The Conical Glass: Summer of Spike: "Bamboozled"

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Summer of Spike: "Bamboozled"

#2 in a 17-part series

Like most people, I missed Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" during its brief theatrical run in 2000, but I was interested in seeing it because it was a true Passion Project -- a blatantly uncommercial film about the portrayal of African-Americans in the media, a story Lee believed needed to be told.

Comedian Damon Wayans ("My Wife and Kids," "In Living Color") stars as Harvard-educated TV writer Pierre Delacroix, and his overly mannered performance is instantly offputting -- it's like he's channeling Eddie Murphy playing "Mr. White" in that old "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The film begins with Delacroix reading the dictionary definition of "satire." Very subtle, Spike!

Delacroix's boss at the network, Thomas Dunwitty (Michael Rapaport), is a white guy whose office is filled with African art and giant portraits of black sports stars. "I have a black wife and two biracial kids. Brother man, I'm blacker than you," he tells Pierre. When Delacroix proposes a new TV show starring two homeless street performers (Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson) he passes every day on the way to work, Dunwitty loves the idea, despite the outrageous premise -- the men will be rechristened Mantan and Sleep 'n Eat, and their "New Millennium Minstrel Show" will be set in a watermelon patch on an Alabama plantation. All of the performers on the show will be African-American, and they must all wear blackface.

At the first taping, the audience is confused and disgusted, but the program soon becomes a hit. (I suspect a lot of the comedy routines shown in the film were taken directly from old vaudeville sketches.) It's controversial -- Al Sharpton and Johnnie Cochran picket the network headquarters. Despite his success, Pierre seems to be slowly going mad, surrounding himself with Mammy and pickaninny dolls and images of blacks with huge red lips.

A subplot in the film features Pierre's assistant, Sloan (Jada Pinkett-Smith), whose brother is a gangsta rapper named Big Blak Afrika; no "c"s, because "they don't even pronounce that shit!" Lee is obviously trying to show the parallels between gold-chain-wearing rappers -- many of whom appeal to an audience consisting primarily of suburban white teenagers -- and the minstrel show performers of old. A couple of fake commercials, one for malt liquor and one for oversized streetwear, are pointed and funny, obviously benefiting from Lee's years of experience shooting TV commercials.

With a two hour and 15 minute running time, "Bamboozled" is at least half an hour too long, and Lee seems to take the easy way out for the ending. In my opinion, a better take on the same themes is 2004's "CSA (Confederate States of America)," a faux documentary that imagines a United States where the North lost the Civil War and slavery became the law of the land. "CSA" also features fake TV ads and forces viewers to confront racist images -- both films depict Abraham Lincoln in blackface -- but it's not as over-the-top and obvious as "Bamboozled."

The making-of documentary on the DVD reveals that because of the low budget, Lee shot his film on digital video using home movie-quality cameras, and even on TV, it looks pretty crummy. It's by far the least interesting looking Spike Lee movie I've seen to date.

My rating: ** (out of 4)

Spikiest Moments: Spike gets self-referential! A brief clip from his "Malcolm X" is shown (the film's title is taken from a Malcolm X quote: "You've been hoodwinked. You've been had. You've been took. You've been led astray, led amok. You've been bamboozled"), and early in the movie, Dunwitty tells Delacroix, "I don’t give a goddamn what that prick Spike Lee says, Tarantino was right: Nigger is just a word."

Double Dolly Effect: Wayans, in the first two minutes of the movie. It made me think of how Alfred Hitchcock started putting his cameo appearances early in his films, so that viewers wouldn't be distracted because they were trying to spot him.

posted by 125records @ 9:46 AM

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