Stereotypes Exposed In Spike Lee's Bamboozled

"You got your head stuck up your ass with your Harvard education and your pretentious ways. Brother man, I'm blacker than you. I'm keepin' it real and you're frontin', tryin’ to be white". Bamboozled, a satirical comedy-drama directed by Spike Lee in 2000, hits the ground running with symbolic and unsettling depictions of stigmatization, oppression, and challenges to the identity of African-Americans in America’s entertainment industry. Juxtaposed with the analyses of Anna Stubblefield in her 2005 book Ethics Along the Color Line, it becomes clear that blacks are not only exploited and typecast into select roles, but also co-opted into worsening the oppression and stigmas in the media. Although Bamboozled is reaching its 17th year anniversary,

Spike Lee's work is still relevant to the problems present in today's industry. Not only does the main character of the film, Pierre Delacroix, represent many aspects of racial oppression throughout the movie, but he serves as a symbol that little has changed in the way blacks are treated compared to the days of minstrel shows.
Ultimately, Pierre Delacroix transitions from the protagonist who writes television programs that better represent middle-class black families in America, to paradoxically becoming the antagonist who defends the appalling racial stereotypes in his show "Mantan - The New Millennium Minstrel".

The catalyst to his fall is his biased white boss, Mr. Dunwitty, the Senior V.P. of entertainment at the CNS network. Delacroix is the only African-American writer in the CNS staff, and is frequently discriminated against by Dunwitty as evidenced in the early dialog: "I understand Black culture. I grew up around black people all my life. If the truth be told I probably know ‘niggers’ better than you, Monsieur Delacroix. Please don't get offended by my use of the quote-unquote N word. I got a black wife and three bi-racial children, so I feel I have a right to use that word". In response to Dunwitty's derogatory statements, disrespect, and lack of consideration towards his ideas, Delacroix decides to create an appallingly racist show that Dunwitty would not be brave enough to air on TV, and thus result in the termination of Delacroix's

contract.
In essence, Dunwitty's remarks to Delacroix about pretending to be a white man as well as his opinion that he fits in better with the black culture because of his wife and children serves no purpose but to ridicule Delacroix for not fitting the stereotype. Additionally, there exists an underlying implication that Dunwitty believes he is superior to Delacroix, both as a professional white man and everyday black man. Stubblefield clarifies the dynamics in this interaction with the analysis that "belonging to a social group means occupying a social location,... in which you [will] experience particular expectations from others and yourself. The expectation puts pressure on you, and it means you will be judged by how much or how little you conform to [the social norms]" (113-114). In this case, Delacroix is expected to conform to Dunwitty's definition of how black man behaves, and to write shows which align with the majority's vision of black lives and identity instead Delacroix's perspective on the lives of middle-class black Americans.
Comparatively, Spike Lee discusses dealing with similar problems amongst Hollywood executives in the director's commentary of the film.

While Spike Lee and Delacroix's position is shared amongst many in other professions, the issue of racial identity is vastly more complex within the entertainment industry, and beyond what Stubblefield covers within a couple of paragraphs. A black individual working in entertainment must not only deal with the expectations of how a famous person should act, but also navigate the expectations of being a representative of black culture, what different demographics want the black individual to represent, what executives want the individual to represent, and the long-term consequences their roles will have on society. Furthermore, they receive public judgment through social media platforms on how well they conform to the expectations. Additionally, there still exists a catch-22 where a famous black individual will be stigmatized in the media because writers and executives either use subtle or blatant stereotypes for entertainment purposes. This, in turn, leads to stereotypes being further reinforced on both individuals and the overall

culture.
Altogether, it is evident in the movie, as in real life, that there exists a pervasive need for society to either attack, control, or manipulate racial identity and black culture in the media. This control of how blacks are perceived is done through stigmatization, which is perhaps the strongest theme of the movie. Delacroix's creation of "Mantan - The New Millennium Minstrel" was meant to not only get him fired, but as he explains to his assistant Sloan, to prove that "networks don't want black people on television unless they are buffoons". His show features black performers who additionally don blackface with red lipstick all while acting out racist skits involving songs about "crack babies born out of wedlock”, “basketball-dunking, football-running, hop-hip rapping ebonic-speaking sex offenders", or enacting the scenes in a cotton field or watermelon patch. The scenes are rude, shocking, and uncomfortable to watch, yet, the show becomes a smashing success for the network. As the movie progresses, Delacroix stops selling the show as a rebellion against the oppression at CNS, to instead defending his work as a nothing more than satire.
Consequently, the success of the show spirals out of control from the first showing where white members of the audience were hesitant to react until the black audience did, to white audiences showing up in blackface makeup and calling themselves niggers. It would be a mistake to state that the show is simply a satirical comedy, or that the audience members wearing blackface are harmless super fans who will have no effect on the present stigmas. On the contrary, Stubblefield notes that "the Greeks originated the term stigma to refer to bodily signs cut or burnt into the body to mark something unusual or negative about the moral status of the signifier" (124-125). Delacroix's decision to defend the racist content of "Mantan - The Millennial Minstrel" did not support "racial healing", but metaphorically marked black culture as being an acceptable topic to mock and exploit for advertising dollars. Additionally, Stubblefield points out "to stigmatize a person or an attribute is to disvalue it. When a white person stigmatizes black identity, he takes white identity as the normal and black identity to be abnormal" (125).
Notably, Delacroix's "Mantan - The New Millennium Minstrel" is not just a reminder of the stigmatization blacks faced in the 1800's because of minstrel shows, but also a reflection that black culture is still misrepresented, exploited, and stigmatized in the same manner today. Dunwitty throws away Delacroix’s scripts on middle-class black Americans declaring he wants a show depicting crackheads, or pre-Civil War follies. Translating to modern media, the scene exposes the typecast of blacks to be the comedic relief, the intimidating man, a sidekick, rapper, gangsta, or just a character to be killed off. Although there does not seem to be any initial harm from these roles, over time blacks are filtered into these stereotypical characters by everyday society; written off as just another gangsta, a goofy friend, or sidekick. Likewise, the minstrel shows of the 1800's exploited blacks for entertainment by portraying them as lazy, stupid, and goofy over 200 years ago, a stereotype that became so deeply ingrained it still exists in society today.