Bamboozling Questions

Spike Lee’s Bamboozled is a satire that raises a ton of questions about how we view race, and how race is portrayed in the media. It tells the story of Pierre Delacroix, a highly educated black man who works for a large media network tasked with attracting a higher number of minority viewers. Delacroix hates his job, but the only way that he can get out of his contract is by being fired, so he decides to pitch a concept so racist and ridiculous that the network will have no choice but to release him. He comes up with a pitch for a modern day minstrel show called Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show. Although the plot of the created show was undeniably racist, with offensive jokes and puns, ridiculous stereotypes, and a cast in blackface, it was still embraced by Delacroix’s crazy white boss Dunwitty. The show becomes a huge success on television, but it isn’t long before everything gets out of hand.

While the plot of the film, especially the characteristics of the modern minstrel show, may seem a bit unrealistic from a 21st century perspective, the movie harkens back to a much different period in the history of our country’s entertainment industry. Not only do Delacroix and co. create show that adheres to trademark features of old minstrel shows, but Bamboozled is filled with references to specific shows, minstrel performers, and even historic black television shows such as Amos and Andy. In this way the movie helps establish a strong link to the past, but the main power of this film draws from its ability to raise a number of questions about how we think of race in the present.

One question that frequently surfaces is that of what it means to be black (or any race for that matter). This can be seen with Delacroix’s struggle to identify himself, especially when dealing with his boss. Dunwitty claims to be “blacker” than Delacroix even though he is white, all because he talks in slang, pretends to love black culture, and has memorabilia of famous African-Americans all over his office. He goes so far as to tell Delacroix that it is alright for him to say the word “nigga” because his wife is black. How do we as a culture define race? What are the consequences of labeling a person who is ethnically white as black, or vice versa?

Other questions about race are raised throughout the film, even by more auxiliary characters. For example, Julius, the older brother of Delacroix’s aassistant Sloan, changes his name to “Big Blak Afrika” as a response to a feeling of oppression and the lack of freedom that he feels in the current social and political system that he is a part of. Also, Mantay and Womack, the two main performers in the minstrel show, have to decide whether or not to continue acting in the show, weighing money and fame versus the integrity of their racial identity. In the end, Julius’ rap group the Mau Maus takes matters into their own hands to end The New Millenium Minstrel Show. That bears the question; whose responsibility is it to police racial prejudice? And what steps must we all take to combat racism and harmful stereotypes?

Bamboozled is a powerful film that forces the viewers to reassess a number of issues regarding race and segregation. In harkening to a dark past, the movie raises a number of questions about the power of racial representation in the media. But beyond that, it targets issues of race that are inherent in nearly all aspects of life, and leaves us wondering; when is something racist? What causes and helps perpetuate racial discrimination? At one point in the film Dunwitty praises the stereotypes on Mantan, and defends them to Delacroix “the show can’t be racist,” he says, “because you’re black.” How did our society get to the point where this would be considered a perfectly legitimate statement?

The Power of Film

Take a moment to watch this video clip, part of the Omaha Beach landing in the movie Saving Private Ryan. The scene depicted is very, very violent, and watching it will likely conjure up a whole range of emotions. Feelings of shock, sadness, disgust, angst or any dozens of others will likely be triggered by the pain and death facing thousands of young soldiers as they stormed the coast of France, prepared to die for their country.

As gripping as the scene is, the fact that you are feeling an emotional attachment to video such as this one is due to a phenomena outlined by Walter Benjamin in "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". He says that creating a film "presents a process in which it is impossible to assign to a spectator a viewpoint which would exclude from the actual scene such extraneous accessories as camera equipment, lighting machinery, staff assistants, etc." (page 233), which he says, in contrast to theater and other mediums, gives the film an "illusionary nature". In other words, part of the reason we feel involved with the content of a movie, in contrast with that of a play, is because when viewing it we have no evidence of the steps taken to render the scene, and there is nothing to demonstrate that it is a documentation of something other than reality. Let's look back at the scene from Saving Private Ryan: whenever someone is shot, or loses a limb and body parts and blood fly everywhere, as viewers our instinct is to feel sick, upset, or shocked - in other words to treat the situation as if we were watching real explosions, real blood, and real people dying. Of course, nobody is actually being harmed, but because of film and cutting techniques, there is no visual evidence that the scene depicted is anything but reality,  and as a result, we become immersed in the images we see.

Another effect that Benjamin touches upon is the power that films generate from utilizing the close-up. He says, "by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring commonplace miliens under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action" (page 236). The concepts behind this quote apply perfectly to Saving Private Ryan, as the opening scene uses the close-up in many respects. For example, it is instantly worth noting that the director chose to focus specifically on one unit in the battle of D-Day, rather than merely give an overhead view of the entire battlefield or even jump across different parts of the shore. In addition, he zooms in to faces or battle wounds to convey emotions of fear, pain, and stress.

It is the result of these techniques that make it easy to suspend disbelieve when watching a movie, which makes it easier to become involved with and therefore more likely to be engaged. In a fitting conclusion, Benjamin says, "The film with its shock effect meets the mode of reception halfway. The film makes the cult value recede into the background not only by putting the public in the position of the critic, but also by the fact that at the movies this position requires no attention" (pages 240 - 241)

Meyrowitz in Europe: Hot or Cold?

