying lone black voices
as representative of a homogenous blackness

Iowan writer, whos not even comfortable

with a single terminology for black people,
refers to The Jeffersons as an experience of
black culture

Blond writer cautiously warns about the

politics of the show, as if there were a way
to do this properly

P brings up OJ at the end, which is the

subject of its own presentation, but which
brought racial diversion to the forefront in a
way it hadnt been in its milieu

Has the same effect once again, with

Pierre as the sole voice to speak for
black culture
Other voices do exist: father as another example of black representation (working
for black audiences) (slide of Paul Mooney)

Father makes jokes about black culture, that appeal to black people, in a
small club with an almost exclusively black audience

Pierre goes backstage to talk w/ his father after the show

Father: I got too much pride, too much dignity, too much
integrity. I cant do that Hollywood stuff. I cant say that
stuff they want me to say

P suggests that maybe father simply wasnt good

enough

Father laughs at P when he says that hes trying to get his

show on the air

P asks father where hell gosuggests that hes

unsuccessful, which isnt

Father says that hes happy w/ his life, and chastises

P for his affected style of speech

P tells us in a VO that this is the last time he

sees his father

Lee emphasizes that Pierres path is far from the only choice for a
black artist

But when only one voice has the chance to speak, as Julien
and Mercer stress and as we see at CNS, that voice
reductively represents an entire group of people

Manray/Womack distinction: Manray embraces idea, Womack is more

skeptical (slide)

Shows complication of seeing black people as singular

Even though they share class and race, they have very different
ideas

Police raiding house: shows the pressure theyre under

Even with all of these similarities, they have very different

perspectives, and only allowing Pierres voice steamrolls over the
differences
Hall in Black in black pop cult: The moment the signifier black is torn from its
historical, cultural, and political embedding and lodged in a biologically
constituted racial category, we valorize, by inversion, the very ground of the
racism we are trying to deconstruct (475)

Julius (slide)

He sees blackness as a binary, but in a positive way

Wants to be called Big Black Africa

Has ambiguous leftist politics, but never clarifies

beyond vague terms like revolution and
freedom, removing his thoughts from any
potentially applicable political context

W/ the Mau Maus, their politics revolve around an

ambiguous conception of blackness

Julius writes a song called Black is Black, calls

the album The Black Album, (predates Jay Z)

They understand blackness as a binary,

hiding the complicated system through
which race is constructed
If black characters such as Julius can simplify race this much, then certainly white
characters can (I.e. Dunwitty)

Julien/Mercer: The impetus to celebrate black cinema, on the one hand,

invokes a unitary notion of blackness that precludes elucidation of
internal differences and diversity (457)

Epitomized by white media consultant, Myrna Goldfarb (female)

Dunwitty brings in to discuss show w/ Pierre/Sloan (1:10:55)

Idea that having a black crew will makes this okay: doesnt
account for the conditions under which people agree to
participate in the show, or what anyone else from the group
they purportedly represent think

She says that the show cant be racist because Pierre is

black

On the one hand, she purports to acknowledge a diverse

notion of blackness, but the images she aims to promote
reify cultural limitations of race

Like Dunwitty, she claims to respect and support black

people but then doesnt care enough to listen when they
talk

Importance of invoking King v. Malcolm X

Reason Lee named the film after a Malcolm X

speech rather than a King speech

Through this exec, we see the issues w/ saying author is black, so

its okay
The limits of Myrnas perspective highlight the importance of thinking beyond a binary
conception of race and moving toward an intersectional understanding of identity.

