Bamboozled: The Representation Of African Americans In Film

The debates over race and representation of African Americans in films have been an extremely controversial discussion for over a century. Blacks have generally been perceived and stigmatized, throughout history, as troublemakers, incapables, intellectually etc. African Americans have for a long time been represented in American cinema in debates of white realism. With the urgency of black directors, there has been a struggle to detach the black community from the traditional, negative stereotypes attached to them.
In the film "Bamboozled" (2000), Spikes Lee, sarcastically attacks the way in which African Americans have historically been misused and misrepresented on screen. Through the film, Lee attempts both to entertain and educate his

audience about the history of African American representation. The word bamboozled indicates the state of having been defrauded or victimized. Lee is a frustrated African American man that creates a contemporary of a minstrel show to get purposely fired and expose commissioning network as a racist outfit. However, the show, featuring its black stars wearing blackface, becomes a huge hit. African Americans first started to be represented in minstrel shows in the late 1820's and on television in the early 20th century. Blackface minstrelsy was a performance style where white males imitate the songs, dances, clothing and speech order of Southern blacks using blackface makeup and exaggerated lips. America's conceptions of blackness and whiteness were shaped by these mocking caricatures.
In the film Bamboozled (2000), Lee addresses this issue of African American representation as being a discourse of white essentialism.

Through the film, Lee shows his audience that although nobody goes around in blackface anymore, it does not mean that Hollywood has abandoned or given up essentialist debates. After reading the pages assigned to the book I found text that resonated with me. In the book "Griffins" says, "consequently, the few representations of African American in classical Hollywood films were predominately under threatening and almost childish" (Benshoff and Griffin 80). This text explains that the African Americans were not taken seriously in classical Hollywood at the time. Lee uses a very symbolic image and components throughout the film in order to explain racism and misrepresentation. Another factor addressed in the film was the trenchant comments on the importance, problem and long-lasting effects of media representation. For instance, each time an unarmed black person is killed, they quickly view the person as a thug or a brute in the media. As we seen it happen recently to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, etc. We are seeing the perpetuation of old anti-black stereotypes, reconfiguring for our

time.
Spike Lee's film "Bamboozled" (2000), cinematically stages American mass entertainment's history of discrimination with humiliating minstrel stereotypes which was first brought to film by D.W.

Griffith's in "The Birth of a Nation" 1915. Blackface minstrelsy was a concerning settlement legacy that began as a tradition in the early 1800s on stage, with white actors using burnt corks to darken their skin. This allowed people to portray African-American as slaves, and or lazy. American whiteness was joined by "Birth of a Nation" 1915, with its built on stereotypes. This is precisely why minstrelsy might have the power and authority to resist racism. For example in "Birth of nation" 1915 the Ku Klux Klan riders were portrayed as white behind their masks when in reality a lot of the actors were African

Americans.
Spike Lee is an important figure in history Black filmmaking. Lee has managed to change the way Hollywood views African Americans. Lee was extremely influenced by the first great African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, important figure in Black American cinema. His film focused on black lives and their experiences. Spikes Lee refuses to present blacks within their acceptable stereotypes. I think the way Lee send out his messages in his films leaves me with a clear understanding of the normalizing of the black image. There is also equality between his film and Micheaux film. Both filmmakers were really significant because they precisely portrayed the lives of African-Americans. Micheaux was especially known for his films of the early 20th century when caricatures of African Americans abounded.
Throughout the years African Americans have struggled to prove that not all blacks should be categorized the same. Having filmmakers like Spikes Lee, Griffith and others make movies that depicted African American in a different light as well as bringing awareness to the struggle that they face throughout the history of filmmaking. Although African American has faced slavery, segregation, discrimination and more, they have successfully managed to make a career in film. To date, filmmakers are addressing black issues as they did in the past in a more controversial way to shed light on that these issues that still continue in the present.