That shy devil of a film director — Spike Lee — has done it again. Got us all talking about a film that none of us has seen, but that many of us have formed an opinion on before screening. Lee, like few other film directors, believes that while certain cinema may be for entertainment, it also has the potential, if not responsibility, to inform, question, enlighten, and examine any and all aspects of society. Spike Lee has chosen to use film and video as a window to look into our inner working as a society and as a mirror, which reflects the naked, unflattering truths about our society.
From his very first film, Joe's Bed-Sty Barbershop — We Cut Heads, to She's Gotta Have It to Do the Right Thing and all the others, Lee has said, "This is America, come inside and take a good look." His films have been the epitome of equal opportunity offenders. That is to say men and women, blacks and whites, Asians and Latinos, Jews, Arabs and gentiles, and everyone in between has found something in a Spike Lee film with which they took umbrage.
So now comes Bamboozled, and in the mirror is America's long-running on-screen distortion of the image of African Americans. This distorted image, embodied in the entertainment industry idea of blacks as "Sambo," has a long-standing history in America. The Sambo image is the Americanized version of the European jester, except the Sambo role has been assigned exclusively to African Americans. From the earliest minstrel shows, where-in whites put on blackface and spoke in what was assumed to be a black dialect, to the Amos and Andy radio and television shows, to Bert Williams and Stepin' Fetchit, to some of the comedy of In Living Color, the Sambo image of a bumbling, illiterate, shiftless, scheming, womanizing black man to laugh at has prevailed.
Walter Lippmann has said, "a stereotype my be so consistently and authoritatively transmitted in each generation from parent to child that it seems almost a biological fact." And it is this assumed "fact" that Lee addressed in Bamboozled. He questions those whites that perpetuate this false image and those blacks who willingly participate in this process. While this false image has been transmitted through other media — postcards, advertisements, figurines and dolls — Lee recognizes and uses the power of film in raising the level of consciousness about an issue of importance.
Some who will view this film will see it as simply funny. Some will see it as a slap in the face of African Americans. And some will see it as a vehicle for encouraging and developing understanding by all of us of who we are.
When Vincent Van Gogh created distorted images with paint, they were clearly understood to be the products of a diseased mind. Lee, and others, now ask us what are we to make of the minds that perpetuate and produce the distorted negative images of African Americans, which amuse us so.
Where better to search for answers to these questions than in a community of those who pursue knowledge and truth?
This film, like few others, requires an open mind and the willingness to challenge Lee or to challenge the reality on which he aims his lens. Either way, it can be an eye-opening experience.
