Bamboozled Movie Analysis

“Bamboozled” response paper by G.Szner “Bamboozled” written and directed by Spike Lee is an outstanding movie describing a problem of racial injustice in the United States. I can say so because while watching it, I felt constantly anxious and interested about what was going on screen. All of the characters in “Bamboozled” were amazingly grotesque, and that was why I had to be more cautious to grasp the essence of the picture. The protagonist of the movie, Pierre Delacroix (whose real name is Peerless Dothan), is a well-educated and intelligent African American working for a television company as a screenwriter. Even though he is somehow successful, he’s also dissatisfied with his job, or rather – his employer. Dunwitty, a white senseless
man, who happens to be Delacroix’s boss, admires his subordinate’s intelligence, but still rejects every of his script for TV shows as they present blacks in a positive manner. I find Dunwitty an odd and controversial character as he talks like a black urban male and overuses a word “nigger”, claiming it is not offensive in any way, moreover he claims to be more black than Delacroix himself, since he’s married to a black woman and have two mixed race children. With Delacroix’s dissatisfaction grows also his desire to create a politically wrong TV show pointing at racial injustice, which is also supposed to result in firing its author so his contract wouldn’t be violated by himself (which would have taken place in case he quits his job).
As he decides, he initiates his plan with help of his co-worker, Sloan Hopkins. The plan was to create “Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show”, in which two African Americans were to perform racist jokes in blackface. I think it was both risky and courageous of Pierre to execute such a plan. It was also ruthless and smart of him to outwit his supervisor. Later on, as we continue to watch the film, we can see that Delacroix succeed in putting his show on air, but surprisingly… not only his racially confused boss Dunwitty, but also entire audience are delighted with the show. Either the male or the female, the white or the black, the young or the old – all of them were extraordinarily charmed. In my opinion, with this picture Spike Lee presented the condition of contemporary human being as corrupted, polluted. We can observe as many TV shows as never before, and still – the numbers of the phenomenon grows increasingly alarming. In fact, what’s the most alarming is that people are not aware of value of art as we are overwhelmed with colorful TV commercials and mind-numbing TV programmes, which were supposed to make us, the people,
relaxed. In the meantime, an underground rap group led by Julius, Sloan’s brother, becomes enraged at the content of Delacroix’s show as it is disturbingly offensive towards African Americans. With the development of the action, they decide to take revenge on the “black folk” performing on stage as Mantan. They succeed and eventually kill him for betraying his own race. I wouldn’t say the killing was a step put too far by Spike Lee. Probably if there wouldn’t have been sacrifice in the movie, it wouldn’t have been as good as it is. In my opinion, Mantan as a victim was to prove that carelessness and hence stupidity, may result in tragedy.