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“Black is Blak”: Bamboozled and theCrisis of a Postmodern Racial IdentityPhil Chidester a , Shannon Campbell b & Jamel Bell ca School of Communication, Illinois State University ,b School of Journalism, University of Southern California , LosAngeles, California, USAc Media Studies , Boston College , Boston, Massachusetts, USAPublished online: 23 Feb 2007.

To cite this article: Phil Chidester , Shannon Campbell & Jamel Bell (2006) “Black is Blak”:Bamboozled and the Crisis of a Postmodern Racial Identity, Howard Journal of Communications, 17:4,287-306, DOI: 10.1080/10646170600966592

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10646170600966592

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‘‘Black is Blak’’: Bamboozled and the Crisisof a Postmodern Racial Identity

PHIL CHIDESTERSchool of Communication, Illinois State University

SHANNON CAMPBELLSchool of Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA

JAMEL BELLMedia Studies, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

The authors contend that, although ostensibly supportive of andopen to previously marginalized points of view, the postmodernage has effectively challenged the stability of all racial identities,and of African American identities in particular. Spike Lee’sBamboozled, as a decidedly postmodern document, serves asa useful lens through which to examine the process of identitybuilding and reinforcement in contemporary times. By focusingon the primacy of the authentic self, by reinforcing the centralityof the image in contemporary thought, and by engaging a self-reflexive critique of its own message on race, Bamboozled bothreflects and speaks to the ongoing struggle to forge and maintaina strong sense of racial self in a postmodern America.

KEYTERMS authenticity, bamboozled, identity, postmodern,race, spike lee

‘‘LIVING IS EASY WITH EYES CLOSED.’’ LENNON/MCCARTNEY,STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER

It is nearly two hours into Spike Lee’s Bamboozled—arguably the director’smost provocative and challenging film to date—before Manray, the maincharacter, finally reaches a firm conclusion about ‘‘Mantan’s New Millennium

Address correspondence to Dr. Shannon Campbell, School of Journalism, University ofSouthern California, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-0281. E-mail: sbcampbe@usc.edu

The Howard Journal of Communications, 17:287�306, 2006Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1064-6175 print/1096-4649 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10646170600966592

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Minstrel Show’’: namely, that any benefits to be derived from continuedinvolvement in Pierre Delacroix’s crude television variety-show ‘‘satire’’ onthe African American experience are clearly outweighed by the mountingdamage to his sense of racial integrity and self-worth. ‘‘I’m not playing myselfno more,’’ Manray announces bluntly just before the curtain rises on the tap-ing of yet another episode in the CNS studios.

This moment of resolve proves to be a pivotal scene in Lee’s film—apoint of no return for a man who has come to see the reflection of hisown fate in the marquee lights of Hollywood. Yet upon closer examination,Manray’s bold statement of independence proves to be as maddeningly inde-terminate as it is unerringly direct. On the one hand, the character seems tobe using his familiar street vernacular to announce that he will no longer foolhimself, that he will no longer participate in the same bamboozle that hasbrought ruin to so many of his fellow cast members. On the other, however,Manray’s declaration hints at an even deeper level of recognition. As the Min-strel Show’s feature performer, Manray has literally been ‘‘playing himself’’—presenting to a rapt television audience a mere representation of his essenceas a human being. In a sense, then, to refuse to ‘‘play oneself’’ is to make animportant statement about one’s own identity—about what it means to be ina particular time and place.

The distinction between these two senses of Manray’s announcementmay seem trivial, but the possibility of deriving such a richness of meaningfrom even the simplest of textual declarations lies at the heart of both the sig-nificance of Lee’s film and of the very processes through which identity isforged and maintained in a contemporary world. Manray’s struggle to definehimself, and the viewer’s consequent striving to determine precisely whatdefinition of self the character has constructed, reveals the clash of twomonumental forces: first, an eternal quest to understand one’s place insociety, and second, the combined efforts of educational institutions, mediaconglomerates, and corporate hierarchies to champion the merits of pluralityand diversity, of indeterminacy (Nash, 2001) over any possibility of stabledefinitions and understandings. The outcome of this on-going dialectichas been nothing short of a crisis in identity, particularly among thoseindividuals and groups who have forged a deep investment in a decidedlyracial identity—one based in historic processes of marginalization and con-struction of difference as the Other. How to maintain a secure sense of selfas African American, for example, in a contemporary era in which the veryqualities necessary for a strong racial identity—stabilizing social narratives,a sense of history, an unassailable subjectivity—are actively and persistentlydeconstructed by society at large?

