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Shot on digital video (by cinematographer Ellen Kuras) and taking it’s title from a Malcolm X speech (“You’ve been led astray, led amok, you’ve been bamboozled”), Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” is an ambitious and contentious satire, a dazzling balancing act that at times strains under it’s own ingenuity but never fails to provoke and challenge. Damon Wayans stars as a successful and affected television executive, Pierre Delacroix, who is pressured by his wannabe home-boy boss (Michael Rapaport) to create a hit series tailored for African Americans. Frustrated by the implicit racism that dominates the entertainment industry, Delacroix comes up with a show that he feels white America really wants to see, a minstrel show called ‘Mantan - The New Millennium Minstrel Show’. His offensive joke backfires however when ‘Mantan’ becomes a runaway success. Lee takes firm pot shots at various institutions, interspersing the film with racially coded advertising and racist images from America’s shameful filmic past (including much loved American classics, “Birth of a nation” and “Gone with the wind”). Not surprising then that Lee dedicates the film to Budd Schulberg, the writer of Eliza Kazan’s 1957 media satire, “A face in the crowd”. Cast includes Jada Pinkett-Smith, Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson.
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
315924
Languages
English
English
English
Audience classification
M (15+)
Subject categories
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Advertising
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Mass media
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Motion picture trailers
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Television
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → Television advertising
Advertising, Film, Journalism, Mass Media & TV → West (U.S.) in mass media
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → African Americans
Crime, Espionage, Justice, Police & Prisons → Kidnapping
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Advertising
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → African Americans
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Race discrimination
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Racism
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → United States - Race relations
Feature films → Feature films - United States
Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Stereotype (Psychology)
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
DVD; Access Print (Section 1)