Bamboozled and Forgeries of Memory

Bamboozled

In Forgeries of Memory & Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film Before World War II, Cedric J. Robinson posits that white individuals and industries seized the opportunity to exploit Blacks in cinema, not simply because of the social interest in these peoples, but also because of its potential financial success. While there is a history of racially influenced films being successful for high-profile investors who were not necessarily found in the entertainment industry, Spike Lee demonstrates that the elements of African-American society that were exploited in film in the past can also be exploited in the present. In Lee's Bamboozled, he explores how Blacks and their culture have been seen as a means of making money.

While Robinson contends, "With so much invested in the Black representations by anthropologists…and hawkers.at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (and elsewhere) what was there not to like…when [Biograph] weighed in with" with its minstrel films. Robinson appears to be pointing to the fact that the attention garnered by anthropologists and pop culture -- the hawkers -- were one of the reasons that minstrel/black-face films were so popular. While Lee has intended for Bamboozled to be satirical, it appears as though he has not strayed too far from the directors, studios, and investors that sought to exploit Black culture for profit. Lee uses the weight his name carries and his position within the Black community and in the entertainment industry to create a film that is more offensive than satirical or allows him to provide social commentary.

Like Robinson's observation that "one film company after another rushed into the business of producing Black caricatures," so has Lee rushed into creating another film that aims to demonstrate how Blacks are more than "degraded Black significations." In Bamboozled, Lee creates caricatures of the images he wishes to uphold and the images he wishes to destroy. For instance, Robinson writes, "The Black elite middle class was the bane of those who subsidized Black caricatures which naturalized Jim Crow and white supremacy. Handsome, affluent, sophisticated, and educated Blacks contradicted the closed texts of racism." This statement, in particular, is a paradox of what Lee is attempting to convey. In Bamboozled, the one "educated" Black man, Pierre, is ignorant, racist, classist, and arrogant. If Lee was attempting to demonstrate the sacrifices a Black man is forced to make in order to succeed, he has failed dramatically. Pierre is the ultimate caricature of an "educated" man. From his attitude towards others to the scathing accent he has adopted.

Ultimately, Lee creates and propagates negative symbols of the Black community to his benefit. He makes a caricature of the "educated" Black man who is subservient to an ignorant white man, he attempts to comment on the destructive nature of "gangbangers" who may potentially threaten his minstrel show but fails to do so by making them out to be one of the only voices of reason in the film, and further emphasizes stereotypes of crime in the film when he turns Sloane Hopkins into a criminal who is willing to kill for retribution.