Central to our argument is a conclusion that contemporary tendenciestoward expressly postmodern patterns of expression and thought, althoughostensibly supportive of and open to previously marginalized points of view,have effectively challenged the stability of all racial identities, and of African

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American identities in particular. A second grounding assumption for thiswork is that matters of individual and social identity are contested dailyacross the discursive landscape of popular culture; thus, to understand thecrisis of modern racial identity is to interrogate the day-to-day interactionbetween audiences and pop culture products, to examine contemporaryways of knowing along with the specific pop texts that both contribute toand work to resist these perceptions of being and meaning. Through suchan effort, important insights into postmodernism as a contemporary aestheticmight be achieved, and a deeper understanding might be attained as well ofthe ways in which pop culture texts emerging from that aesthetic can serve asboth statements about and powerful tools within the identity battle.

In keeping with this approach, we argue that Lee’s Bamboozled is a keydocument in the contemporary struggle of African Americans to forge andmaintain a meaningful sense of racial identity. As a decisively postmoderntext in its own right, Bamboozled clearly reflects this crisis in identity; atthe same time, as a postmodern document, it actively contributes to the veryaesthetic that challenges on a daily basis the cultural assumptions and experi-ences that are such a critical aspect of the racial self. More specifically, wecontends that Lee’s film interrogates existing notions of identity in threeways. First, Bamboozled offers a damning critique of authenticity—a critiquethat is effected through a filmic deconstruction of the familiar call in theAfrican American community to ‘‘keep it real.’’ Without any clear sense of his-tory or context, we assert, there is also no possible means of evaluating whatis real—an argument Lee clearly engages in his satirical lampooning of theexcessive efforts some African Americans engage in order to claim racialcredibility. Second, Bamboozled offers an extensive commentary on theprimacy of the image as one of the basic tenets of postmodernism. In theprocess, we argue, Lee also questions the very viability of image as a toolfor creating and fortifying one’s sense of racial self. Finally, we contend thatLee engages the postmodernist self-reflexive turn by casting doubt on hisown artistic contributions to the continued deconstruction of Black identity;in doing so, he forces his viewers to interrogate their own assumptions anddiscursive practices. In sum, Bamboozled provides a complex, ever-shiftingpicture of the meaning of identity in a contemporary America—a picture thathints at hope for a future less riddled by racial angst and confusion while atthe same time aligning its voice with what seems to be a prevailing howl ofdoom and utter, rootless despair.

At a purely superficial level, Lee’s film would seem to be a rather direct,perhaps even crude, satire on the persistent victimization of African Ameri-cans in popular culture—an observation that has been shared by a majorityof the film’s critics (Anderson, 2005; ‘‘Bamboozled,’’ 2005; Ebert, 2000; Kipp,2004; Lyons, 2000; O’Hekir, 2000). The work focuses on the struggles ofPierre Delacroix, a writer for the fictional television network CNS, to carveout a comfortable space on a creative team that is intent on recycling the

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same tired Black stereotypes that have plagued the medium since its incep-tion. Bullied by his supervisor, Mr. Dunwitty, to come up with yet anothersitcom playing on the most offensive of African American stereotypes, Dela-croix decides to submit a proposal that even CNS would find too atrocious toput on the air—a proposal so repulsive that it will get him fired from a job heno longer seems to want. The writer enlists the support of his assistant, Sloan,to recruit a pair of street performers as cast members for a program he hasdubbed ‘‘Mantan’s New Millennium Minstrel Show.’’ To Delacroix’ surprise,Dunwitty loves the proposal, and encourages his underling to ‘‘swing forthe fences’’—in other words, to push the concept of satire to its very limits.

Though the studio audience is visibly uncomfortable during the shoot-ing of the pilot, CNS executives decide to pick up the show after watchingonly a few scenes. Dunwitty calls in an all-White team of writers to contributeto the program, and Delacroix’s idea of a satire that will inevitably undermineWhite America’s stereotypical perceptions of the Black community is quicklytransformed into a veritable celebration of those offensive perceptions. Thebulk of Lee’s film is left to interrogate the ways in which each central charac-ter comes to deal with this ‘‘bamboozle’’: Delacroix’s ultimate embracing ofthe show and its promise of fame and fortune; Sloan’s persistent voice ofwarning; the attempts of Sloan’s brother, Julius, to communicate his angerin a society that privileges only those expressions given the sanction of mediaattention; and Manray’s untimely discovery of what he has lost through hisactive participation.

