Spike Lee is one of those filmmakers who isn’t afraid to make audiences mad. And that’s part of the reason I don’t like some of his movies. He seems to be too busy on his soapbox without being a storyteller. When his movies like Summer of Sam, Oldboy and Inside Man don’t focus much on social and racial themes, you can see where he’s a skilled director at telling a story. Not to say that movies like Do The Right Thing or School Daze aren’t entertaining as they still pack a punch. When I first saw Malcolm X, the image of the Ku Klux Klan members riding on horseback toward a full-moon rising is both haunting and shows he has as wonderful mind. Yet the “I’m Malcom X!” sequence at the end seems to break down what would’ve been a flawless biopic with a great performance by Denzel Washington.
That being said, when I saw Bamboozled in the summer of 2001, mere weeks before 9/11, I didn’t really think much of it. At two hours and 15 minutes with credits, it’s way too long by at least 40 minutes. The final sequence showing all the racial stereotypes in pop culture seems a little too much and way too preachy. The performances by Damon Wayans, Jada Pinkett Smith and especially Mos Def are just hard to watch. Lee seems to fall into the same problem most satire movies since Network have – they have to end in violence. While Sidney Lumet and writer Paddy Chayefsky were showing how TV executives had gotten out of hand, they were willing to kill a major TV personality for ratings, most satires since have foolishly included a death or scene of violence to end the movie where it’s not necessary.
But more on that later.
Pierre “Peerless Dothan” Delacroix (Wayans) is a Harvard-educated executive at the fictional TV station CNS. He is constantly the subject of ridicule because he “doesn’t sound black.” And when he shows up late to a meeting, he hears the comment “CPT” as in “colored people time.” His boss, Thomas Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport wonderfully cast) chastises Peerless saying he’s more black than Peerless. Since his wife is black and their children are biracial, he says it’s okay for him to use the N-word and talk like he’s black. (Lee even throws in a meta jab at himself talking about how he criticized Quentin Tarantino for the use of it in his movies.) Dunwitty doesn’t care for Peerless’ scripts that portray black people in positive lights as he considers them “Cosby clones.”
Fed up and wanting to be released from his contract even if it means getting fired, he devises what he thinks is a sure way. He will cast two homeless street performers, Manray (Savion Glover) and Womack (Tommy Davidson) in a minstrel show. The kicker is they will appear in blackface themselves even though they’re black playing on old-fashioned stereotypes. Manray will play “Mantan” and Womack will be “Sleep N Eat.” His colleague, Sloan Hopkins (Pinkett Smith) is horrified by this idea as well as Dunwitty liking it. And Womack is more opposed to it than Manray, even though it gets them off the streets.
Peerless gets the white writers at the station to make some really racial and tasteless shows by asking them to channel how they felt when they heard O.J. Simpson was acquitted. But just like in The Producers, the show becomes a big hit with it being popular for people to use blackface, regardless of their skin color. Dunwitty shows up to tapings in blackface as well. And both Manray and Peerless realize they’re rich and this is putting them in the spotlight.
However, Womack hates it, even holding back tears and his own frustrations to get through tapings. Davidson, who was more known for comedy roles on In Living Color does a great job at playing serious. And he channels all the hatred and embarrassment many black actors and entertainers have felt when they were told to play up their stereotypes for white audiences. In a moving scene when he’s had enough, Womack gives a full display of the stereotypes on how they’ve been portrayed as he walks off the set in disgust.
Sloan, on the other hand, begins to despise it more and more. But Lee doesn’t give Pinkett Smith much to do except constantly complain. Worse, Sloan’s brother, Julius (Def) is the leader of an underground militant rap group, the Mau Maus, which become very opposed to the show’s popularity, they kidnap Manray and kill him live during a webcast. The whole subplot about the Mau Maus is tired and boring. Julius, also called “Big Blak Afrika,” seems only to exist in this movie for the kidnapping and murder of Manray. And Lee has to take it a step further by having the Mau Maus all killed when the police track them down. That is except for the token white guy who is arrested. This seems overkill, for lack of a better word.
Worse, Sloan shoots Peerless because she’s mad at him for what he’s unleashed. But Pinkett Smith plays the character badly, mainly because she isn’t really written well. To end the movie with just violence is poor storytelling and writing. I think Lee had a great idea but he wanted to distance it as much as he could from resembling The Producers. Lee needed a better editor. Even though he had worked with Sam Pollard before, this is their final collaboration as of this time. The crux of the movie is how the show titled Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show becomes outrageously popular. And then Peerless, himself, sees it to work in his favor.
Lee is actually making a bold statement that it’s not just white audiences that perpetuate also black stereotypes but black actors, writers, producers and directors themselves. Lee has spoken out a lot over the years how Do the Right Thing was snubbed for Best Picture in favor of Driving Miss Daisy, a movie that he rightfully sees as racist. And I’m almost certain if anyone but Morgan Freeman had played Hoke, it would’ve been a lot worse. It’s harder 35 years later to look at Daisy with the rose-collared glasses we have especially since Do the Right Thing struck a harder nerve than most of America was ready for at the time.
