Bamboozled: The Representation Of African Americans In Film

The debates over race and representation of African Americans in films have been an extremely controversial discussion for over a century. Blacks have generally been perceived and stigmatized, throughout history, as troublemakers, incapables, intellectually etc. African Americans have for a long time been represented in American cinema in debates of white realism. With the urgency of black directors, there has been a struggle to detach the black community from the traditional, negative stereotypes attached to them. In the film "Bamboozled" (2000), Spikes Lee, sarcastically attacks the way in which African Americans have historically been misused and misrepresented on screen. Through the film, Lee attempts both to entertain and educate his

Through the film, Lee shows his audience that although nobody goes around in blackface anymore, it does not mean that Hollywood has abandoned or given up essentialist debates. After reading the pages assigned to the book I found text that resonated with me. In the book "Griffins" says, "consequently, the few representations of African American in classical Hollywood films were predominately under threatening and almost childish" (Benshoff and Griffin 80). This text explains that the African Americans were not taken seriously in classical Hollywood at the time. Lee uses a very symbolic image and components throughout the film in order to explain racism and misrepresentation. Another factor addressed in the film was the trenchant comments on the importance, problem and long-lasting effects of media representation. For instance, each time an unarmed black person is killed, they quickly view the person as a thug or a brute in the media. As we seen it happen recently to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, etc. We are seeing the perpetuation of old anti-black stereotypes, reconfiguring for our

Griffith's in "The Birth of a Nation" 1915. Blackface minstrelsy was a concerning settlement legacy that began as a tradition in the early 1800s on stage, with white actors using burnt corks to darken their skin. This allowed people to portray African-American as slaves, and or lazy. American whiteness was joined by "Birth of a Nation" 1915, with its built on stereotypes. This is precisely why minstrelsy might have the power and authority to resist racism. For example in "Birth of nation" 1915 the Ku Klux Klan riders were portrayed as white behind their masks when in reality a lot of the actors were African