‘Bamboozled’

By Andy McMurray

Spike Lee’s 2000 film with Savion Glover and Damon Wayans, about blacks in the entertainment industry and the stereotypes that surround them, is poignant and disturbing. After having a “Cosby Show”-type series about a black family rejected, writer Pierre Delacroix (Wayans) proposes a revitalization of minstrel shows. Instead of white actors in “black face” the show features black actors in “black face.” This film is disturbing to say the least and more so to white Americans. Eventually Mantan (Glover), the star of the revised minstrel show, comes to realization of what his new found popularity says about race relations in America. At the close of the film is a montage of images of black Americans in entertainment that run chills up the spine. The film’s statement is left reverberating long after the credits roll.