During the introduction to Joshua Meyrowitz's book "No Sense of Place", the author describes the scenario that faced him upon returning from a trip backpacking across Europe. His international journey had inevitably left him with dozens of interesting stories, but he faced a situation with which I'm sure you all are familiar with - he found himself subconsciously telling different stories to different people. Meyrowitz explains, "I did not give everyone I spoke to exactly the same account of my trip. My parents heard about the safe and clean hotels in which I stayed... (while) in contrast, my friends heard an account filled with danger, adventure, and a little romance" (Meyrowitz, pg. 1). He goes on that he is neither lying to his audiences, nor even stretching the truth of his trip to Europe: he is merely selecting which truths to convey to which people.

But why does Meyrowitz - or any of us for that matter - ever behave in such a way? He goes on to explain that certain activities and audiences require different behavior (on page 2 he compares sitting in church, where it is polite to be silent and passive, to eating dinner at a friends house, where it is not). This is pretty straightforward and logical, but something that often slips through our strains of consciousness nonetheless.

Throughout the rest of the introduction, Meyrowitz introduces other famous media theorists, among them Marschall McLuhan. He says "McLuhan describes media as extensions of the senses, and he claims that the introduction of a new medium to a culture, therefore, changes the 'sensory balance' of the people in that culture and alters their consciousness" (page 3. In other words, he is building upon his prior claim that we all alter our behavior for different audiences by saying that the media helps determine specifically how we judge our audience, and how our behavior changes accordingly. To further support this statement he explains how the perception of gender roles changed as a result of media events that occurred, on television and radio, during the 1960's.

But although Meyrowitz gives props to McLuhan in this reading, he regrets to note an important connection that exists between the idea of altering behavior based on audience, and with another of McLuhan's work. In "Media Hot and Cold", Marshall McLuhan breaks down the various forms of media technology that existed at the time into two distinct categories: Hot and Cold. Hot media technology he describes as being "high definition", and "extending on single sense" (McLuhan, page 22). Going further, he helps categorize a hot medium as one that is detached and rustic, and its examples include writing, photography, and radio. In contrast, a cold medium is one that is interwoven and modern, and includes the telephone, tv, and speech.

Why are these two distinctions important, or at least relevant to Meyrowitz? We can use the medium type to determine whether or not we will alter the information that we convey. In the initial example, Meyrowitz clearly demonstrates how through speech the audience interacts directly with the audience, and therefore acts accordingly. This is also the case when talking over the telephone - the audience is known, and both parties will cater their dialogue specifically towards whom they are talking. What do both of these mediums have in come? McLuhan categorizes them as Cold.

Conversely, with Hot mediums, it becomes impossible to directly cater to a specific audience. In writing or photography or film or radio, the author or the media has no idea who will view their work. As a result, it becomes inevitable that the burden of the interpretation of the work relies almost entirely upon the audience. They ultimately craft their own meaning and emotional responses using the tools given by the author.

This is just an interesting connection that I made when re-doing the readings, it is interesting that someone as well versed as Meyrowitz in McLuhan's work failed to touch upon "Media Hot and Cold". It enables us not only to categorize the various media technologies, but also to predict how we will convey ideas across a wide range of medium.

Mass Culture

As this very blog exemplifies, the ideas behind "mass culture" and "mass society" are drastically changing during the internet age. In his essay "On/Against Mass Culture Theories", Peter Gibbian describes the traditional views of the public. He says, "Mass society was defined and described by culture critics such as Ortega and Gasset as a society in which the heedless many use the creativity of the few: his 'mass man' does not invent, but merely uses other people's inventions" (Gibbian, pg 14). In other words, the work and ideas of the famous represented the viewpoints of the many.

In explaining this theory, Gibian paraphrases the writings of theorist Frederic Jameson, who explores important ideas of media through looking at the movie Jaws. Together they essentially explain that public reaction to the shark (and therefore sharks in general), that it is something to be feared, results directly from how the three main characters in the film react to it (page 22). In this example, Gibian would argue that the three characters represent the "few" described by Ortega and Gasset. Their opinions (demonstrated through dialogue, as well as through body language and actions) influence the audience of the film. These people then go on to play a role buying scary shark posters, inspiring shark attack reports on television, and generally spreading a negative sentiment and fear of sharks. Ultimately the widespread hysteria and creation of programming such as Shark Week on Discovery Channel, all stems from the opinions of three scared, albeit fictional, men on a boat.

I, on the other hand, would be likely to argue that this idea is not essentially the case anymore, as a result of the widespread adoption of the internet. Now, when a celebrity or created personality says something, it is almost instantly evaluated and contradicted by thousands of people on the web. Through blogs or websites, ordinary people can express their thoughts and opinions in a widely accesible place, and as a result, people are more often receiving news and opinions from what would have been considered the "heedless many" by Ortega and Gasset. So as a result of the internet, a web documenting the flow of opinion and information is much more tangled and interrelated now than it would have been twenty years ago.