Bamboozled

Bamboozled is a 2000 satirical film written and directed by Spike Lee about a modern televised minstrel show featuring black actors donning blackface makeup and the violent fall-out from the show's debut.

Related Topics:
2000 - Satirical - Film - Spike Lee - Minstrel show - Black - Blackface

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The content is heavily satirical, with it's show within a show featuring it's characters all in blackface and in a rural setting in a cotton field with plentiful watermelons. The Roots have a role as the show's house band, The Alabama Porch Monkeys. The audiences within the movie, initially baffled, come to love the show, and after a few episodes even elderly white women show up in blackface and proclaim themselves "niggers."

Related Topics:
Satirical - Show within a show - Blackface - Cotton - Watermelon - The Roots - Nigger

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The title, which may in fact have come from an old, racist game seen briefly (literally for a few seconds) in the movie, means "purposefully confused, tricked or led astray".

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One of Lee's tricks on the audience for his movie is that the performances of the show within a show are rendered with excellent musicianship, sharp timing, exciting dancing, all within the most stereotypical settings of cotton fields and watermelon feasts. This puts the audience (both on-screen and in the theatre) in the position of enjoying the performances, but being unsure whether it's correct to enjoy them.

Related Topics:
Show within a show - Cotton

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The script, expressing rage and grief at media representations of black people, largely does so through the eyes of its moral center, the character Sloan Hopkins (played by Jada Pinkett Smith). It also satirizes many icons of black culture, including Ving Rhames, Will Smith, Johnnie Cochran, and Al Sharpton (Cochran and Sharpton appear as themselves in the film, protesting the television series).

Related Topics:
Jada Pinkett Smith - Ving Rhames - Will Smith - Johnnie Cochran - Al Sharpton

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The movie also stars Savion Glover as Manray (stage name Mantan, after Mantan Moreland), Tommy Davidson as Womack (stage name Sleep n' Eat, after Willie Best), Thomas Jefferson Byrd as Honeycutt, and Mos Def, Canibus, and DJ Scratch as three of the activist/hip hop group The Mau Maus. Mos Def's character, who calls himself "Big Blak Afrika" (refusing to spell the word with the "c" because "they don't even pronounce that shit!") is also Sloan's older brother.

Related Topics:
Savion Glover - Mantan Moreland - Willie Best - Thomas Jefferson Byrd - Mos Def - Canibus - DJ Scratch - Mau Maus

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Bamboozled was dedicated to Budd Schulberg.

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Pierre Delacroix, played by Damon Wayans, is a Harvard-educated black man working for a television network that routinely rejects all of his attempts to get respectable, intelligent shows involving black people on the airwaves. He is further tormented by his boss Thomas Dunwitty (played by Michael Rapaport), a white man who proudly proclaims that he is more black that Delacroix and that he can use the word "nigger" since he is married to a black woman.

Related Topics:
Damon Wayans - Michael Rapaport - Nigger

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Faced with an ultimatium of either coming up with a hit black-centric show for the network or being fired, Delacroix opts for the later on the basis that being fired will allow free him from his contract to the network and allow him to go to work for another network without having to go through the hassle of quitting and being sued for breach of contract. With help from his personal assistant Sloan Hopkins (played by Jada Pinkett Smith), Delacroix decides to pitch a minstrel show, complete with black actors in blackface on the belief that the network would reject it for being out and out racist and fire him on the spot.

Related Topics:
Jada Pinkett Smith - Minstrel show

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With help from Sloane, Delacroix recruits two homeless street performers Manray and Womack to star in the show. While Womack is horrified when Delacroix tells him about the show, his best friend Manray willfully agrees to star in the show as his big chance to become rich and famous.

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To Delacroix's horror, Dunwitty falls in love with the minstrel show concept and not only does the show get greenlighted but it becomes a hugely successful show. Manray and Womack become big stars while Delacroix becomes a lightning rod of controversy over the show, which he defends as being satirical. Delacroix embraces the fame of the show while his assistant Sloane becomes horrified at the racist nightmare she's helped unleashed. Meanwhile, Womack finally has enough of the show and it's racist nature and quits much to the shock of Manray. This causes Manray and Sloane to grow closer, which angers Delacroix. Delacroix tries to break up Manray's relationship with Sloane by accusing Sloane of sleeping with Manray to further her career and then reveals that Sloane only got her position as Delacroix's assistant by sleeping with him.

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The move backfires though and only further drives Manray and Sloane together. The two create a tape of offending racist footage culled from assorted movies, cartoons, and newsreels to try and shame Delacroix into stopping production of the show and when Delacroix refuses to view the tape, Manray defiantly announces that he will no longer wear blackface and goes in front of the studio audience during a tv taping and does his dance number in his regular clothing. The crowd imeadiately turns against Manray and Dunwitty personally fires Manray from the show.

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Kicked out of the studio, Manray is then captured by Sloane's brother Big Blak Afrika (played by Mos Def) and is executed by him and his fellow rappers the Mau Maus on a live internet webcast. The Mau Maus are quickly caught by the police and shot down in a hail of bullets, with the only survivor being the group's token white rapper, 1/16th Blak. Furious, Sloane confronts Delacroix with a gun her brother had given her years prior and demands that Delacroix watch the tape she and Manray prepared for him. Delacroix refuses and tries to get the gun away from Sloane only to be shot in the stomach. Sloane looks on with horror and flees while proclaiming that it was Delacroix's own fault he got shot as Delacroix watches the tape at long last while he lays on the floor and dies.

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The film concludes with a montage of racially sensitive and demeaning clips of Black characters from Hollywood films of the first half of the 20th century. Among the films used in the sequence are Gone with the Wind, Holiday Inn, Ub Iwerks' cartoon Little Black Sambo, Walter Lantz's cartoon Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat, the Looney Tunes short All This and Rabbit Stew, and, from the Hal Roach comedy School's Out, Our Gang (Little Rascals) kids Allen "Farina" Hoskins and Matthew "Stymie" Beard.

Related Topics:
Montage - Gone with the Wind - Holiday Inn - Ub Iwerks - Little Black Sambo - Walter Lantz - Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat - Looney Tunes - All This and Rabbit Stew - Hal Roach - School's Out - Our Gang - Allen "Farina" Hoskins - Matthew "Stymie" Beard

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