Stereotypes Exposed In Spike Lee's Bamboozled

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"You got your head stuck up your ass with your Harvard education and your pretentious ways. Brother man, I'm blacker than you. I'm keepin' it real and you're frontin', tryin’ to be white". Bamboozled, a satirical comedy-drama directed by Spike Lee in 2000, hits the ground running with symbolic and unsettling depictions of stigmatization, oppression, and challenges to the identity of African-Americans in America’s entertainment industry. Juxtaposed with the analyses of Anna Stubblefield in her 2005 book Ethics Along the Color Line, it becomes clear that blacks are not only exploited and typecast into select roles, but also co-opted into worsening the oppression and stigmas in the media. Although Bamboozled is reaching its 17th year anniversary, …show more content…

The catalyst to his fall is his biased white boss, Mr. Dunwitty, the Senior V.P. of entertainment at the CNS network. Delacroix is the only African-American writer in the CNS staff, and is frequently discriminated against by Dunwitty as evidenced in the early dialog: "I understand Black culture. I grew up around black people all my life. If the truth be told I probably know ‘niggers’ better than you, Monsieur Delacroix. Please don't get offended by my use of the quote-unquote N word. I got a black wife and three bi-racial children, so I feel I have a right to use that word". In response to Dunwitty's derogatory statements, disrespect, and lack of consideration towards his ideas, Delacroix decides to create an appallingly racist show that Dunwitty would not be brave enough to air on TV, and thus result in the termination of Delacroix's …show more content…

While Spike Lee and Delacroix's position is shared amongst many in other professions, the issue of racial identity is vastly more complex within the entertainment industry, and beyond what Stubblefield covers within a couple of paragraphs. A black individual working in entertainment must not only deal with the expectations of how a famous person should act, but also navigate the expectations of being a representative of black culture, what different demographics want the black individual to represent, what executives want the individual to represent, and the long-term consequences their roles will have on society. Furthermore, they receive public judgment through social media platforms on how well they conform to the expectations. Additionally, there still exists a catch-22 where a famous black individual will be stigmatized in the media because writers and executives either use subtle or blatant stereotypes for entertainment purposes. This, in turn, leads to stereotypes being further reinforced on both individuals and the overall

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