In the end, Bamboozled’s message is far too complex to be confinedwithin the generic expectations of satire. Lee himself alludes to this con-clusion by opening the film with voice-over definitions of both satire andirony—as if to suggest that the work is an ironic comment on itself as a satiricfilm. Critical reactions to the film only add to this perception of Bamboozledas a complicated, even contradictory media message: A common response isto call the first half of the film a ‘‘dark, biting satire’’ (Kipp, 2004) and to con-demn the second half as a farce (‘‘Bamboozled,’’ 2005), as an explosion ofideas over which Lee has precious little control (O’Hekir, 2000), as a sledge-hammer blow (Berardinelli, 2005) lacking in any sense of subtlety (Anderson,2005). Yet it is this very contrast in perception that argues for an analysis ofBamboozled as a decidedly postmodern text—a work that is purposefullyoverflowing with ideas, that intentionally refuses to make any consistentpoint or reach any single conclusion.

To suggest that Bamboozled is a postmodern document is, of course, tosay something about both the film itself and about the mode of thinking andbeing from which it arose and to which it contributes. It is, in one sense, toignore a range of other possible evaluative approaches that might themselvesyield rich insights into the rhetorical power of both Lee’s film and of contem-porary American film in general. There is much in Bamboozled, for example,that would recommend an Afrocentric approach on the part of the critic—yet

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there is also much to suggest that Lee’s message extends well beyond anattempt to center the experiences of African peoples as a valued subjectposition (Asante, 1988). Thus, to apply a critical postmodern lens toBamboozled is not to discourage or undermine other methodologicalapproaches to the film, but rather to focus our own analysis in what wesee as a promising avenue of inquiry.

To view Lee’s film as a postmodern document is also, in another sense,to acknowledge the difficulties—and dangers—of assessing a particular com-municative text within the same paradigmatic limits which shape one’s abilityto consider and evaluate. In other words, it is to risk calling an object a base-ball simply because it has been put to use by a baseball team. Any effectiveanalysis of a postmodern text conducted within a postmodernist paradigm,then, must either work to remove the object of analysis completely fromits epistemic context, or it must actively and openly acknowledge that theobject is both postmodern and postmodernism itself. This analysis will followthe latter path. No attempt will be made here to claim that exposure to a sin-gle text has influenced the identity formation and maintenance of the individ-ual audience member; rather, we will interrogate the very notion of identityin a postmodern world and use Bamboozled as a critical lens to do so. In theprocess, it is hoped that useful insights will be gained into the film itself, intothe potential meanings to be derived from the film, and into the very conceptof postmodernism itself—a concept that refuses to be affixed to any stabledefinition, and therefore can be examined only in the context of the productsthat it influences and of which it is comprised.

POSTMODERNISM: PERIOD OR ATTITUDE, PARADIGM ORPRODUCT?

Even a brief review of the literature on postmodernism is enough to confirmthat perhaps the only definitive statement to be made about the concept isthat there is nothing definitive that can be said about it. Literally dozens ofdefinitions of postmodernism have been proffered; unfortunately, thereseems to be very little in common to bind them into any single, workabledescription. A handful of theorists and scholars, for example, have attemptedto establish postmodernism as either a distinct period in history or as a reac-tion to a given period (Berger, 2003; Jencks, 1991; Lyotard, 1983; Taylor,2002). Others have contended that postmodernism is, instead, a concept orattitude (e.g., Kramer, 2002). As a pointed disavowal of Enlightenmentnotions of linear, progressive history, one might even go so far as toclaim that postmodernism is a ‘‘collapse of periodization’’ (Turim, 1991,p. 188)—a refusal of the notion that one mode of thought could everpeacefully or effectively transition into another. Rather than conceptualizingpostmodernism as a frame of time or space, then, numerous researchers

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encourage a consideration of postmodern style—a style that ’’reflectssomething of this epochal age, in a depthless, decentered, ungrounded,self-reflexive, playful, derivative, eclectic, pluralistic art which blurs theboundaries between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, as well as between artand everyday experience’’ (Eagleton, 1996, p. vii). In other words, post-modern style is a means of expression as well as a mode of thought; a patternof discourse rather than a tradition of experience (Kramer, 1997); in sum, averitable style of life (Nash, 2001).