In another scene that should’ve been cut, Peerless wins an award and acts way too excited before handing the award to the presenter, Matthew Modine, playing himself. Lee has also spoken out over the years on how he didn’t care for Cuba Gooding Jr.’s jumping up and down when he won an Oscar for Jerry Maguire. He was also offended when Ving Rhames gave his Golden Globe Award for Don King: Only in America to Jack Lemmons. Yet, I understand what Lee is getting at here. It just doesn’t work.
If you look at some TV shows and movies that have come out before the movie and since, you can see what Lee is getting at. Anyone remember Homeboys in Outer Space? That was a real TV show. And then there was the criticism over the bouncing plane in Soul Plane. It seems in some ways, Lee himself has also perpetuated the same stereotypes he is against. School Daze seemed to focus on the racial divide between lighter skinned black students and darker skinned black students at a fictional college with a certain tone that now might seem too offensive. Even having the people criticize the pizzeria in Do the Right Thing for not having any black people on the wall could be seen as too much, the way Karens act in businesses.
Yet, you can still see what Lee was focusing on with the recent show Reservation Dogs, which in my opinion perpetuated the stereotypes of both Indigenous Native Americans and Oklahomans. I only made it through the first season and a few episodes of the second season before giving up. I think that Echo did a better portrayal of Native Americans in America without resulting to stereotypes. Would people have praised Reservation Dogs as much if it wasn’t created and overseen by a Native American Sterlin Harjo? Why did shows like Dogs get a lot of attention but Skins, released not released much time after Bamboozled, come and go with little attention.
Originally, Norman Jewison, who passed away last month, was tapped to direct a biopic on Malcolm X before people realized rightfully he was the wrong person for the job. Even in 1985 where there weren’t that many black women directors, the notion of Steven Spielberg directing The Color Purple was heavily criticized. Do people watch Mantan because a black TV executive created it or do they watch it because it’s better to watch the stereotypes.
Living in Oklahoma almost 22 years, the public misconception of Indigenous Native Americans is on full display in Reservation Dogs. Yet, if you just show a family or group of Indigenous people going about their days and dealing with the same issues as others, would it be dismissed as “Cosby clones.” But even white people seemed to love to perpetuate their own stereotypes, just look at people in Boston, Philadelphia and other cities with a poor reputation. Italian-Americans have fought back against their portrayals in The Godfather trilogy and The Sopranos but still watch them.
Chris Rock touched on this with some of his earlier comedy shows where he said people in black communities and neighborhoods get more respect for going to jail or prison than they do for going to college. He mocked the people who criticized others who receive their master’s degree as “you my massa now?” For the most part, redlining and our public education system has failed and continues to fail most black students as it does Latino and even Indigenous Native Americans. But you may also ask, doesn’t it also begin in the home?
Akeelah and the Bee has a scene where Angela Bassett gets mad at her daughter, Akeelah (Keke Palmer), for winning a spelling bee as it doesn’t matter to real-life issues they have. There are white parents in real life who don’t think their kids should be too educated and need to focus on other things, too. But it seems our history of racism through years of oppressions makes black people hate their own. In A Soldier’s Story, Adolph Caesar plays Master Sgt. Vernon Waters who doesn’t care for Pvt. C.J. Memphis (Larry Riley) who doesn’t seem too smart and speaks in stereotypical uneducated dialect. Waters has treated other enlisted men under him who act the same with contempt as his goal is to eradicate them. C.J. ends up committing suicide.
In Antwone Fisher, which Washington directed based on a book and screenplay written by the eponymous person, this is further examined. Fisher was a victim of constant abuse and beatings while he was living in a foster home. Washington, who plays the Naval Officer who is his psychologists, states it’s from the history of oppression and violence black people have experienced that makes them beat and abuse their spouses and children. It’s been reported that before American colonization, Indigenous people didn’t believe in whipping and beating their kids for punishments. Indigenous people and later black people were subjected to the worst abuse during the slave trade.
Hattie McDaniel who won an Oscar for her role in Gone With the Wind was the first black actor to win. The win only brought her other roles playing maids and the help. But she said she would rather play a maid than actually being one. The real-life Malcolm X criticized Butterfly McQueen’s role as Prissy in that movie and said he was embarrassed. McQueen seems to play up the stereotype in her role, especially how she famously quips, “I don’t know nothing about birthing babies!” before she is hit by Scarlett O’Hara.
Robert Townsend, who also appeared in A Soldier’s Story, in a minor role, would explore the same stereotypes in Hollywood Shuffle and how some actors are willing to be humiliated if it means stardom. Manray sees that he can get rich on TV rather than tapdancing on the street for loose change. While comedy can be used to break down stereotypes the way Mel Brooks, the Wayans family and others have, Dave Chappelle said he walked away from Chappelle Show when a white man in the audience laughed too much at a skit where he was playing a minstrel character. And even though I have issues with Chappelle, it does bring up a valid point that Lee also addresses here. Are they laughing with you or at you? And when is it no longer funny?
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 