Bamboozled (2000) 3/10
An African-American television executive (Damon Wayons), frustrated with his inability to get interest in his scripts about intelligent blacks, creates a minstrel show, complete with a tap-dancing star (Savion Glover) and broad, Amos & Andy-style stereotypes. When the show is a hit, things spin out of control. Written & directed by Spike Lee.
Bamboozled opens by defining “satire”. In case you didn’t get it. In case you thought a Spike Lee film that humiliates blacks, especially every form of black entertainer, in every possible way, was meant to be taken seriously. Ultimately though, it’s not a satire, it’s a train wreck. Or maybe a satiric train wreck. What it’s not, is a satire of train wrecks.
To begin with, Damon Wayons is absolutely terrible. His over-mannered “Pierre Delacroix” is a stiff caricature, and stands in uncomfortable contrast to the naturalistic performances of Jada Pinkett Smith, Savion Glover, Michael Rapaport, and the rest of the cast. I’m not neglecting the possibility that “that’s the point” (which is, of course, the answer for any complaint about satire, therefore making all satire theoretically impregnable by criticism), but it doesn’t work. Especially at the half-way point, when Delacroix is supposed to be asking himself serious questions, his obnoxious buffoonery is nothing but interference.
Pierre’s assistant, Sloan (Jada Pinkett Smith), is the voice of reason, frustrated by her boss’s crazy plan. While Pierre is sure that if he shows an offensive enough black stereotype, station executives will wake up and smell the bigotry, Sloan thinks that any such depiction is wrong. Still, she goes along. Sloan is the audience’s sympathetic anchor, the one to whom we relate. In many ways, she is also Spike Lee’s voice in the picture, so that when Sloan collapses, the picture comes apart as well. In fact, Lee seems to lose interest in his satire once he’s got all the pieces into play, after that, he tries drama, and then just gives up and lets it all go to hell. When Sloan becomes destructive, we’re already there—you go, girl, destroy this thing.
Sloan has a brother, Julius (Mos Def), who has changed his name to Big Blak Afrika as part of a revolutionary rap group called Mau Mau. Between Mau Mau and the minstrel show, Lee sends up the full range of African-American entertainment (not omitting stand-up comedy, advertising geared towards the black community, and oversexed music videos). For a while this works, and Mau Mau has a lot of the films best moments. But Lee doesn’t have anything to say to or about any of them except that he finds them worthy of sarcasm.
The success of the minstrel show is never fully explained, except in one segment where even Mau Mau can’t help laughing at the comedy. Unfortunately, what Lee chooses as his comedy piece belies his point. He takes a very clever bit of dialogue, and has it delivered by men in an obnoxious minstrel-show setting and costume. The dialogue itself, though, has no connection to race, racism, or the scene. It’s just a funny and well-timed conversation. If the show succeeds because the comedy is clever and Savion’s dancing is amazing (which of course it is), that doesn’t explain the sudden craze for black-face and the use of the word “nigger” on TV. Lee never shows anyone enjoying that stuff until suddenly everyone is.
Finally, Bamboozled ends with a long series of clips from a huge range of racist comedy; blackface, servants, and subservience throughout the history of movies and TV. Sloan has nothing to say, when she puts the video clip together, except ‘Just look! Just look at that!’ Ultimataely, Lee has nothing else to say either, so it’s no wonder the movie caves in.