If postmodernism is, then, a style rather than a period, it is an aestheticthat would seem to both reflect a mode of life and actively contribute toprevailing patterns of thinking and being. Still, the specific characteristicsof a postmodern aesthetic would seem to be as varied and as eclectic asthe social effects that have been attributed to the paradigm itself. Accordingto Nash (2001), postmodernism extends into language a radical skepticism ofmathematics and physics, and subsequently becomes a wholesale embracingof pluralism and indeterminacy as a means of allowing a range of alternativesto stand at once. Such attitudes are reflected in a postmodernist explosion ofexpressive forms (Turim, 1991); a schizophrenic, fractured approach toexpression (Henley, 2002); and a ‘‘messy vitality’’ that emerges froman overlapping of forms and contradictory meanings (Clendinning, 2002).Further, a contemporary mistrust of language and its ability to represent(Falck, 1994), not to mention radical advancements in technologies ofvisual representation (Lovejoy, 1989), would seem to have resulted in awholesale adoption of the image as the privileged conductor of meaning,and a subsequent deconstruction of linear narrative as a verbal process(Gibson, 1996).

Scholars of postmodern thought and being concur that these trends areanything but merely esoteric developments; at question is the very conceptof the symbol as a representation of ‘‘real’’ objects (Gibson, 1996). Unfortu-nately, the replacement of verbal symbols with visual ones in postmoderntimes has not created new levels of meaning, but rather has only generatednew and unexpected problems in communicating ideas. The postmodernistaesthetic has always privileged audience readings over artist intents;meanings emerge through the interaction between texts and consumers(Klinkowitz, 1988), a result that robs the producers of such texts of muchexpressive control. Further, because images are notoriously indeterminate,postmodern artists have been forced to seek meaning in the connectionsbetween individual representations. The product of these forces is whathas been called variously a ‘‘collage’’ (Jencks, 1991), a ‘‘pastiche’’ (Jameson,1988), and a ‘‘simulacrum’’ (Baudrillard, 1983)—entire series of imagesdivested of any representative power. In other words, images hold meaningonly between and among themselves; they no longer represent any realobjects in the world (Barthes, 1974; Baudrillard, 1983; Berger, 2003 Gaggi,1989; Gibson, 1996; Jameson, 1991; Montag, 1988).

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As might be imagined, the critical response to this wash of images hasbeen anything but positive. Jameson (1988), for one, contended that postmo-dernism is not a style of its own, but merely an imitation of style, anassemblage that has no value precisely because all standards and expecta-tions have been eliminated. All that remains is a ‘‘spectacle of superficialitywhich intends no celebration of myths, no superior meanings’’ (Polan,1988, p. 46)—a decorative surface that hides a yawning abyss of historicalnon-understanding (Norris, 1990). In the end, such a fascination with thevisual might well be the cause, rather than the product, of a postmodernmentality—a recognition that the seed of postmodernism is ‘‘the saturatedself’’ (Kramer, 2002). But the influence of such a spectacle goes far beyondthe struggle to find meaning in an image-riddled world. Postmodernism isfundamentally dualistic in nature (Berger, 2003; Foster, 1983; Hassan, 1987;Jameson, 1991; Nehring, 1997), and profoundly self-reflexive (Lyotard,1983; Mitchell, 1994; Nash, 2001). In a sense, texts aren’t postmodern; theydo postmodernism (Falck, 1994). As Bignell (2000) noted, ‘‘The postmodernis constituted while performing the postmodern’’ (p. 63). In doing so, post-modern expressions abolish any critical distance between text and audience;we as viewers and readers are inside the works we evaluate (Jameson, 1991;Nash, 2001; Rorty, 1979). Thus, to critique the postmodern is also to contrib-ute to it—a very real possibility that cannot be ignored in any attempt at acritical evaluation.

These characteristics and influences of postmodern thought—frag-mented and contradictory as they may be—will serve as vital direction andcontextual grounding for the analysis to follow.

BAMBOOZLED: A CRITICAL POSTMODERN ANALYSIS

To consider Bamboozled as a postmodern text is to assess its meaningssynchronically rather than diachronically. It is to recognize, in essence, thatpostmodern texts incorporate previous materials rather than simply indicatethem (Jameson, 1988), and that postmodern texts are themselves free-floatingsignifiers with no reference to signifieds (Natoli, 1997). It is also to acknowl-edge that postmodern themes as layers of meaning never function or signifyentirely independently. This point is certainly true of three of Bamboozled’score thematic arguments: a critique of authenticity, an interrogation of theprimacy of the image, and a self-reflexive criticism of Lee’s own participationin the deconstruction of Black identity. When Lee questions the very possi-bility of ‘‘keeping it real,’’ for example, he often uses the role of images inhis characters’ lives to make the inquiry—a process that reinforces boththe ethereal nature of racial authenticity and the contemporary fascinationwith the visual. Thus, while examining each of these threads of meaningas a separate entity, we are also careful to consider the cross-influences of

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these themes as they are woven throughout the work. In the end, what isimportant here is not to definitively establish that these meanings are presentin Lee’s film (nor, of course, to suggest that these are the only messages toemerge from the work), but to consider what their suggested presence doesas both a holistic comment on contemporary African American identity andas an active contributor to the very postmodern morass into which that ident-ity has been introduced.

