"Bamboozled"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Director Spike Lee's 2000 film, "Bamboozled", is a powerful, hard-hitting satire within a satire of both the historical and modern stereotypical portrayal of black Americans in mass media. It looks at how, in the film, a black, Harvard-educated television writer, Pierre Delacroix develops an idea for the rebirth of a traditional minstrel show, expecting that the outcry from this racist throwback will cause him to be fired, thus negating and freeing him from his contract. It discusses how the ironic and fateful twist in the plan is that it backfires and how the show goes into production and the public loves it. Rather than recognizing the show as satire, all the negative, demeaning stereotypes are embraced and mimicked by the masses. A chaotic series of events ensues, culminating in the tragic deaths of several of the characters.

From the Paper:

"As introduced earlier, the main character in Bamboozled, Delacroix, devises a plot to turn a pair of performers into the leads in a minstrel show for the new millennium. Delacroix can best be described using the term 'New Negro' as explained by Alain Locke. He asserts that, "the Negro of today be seen through other that the dusty spectacles of past controversy. The day of 'aunties' and 'uncles' and 'mammies is equally gone." Delacroix is a well-educated, successful, wealthy black man who supposedly demonstrated that past racial suppression is gone. Spike Lee in Bamboozled however, turns this belief around. Delacroix is still under the thumb of his white superior and manages to fall victim to his own plan. From the outset, the Jim Crow symbolism is glaringly evident, even before Delacroix begins to create the new minstrel show. "

More papers on "Bamboozled":

• Film Review # 35927 : "Bamboozled"
• Persuasive Essay # 46305 : "Shakespeare from a Modern Viewpoint"
• Essay # 42254 : "Black American Philosophy"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: