The Very Black Show

This could have been a brilliant film. The problem I had with this film is that Spike Lee had too many ideas he was trying to pursue, and should have kept to the single focus. Yet, there were some brilliant scenes. We see a black gangsta group of hip-hoppers and one scene shows a member drinking out of a bottle shaped like a rocket. Later on we see a commercial for this product. Subtle and interesting. The film clips from old films and the display of of toys during the endtitles, were fascinating and could have made an interesting documentary.

One thing I didn't like, besides the stereotypical white bigots, was Lee's focusing upon 40s black comedian Mantan Moreland as the epitome of black humiliation. Moreland was a brilliant comic who stole the show from the white actors of the day. Whites and Blacks turned against Moreland during the civil rights movement and the man could hardly make ends meet. Before he died in the early 70s, opinion changed again and he was seen as a pioneer. He once again managed to get some work in films and tv before his death. A better target for Lee should have been Stepin Fletchit, who made a career out of playing a lazy black freeloader.

I have to agree with Lee on hip-hop as a minstrel show. The gold chains, oversized sport jerseys, and baseball caps worn sideways are clownish and not far removed from the olden days when blacks played buffoons to entertain white people. The show is still going on....

I approached this film with trepidation due to the mixed reviews(in particular, the flat-out negative review of Ebert at the Movies). Knowing Lee's penchant for controversy, but knowing also his unflinching honesty and passion about his position, I decided to give this film a chance.

I consider myself an educated, articulate, middle-class black-american. And I was wary of Lee's supposed satire which centers on the creation of Minstrel show for the new millenium. By the time I credits rolled, I was applauding.

In this film, Lee takes no prisoners, he neither excuses the white establishment for its entrenched and hard-to-expose racism nor does he excuse the blacks and other non-whites who become the literal agents of this process.

This story of two young black men's rise to financial and commercial glory through demeaning themselves, their talent and by example the group of people from which they hail, is an allegory. Rather than getting stuck in a discussion of this film's form, viewers should consider what it means about the world around them.

The disturbing and unnerving finale, is a suitable response to our rising awareness of inner-city violence, hip-hop culture, the prison industrial complex, and the police state in which many blacks, poor or not, find themselves a part. Instead of offering us solutions this film offers us, as in many other of Lee's films, a wake up call.

As in the body of Lee's work, the camera work gives a gritty cinema verite feel to the scenes, and the performances of Glover, Davidson, Pinkett, Wayans, and Rappaport are dead-on. The cast has a good chemistry and the dialogue will have have you howling with disbelief and laughter.

An incredibly important film, for any consumer, and by definition, any creator of popular culture who may be responsible for the perpetuation and dissemination of DAMAGING and DEGRADING stereotypes. Thank you, Mr. Lee.

Being white, and european, I'm not really sure about the point of this movie seen in an american perspective. But as a european it really opened my eyes to a strange fact: if your only knowledge about black America comes from television, you WOULD really think, that all afro-americans were gangsters, rappers or Urkel-like comedians, that is: stereotypes. You very rarely see an american show, or movie, where a black american is portrayed as a complex human being. And that really IS scary.

The film "Bamboozled" has caught a lot of heat for it's portrayal of blackface (an issue that wasn't really talked about until the release of "Bamboozled") Writer Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) sees his pitches for TV shows being rejected one after another. He is upset with his job and his boss Thomas Dunwitty (Mike Rappaport) He is under contract, he cannot quit because he will be sued. So he decides to get himself fired. He plans on reviving blackface and hopes that it'll be so controversial that CNS will be under fire and he'll get fired. He recruits two street performers Manray (Savion Glover) and Womack (Tommy Davidson) and pitches the show to his boss. The show gets green lighted, but unfortunately it becomes a big hit and destroys his whole plan. Spike got some heat for this (mainly because he criticized previous films for the way blacks are shown, then he made a film with blackface) But what people don't understand is that this is a satire. The images of rappers and "Timmi Hillnigger" are all poking fun at today's society. "Bamboozled" is clever and one of Spike's most explosive films next to "Do the Right Thing" and "Malcolm X". This film has Tommy Davidson performing in blackface, in a very funny routine. I wanted to laugh but at the same time it made me think. This sketch was making me laugh at every stereotype about my people that I hated. That was the smart thing about "Bamboozled", it caught you in the act of doing something and made you think. "Bamboozled" is a well thought, mentally challenging film that'll change your life.

Bamboozled- rated R **** out of ****

I saw Bamboozled on cable years ago and could not watch the entire movie. I was very uncomfortable with the racist minstrel characters and those dehumanizing vintage toys. Flash forward to 2012 and I happened across it again. Wow, what a difference 10 years make. Since the election of Barack Obama, seemingly normal white people have lost their collective minds. They spent years denying the president's legal citizenship. They joined anti government Tea Party groups not because they did not wanted their big gov't social security checks but because they wanted to hang with a bunch of aging bigots carrying signs of the President dressed as a Kenyan native.

Where does Bamboozled fit in? These very same people love Herman Cain. It took me awhile but I finally got it, Mr Lee. Herman Cain is the Negro that white America is comfortable with. A self confessed sitting on the back of the bus entertaining... "awwwwww shucky ducky now" Negro. The Racist Tea Party folks could not get enough of him and his simplistic 9-9-9 plan. . When white women accused Mr Cain of sexual harassment, that just comforted them more because everyone knows Negros love white women. I guarantee you that if Herman Cain had darkened his skin with a burnt cork, the Tea Party folks would have lapped it up. His audience could have easily started to sport a black face too and proclaimed loudly to the press, "See we aren't racist!" The Herman Cain train exemplified everything that Spike Lee was saying in this dark comedy. Americans do not want to see African Americans represented by the Bill Cosby Show or the educated, functional Obama family. They want a minstrel show.

The movie is heartbreaking as is the behavior of many Americans. Thank you Spike Lee.