BAMBOOZLED review

Satire is the most difficult of filmed mediums to sell to the public and to critics. You see, for satire to work, it needs to offend and shake you to the point of self-examination. In BAMBOOZLED, Spike Lee does that… However, the problem is… Some audience goers, some so-called intelligentsia… well they come in, pre-offended and holier-than-thou. Some will walk away from this film angry at Spike for making them witness this film… And then throughout the film, everytime Spike tried to make you smile… these self-centered critics will hold that against him.

This is a complete satire, from top to bottom… not just of the pop cultural portrayals of Afro-Americans in the past century on up to today… but it is also a satire of the reactions that Blacks have upon seeing this material, the way Whites tend to ‘associate’ and try to become ‘blacker than black’. This is a parody of the entire ball of wax.

Now, I do disagree with some of what Spike is doing here… but that, in and of itself, is the point. We are supposed to react, think and chew on this film like an everlasting gobstopper and not like a stick of Wrigley’s.

I saw the film about a week ago, and instead of my usual instant pounding of the keyboard, I wanted this film to settle… to think about it a bit more. There is a lot here to go over.

Going into this film, you have to look at the satirist performing the satire.

SPIKE LEE

Spike does not believe in smooth sailing, he likes to shake things up… Through his art, he lashes you with pangs of pain… And when you come out the otherside you feel motivated to discuss the experience.

His entire career has been a struggle. He is a serious filmmaker wanting to discuss and film serious films concerning the issues closest to him.

Unfortunately, he is an artist in an industry that wants Spike to ‘lighten up’.

Now we get all angry at Spike when he begins attacking a Spielberg for making AMISTAD, but look at it from Spike’s point of view. Had Spike Lee set out to make AMISTAD, he would have had the door slammed in his face a dozen times on Friday alone. An ambitious expensive period piece?

Spike knows that the only way he can get to the point where he gets a $65 million budget for a period piece would be for him to ‘sing and dance for a long time’ turning a profit for the ‘man’ till ‘they’ deemed him worthy to tell larger stories.

We’ve been watching Spike trying to get his JACKIE ROBINSON film off the ground forever…. It is a story we would all love to see, but he never seems to ever get closer to getting it made. Perhaps he hasn’t made enough people laugh or giggle yet.

Meanwhile, he is always able to get expensive budgets for shooting commercials…

It has to be demoralizing.

So, to express his frustration at the entire system, to show how nothing has really changed. To scream loud enough to make people take notice…. Spike makes BAMBOOZLED… a biting satire at the entire thing.

Now I have read how some feel the BLACKFACE used in the film "isn’t funny" and is too "hurtful".

BULLSHIT.

In 1729, when Jonathan Swift was satirizing the Victorian grumblings about poverty and the taking of children from their poverty struck single mothers and throwing them in orphanages… He wrote A MODEST PROPOSAL…. He painted the ugliest picture imaginable, shoved it in the faces of the élitist… and it stung…. Stung only like satire can.

My father brought me up very aware of the ethnic stereotypes that have took place in American Culture… Beginning at a very early age I was aware of cartoons like GOING TO HEAVEN ON A MULE, SCRUB ME MAMA WITH A BOOGIE BEAT, COAL BLACK AND DA SEBBEN DWARFS, TRADER MICKEY… the Ol Jasper puppetoons of George Pal’s and so many more. He taught me the difference between these and… oh, let’s say George Pal’s JOHN HENRY AND THE INKY POO (1946) and when I was 8 and read Leonard Maltin’s OF MICE AND MAGIC, I learned that John Henry was Pal’s attempt at a public apology to the African American community, when he realized that his Jasper puppetoons were hurtful.