In The New Ethnicities, Hall offers two visions of race/blackness

Past:

The black experience, as a singular and unifying framework based on

the building up of identity across ethnic and cultural difference between
the different communities, became hegemonic over other ethnic/racial
identities (441)

Present/future

What is at issue here is the recognition of the extraordinary diversity of

subjective positions, social experiences and cultural identities which
compose the category black: that is, the recognition that black is
essentially a politically and culturally constructed category, which cannot
be grounded in a set of fixed transcultural or transcendental racial
categories and which therefore has no guarantees in nature (443)

Accounting for aspects of identity such as gender,

class, and ethnicity

Opposed to the homogenous conception of

blackness offered by both Myrna and Julius

This begins to explain how ethnic and racial difference can be constructed as a
set of economic, political or ideological antagonisms, within a class which is
subject to roughly similar forms of exploitation with respect to ownership of and
expropriation from the means of production (438)

To illustrate this in Bamboozled, instructive to look at dichotomies of

characters

Sloan v. Julius

They come from the same family, but Sloans university

education and office job put her in a very different position
from Julius

Sloan also has to deal w/ gender discrimination

Pierre feminizes her by calling her lamb

Dunwitty calls her his beautiful black princess

and kisses her on the cheek

Her opinions are frequently ignored

Characters use masculine slang around her which

implicitly excludes her

Mantan frequently includes jokes about violence

against women

Validity of her position is questioned repeatedly by

the suggestion that she only has her job because she
slept w/ Pierre

Pierre v. Manray/Womack

Even M&W arent homogenous, but we do see a distinction

from Pierre

As a result of Ps education, hes able to decide

what goes on TV

M&W, the poorer people, have to do what hes tells

them

They specifically accept Ps offer because of

money

Through both of these dichotomies, we see the inadequacy of

referring to blackness as a singular identity without accounting for
nuances within the single category

All subject to racial exploitation, but their various

experiences of it are all very different
Different names: complexity of identity within individuals

Pierre/Peerless

Hes taken on a certain identity for himself through speech/

education/career/name, but this doesnt discount his background

Through his interaction w/ his father and his life at CNS, we see
how Ps experience changes whether hes Pierre or Peerless

Manray/Womack & Mantan/Sleep N eat

Due to their class position, theyre forced to embody identities that

they do not wish to

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They put on blackface, which makes people view them differently

then when theyre offstage

Julius/Big Black Africa

Sloan wont take him seriously, refuses to call him what he wants
to be called

With the Mau Maus, where hes Big Black Africa, hes able to
express himself as he identifies

Mau Maus are rejected from Mantan by Pierre and Sloan, limiting
Julius ability to present himself as Big Black Africa

Through all these characters, we see the complexity of identity, and the
inadequacy of viewing race as a binary
Everything that weve seen illustrates the effect of the media in the WoP, but Lee is less
explicit about how it impacts the daily experience of race in America

Ashley Clark: re-evaluating film (Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in

Spike Lees Bamboozled)

In a fraught contemporary climate where the mediation of the black

image in American society is at a crucial juncture, Bamboozleds trenchant
commentary on the importance, complexity and lasting effects of media
representation could hardly feel more urgent. Each time an unarmed black
person is killed, then hurriedly repositioned in death as a thug, a brute, or a
layabout by mainstream media outletsas has happened recently to
Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Samuel DuBose and
countless otherswe are seeing the perpetuation of old anti-black
stereotypes, forged in the crucible of mass American art, reconfigured for
our time
Greg Tate: Bamboozled speaks existential volumes about the African American
anxiety that neither good behaviour nor bling-bling can free
our minds from the ever-present fear of being profiled,
riddled by a forty-one-bullet NYPD salute, taken out for a
Jasper, Texas, Joyride, or suffering a Nissan loan rejection.
These real-life scenarios declare more eloquently than Spike
ever could that no Black performance, no Black male show, be
it on stage or in the boardroom, can remove open-huntingseason signs and the stain of the tar brush from around Nubian
necks (269)

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Discussion questions:

What is the relationship between the caricatures shown in Lees film and daily
experience of race? Can we separate the two?

What are some other fronts in the war of position? How would a war of maneuver
model explain race in America? What does such a model exclude from our
discussion of race in contemporary life?

Who is ultimately most responsible for the bamboozling of the films title? How
do you assign responsibility for what we see between bosses like Dunwitty,
creators like Pierre, accomplices like Sloan, performers like Manray, and audience
members?
Does Lees critique discount the agency of black artists? Could Julien and
Mercers dismissal of the impetus to celebrate black cinema
risk unfairly degrading black artistic contributions?