When the fictional Mantan New Millennium Minstrel Show becomes a nationwide phenomenon with its mocking blackface in Spike Lee's Bamboozled, the satire of Lee's difficult film becomes sharply uncomfortable: Is it because such an idea is so outrageous, or because it's not so foreign?
When Lee came to talk on campus this past Monday about Bamboozled, he emphasized the "destructive force of misrepresentation [through] negative images" that have been used from the very birth of modern media to debase racial groups into what he deemed "subhuman" constructs. The state of racialization in today's entertainment culture still feeds on such ethnic exploitation, and the result is that while challenging films such as Bamboozled attempt to engage the culture in serious racial discourse, they are virtually ignored. Instead, moviegoers opt to pay for flicks like Double Take and laugh when a mock ghetto wino snarls for some "Schlitz malt licka!" The spirit of Buckwheat is alive and well in the new millenium.
Much of Bamboozled deals with network television programming for minority demographics. Ethnic groups on television have been relegated to what Lee calls the "ghetto of the sitcom," confined mostly in the projects of UPN and the WB. There, shows like The Wayans Brothers and Homeboys From Outer Space are fueled primarily by comedy milked from ethnic stereotypes. When controversy raged a few seasons ago over the utter lack of minority representation on network primetime television, the debates somehow missed the point. Though the lack of racial characters was a serious issue, the more fundamental problem was the type of roles existing characters were given. Just decades ago, television featured the surprisingly sharp social commentary of All in the Family and the relatively deracialized presentation of black suburban life in The Cosby Show, but those lines of discourse never developed. Today, race in TV Land is still exploited by "cooning" for the audience.
While television may be expected to pander to the lowest common denominator, racial constructions in film are also troubling. Consider some of the more famous black comedians and their recent showcases. Martin Lawrence is known for crazy antics in various roles such as an unctuous black con man disguised as a cop (Blue Streak) and an unctuous black cop disguised as a fat lady (Big Momma's House). Chris Tucker plays all Will Smith has charmed the nation as a wisecracking, alien-fighting sidekick to both a square old white dude (Men In Black) and a nebbishy Jewish guy (Independence Day) and he uses his mystical powers to help out a struggling white golfer (The Legend of Bagger
Lee has a right to be frustrated at the recent dominance of the "mystical black man" in film. The magical "Supernegro," as he calls this type of character, exists only to help the white man. Such odd hybrids of Sambo and voodoo witch doctor can be found in What Dreams May Come, The Family Man and the aforementioned Smith/Damon yawner that Lee dubbed "The Legend of Nigger Vance." In an alarming display of racial insensitivity and poor common sense, the Academy gave Michael Duncan Clark a Best Supporting Actor nomination for a role in The Green Mile that fully crossed the line into racial offense. And the portly black woman known as "the Oracle" in The Matrix seems an awful lot like Cleo the Jamaican Tarot Card lady who dominates those late night commercials. Such characters may all be positive forces within their movies, but the manifestation of black-man-as-mystic still makes the correlation between non-white and something not quite human. None of these roles, when seen through the lens of racial ideology, present strong independent images of black people in today's society.
There are at least a few filmic moments where race is dealt with in a more legitimate fashion. Along with Bamboozled, James Toback's quasi-improvisational Black and White looked at the construction of racial identity through hip-hop in youth culture.
However, the reaction to both of these arguably flawed films was not very positive. Nineteen ninety-nine's The Hurricane brought Denzel Washington an Oscar nomination, but the film's message was lost behind Denzel's celebrity presence and complaints of historical inaccuracy. Surprisingly, one of last year's most potent race plots was found amidst the coal of a teen cheerleading comedy, Bring It On, which managed to present conflicts caused by racial segregation and economic disadvantage with maturity and poise.
Television also has its glimmers of hope. Outside the sitcom ghetto, black characters are allowed to develop free of stereotyping, like Andre Braugher on Homicide or Eriq La Salle's Dr. Benton on ER. Tangi Miller's role on Felicity has developed a complex racial identity as a black coed under extreme pressure to succeed. Another rich source still under development is HBO, where several original movies like Dancing In September have directly confronted racial issues.
Unfortunately, these are mere exceptions to the majority of pop culture. The deeper parts of the racial discourse stream are often avoided so that no controversy is caused. That is why films that are ostensibly about racial tension, like Remember the Titans and Men of Honor, are often
The state of minority programming on television and in film suggests that the fault does not lie solely with studio "gatekeepers" who, whether they be seen as slaves to the whip of capitalism or conspiratorial racists, control the flow of media product. Instead there are many complicit factors. Actors themselves can be held accountable for the characters they inhabit: As Lee noted, the select few minority celebrities like Smith are certainly not forced to accept racially suspect roles. More importantly, racist shows and films could not exist without the demographic that is repeatedly willing to consume them. Lee attributed that willingness to audiences that are "so happy to see black faces on TV [that] they will watch anything." But by consuming such products, the black audience is not only condoning but endorsing their implicit stereotyping.
But to lay blame on any one group for a problem so deeply embedded in our culture would not only miss the point, but would restrict the dialogue necessary to approach the topic. The discourse should be expanded, rather than contracted.
The construction of whiteness and non-whiteness in media is such a complex and dynamic function that it is impossible to address in one swoop. Racial exploitation is entrenched not just in film and television, but also in advertising, news media and hip-hop albums and videos. More importantly, it extends beyond black people to all non-white minority groups whose representations in the media are prone to caricature or tokenism.
Even my very point of view on this subject is open to criticism: As a middle-class white male, my own personal perspective is suspect when it comes to interpreting cultural manifestations of race. But the point of this discussion-and one of Lee's main intentions behind Bamboozled and all his work-is to interrupt the ideological process of racial construction in TV, film and other media, and bring that construction into cultural consciousness. Hollywood can do better for black people; Hollywood can do better for all people. And until it does, it needs to be taken on.
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