And it was actually through Maltin’s book that I first started to seriously examine the significance of the ‘black birds’ in DUMBO… or the ‘black birds’ in FRITZ THE CAT…

At the same time, I was watching the Ol CHARLIE CHAN, Sidney Toler series, movies that often times co-starred Mantan Moreland… sometimes Stepin Fetchit… Now I was lucky, my parents always taught me to look at these performances with an eye for the origin of stereotypes…

A couple of years back I had a chance to talk to Jack Hill about Mantan Moreland, who he directed in the classic SPIDER BABY. Now, he told me how Mantan hated the entire civil rights movement. How at the end of his career, all of a sudden the mass organization was attacking him and blaming him for all the racism that the African American community was experiencing. NOW, that was Mantan’s feelings. He didn’t understand it, because his comedy act was HIS comedy act… He wasn’t told to create it, he worked it out over years… and when you boil his routine down, it is actually very similar to Shaggy’s on SCOOBY DOO… But Mantan was soooo popular that his routine became a foundation for stereotypes…. His character was lazy, shifty, scared and loved to gamble. Now you could say the same thing about Lou Costello, but the difference was… Mantan was one of the ONLY known Black Performers around… And he played his character in B-movies… the films of mass culture, so when UP JUMPED DA DEVIL or SHE’S TOO MEAN FOR ME played in that small town theater… Mantan might very well of been one of the very few Black characters those hicks might have seen or paid attention to… So they instantly adopted and projected Mantan’s routine upon all Blacks.

And beginning in the thirties when Jolson and Eddie Cantor began popularizing Black-Face into the mainstream theaters…. Well, you would have them singing… but their production numbers were huge… gigantic wallowing edifices of watermelons, dice, catfish, fried chicken and booze… Happy cotton pickers.

Now this material has nearly been completely exorcised from mainstream media…. Trying to get a copy of films like WONDERBAR with its last… startling number… are nearly impossible to see.

Now I seem to be one of the very few people on the planet that seems to think of this as a bad thing… To me, it is an important part of history to preserve and study and consider when examining the history of pop-culture.

NOW… because of this, my opinion on BAMBOOZLED may be quite different from yours. I know black-face routines inside and out…. My ‘uncle roy’ was a dealer of radio shows, so I’m familiar with the old AMOS & ANDY shows… As a collectibles dealer, I am not only aware of the rare "JOLLY NIGGER BANK" and the other mechanical ‘toys’… And I am also aware that nearly every toy was also repainted as a Lil Abner or hillbilly toy too…

BAMBOOZLED takes this history… this century + of shameful profiteering… then moves it forward to the modern creators and purveyors of modern stereotypes… THE JEFFERSONS on up to GOOD TIMES and SANFORD AND SON… And then points out how we have all the funny sitcom black television you can imagine… but there are no dramas… no action shows… where are these?

Now, I might be alone here, but I was a fan of MANTIS something fierce. However it didn’t last very long when you get right down to it.

Well, in the BAMBOOZLED universe… we are in some future world… not far from now… where the world of Cable Programming is getting more and more desperate to shock and entertain. Boy, that’s haaard to imagine. Heheh.

In this world he has created a set of circumstances where a show… a minstrel show… becomes the hottest show on Television.

The person who created it, was trying to get fired… but it has now turned into his greatest success.

His assistant has become incensed.

His television company happy.

He has a pair of desperate innately talented homeless performers, who are desperate enough to do ANYTHING to get off the streets… so they don the burnt cork base black-face and the big ruby red lips and take the stage.

At the same time he satirizes the commercials that run during this show… the insane adoption of the show’s motifs by audience members… the militant groups protesting the outrage… The media and critics in their acceptance… the outrage of the audience…

And for moments in the film, you have a harsh look at the reality these images bring upon the really real characters in the film. Like Delacroix’s mother, when she is speaking to him about his show… the hurt on her face is tangible.

This film is an EXCEPTIONAL satire upon the pop-culture treatment of Black America.

And as such, it will offend… and it will hurt… but at the same time it forces issues out from being buried and into discussion where they belong.

Take a look at those old performances by actors and comedians like Rochester, Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit… and compare and contrast their work with say that of modern day comedians like Chris Tucker, Chris Rock and others.

Take a look at modern day cinema concerning black culture… Are films like FRIDAY good for culture? Is there harm in playing a black stoned slacker in SCARY MOVIE… and if so, what is the difference between Marlon Wayans doing it… and say Matthew McConaughey in DAZED AND CONFUSED?

Watch BAMBOOZLED then look back on the past century of film… has their been progression? Is it enough? And is there anything that can be done? Or should anyone try?

Coming through BAMBOOZLED you should have a lot on your mind, and not just a diatribe about whether or not Spike Lee should or should not have used BLACK FACE in Bamboozled… Black Face was nothing more than an exclamation mark… and if that’s all you saw, then you missed the entire point. Watch it again.