BAMBOOZLED
US, 2001, 135 minutes, Colour.
Damon Wayans, Savion Glover, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tommy Davidson, Michael Rapaport.
Directed by Spike Lee.
"You've been hoodwinked. You've been had. You've been took. You've been led astray, led amok. You've been bamboozled." The speaker is Malcolm X in Spike Lee's movie of that name. The audience is a crowd of African Americans. Malcolm X is speaking of how his fellow black Americans have been portrayed in the media. The scene is inserted into Spike Lee's new film, the title taking up Malcolm X's choice of words, Bamboozled.
Spike Lee himself is by no means bamboozled. He sees very clearly what has happened. He is angry about it (and has been in most of his films) and has decided to tackle the subject full on. His chosen mode of communication is satire. In fact, as the film opens, we are given a dictionary definition of satire as a humorous, though sometimes black and bitter, attack on the failings of society. There is no mistaking how this film is to be taken.
Lee is not a subtle storyteller. He hits hard. He makes his point (sometimes over and over again as he does here) with blunt and exaggerated dialogue and some over-the-top characterisation. Even audiences who might miss the message in the indirect approach will know that American theatre, cinema and television has caricatured the black African American presence with, in the title of one of the best books on the subject, Donald Bogle's, 'Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks'.
Bamboozled is the calamitous saga of Pierre Delacroix, a Harvard educated TV executive who feels he has been put down by his colleagues. He is either ignored or patronised by his go-getting white boss who claims to be in sync with black aspirations. He has a brainwave that will get him sacked and make him a martyr: he will introduce a TV minstrel show where the black performers will have extra 'blackface'. He will lay on all the cliches, all the caricatures, all the broken dialogue made popular by the slaves and mammies in the movies.
It is a ratings bonanza! What is Pierre to do? Go with it and be a success? Continue his war against the channel? Or let US media madness and proneness to violence run its course?
Bamboozled is not an easy film to sit through. While it is entertaining in its grimly humorous way, it is more like an illustrated lesson on American race stereotypes. It has also been filmed with digital video cameras to give it a sense of 'immediacy' - this is all happening now. So, its look is sometimes fuzzy with the touch of the home movie. And Damon Wayans' performance as Pierre Delacroix is constantly disconcerting. Wayans has chosen a most peculiar accent, part over-educated, part phony 'French-is-really-my-first-language precision. We are continually wondering who is this man and what is he really up to. Does he really know? This puts us on edge. Which is what Spike Lee wants. He wants us to react emotionally to the put down of black Americans and the bigotry, intolerance and mockery that is the mark of racism in any society.