A Matter of Authenticity

If there is a single motivation common to each of the remarkably varied pan-oply of characters in Bamboozled, it is the on-going effort to ‘‘keep it real’’—to be consistently true to oneself in matters of thinking, behaving, and being.Such an attempt to forge a strong sense of racial identity in a contemporaryAmerica is, of course, paradoxical at its very core; mounting pressures toconform to broader social patterns of thinking and acting run persistentlycounter to one’s desire to be true to more specific cultural mores based onrace, ethnicity, and national origin. Still, Lee seems to be aware, from thebeginning moments of the film, of the profoundly paradoxical nature of thisattempt in another sense. Even as a linguistic construction, the call to ‘‘keep itreal’’ echoes of ultimate frustration. If the mantra encourages subjects tobehave in a manner consistent with their own essences as human beings,it also suggests that doing so requires some effort—in other words, that being‘‘real’’ to oneself is, in a sense, to act contrarily to one’s natural impulses. Itwould seem, then, that to be real is also not to be real, to be somethingone is not in order to be the thing that one sees oneself to be.

Of course, in true postmodern fashion, there is another possible readingof this call—namely, an invitation to remain true to some external ideal ofbehavior and being as established by the membership of a particular collective.In his own analysis of Bamboozled, Black (2003) suggested that the core themeof Lee’s work is an interrogation of what it means to be Black in contemporaryAmerican society. Is Blackness situated in skin pigment, the critic asks? Inacting Black? Or does the distinction rest in connections to a specifically Blackheritage? Unfortunately, Lee seems to suggest in Bamboozled that a meaningfulsense of Black authenticity cannot be founded in any of these characteristics,given a postmodern morass that effectively obliterates any sense of history orvalues against which to measure oneself.

This is not to suggest that Lee’s characters do not actively engage in asearch for racial confirmation; in fact, one reading of the film would suggestthat such a search is the central theme of the work. True to form, the direc-tor’s filmic observations in this regard are remarkably complex and multi-layered. At a more superficial level of meaning are Lee’s ‘‘sledgehammer’’observations on White people’s attempts to claim a measure of Black authen-ticity by surrounding themselves with the trappings of Black culture and

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experience. Myrna Goldfarb, an academic ‘‘expert’’ on the African Americanexperience who serves as a consultant on the show, is viciously lampoonedfor claiming an insider’s knowledge of Blackness as a Jewish woman.Likewise, Dunwitty is never more crudely drawn in Bamboozled than inthe scene in which he demands the right to use the ‘‘N word’’ simply becausehe has a Black wife and two bi-racial kids. Still, Lee would seem to be nomore sympathetic to his many Black characters in their use of the term laterin the film. The director simply refuses to claim, as many have done, thatAfrican Americans can make ‘‘authentic’’ use of the term as a symbolic rever-sal of its original instantiation as perhaps the most vitriolic racial epithet inAmerican history. Instead, by indiscriminately inserting the word into the dia-logue that arises between and among many of his Black characters, includingSloan, Delacroix, Big Blak Africa, Manray, and even a number of the MinstrelShow’s extras, Lee would seem to suggest that the term continues to carry amodicum of hierarchal power, even within the African American community.Yet by the time Honeycutt convinces his blackfaced White audience mem-bers toward the end of the film to gleefully acknowledge that they, too,are ‘‘niggers,’’ the larger point has been made abundantly clear: self-labelingas an expression of power is no more a meaningful claim to authenticity thanis an attempt to immerse oneself in the culture and behaviors of the Other,particularly when the symbols involved have been shorn of their historicalfoundations by cultural insiders and outsiders alike. For Lee, it would seem,a sense of black authenticity simply cannot be achieved through the experi-ence of black heritage and culture alone.

Yet Bamboozled is, at least ostensibly, a postmodern document—and Leewould also seem to argue that, in an era when social and cultural expressionshave been cleanly detached from their historic roots, the trappings of Blackheritage are no more helpful in confirming a black identity for AfricanAmericans than they are in authenticating a Black experience for non-blackAmericans. At one point in the film, Sloan gives Delacroix an antique ‘‘jollynigger bank’’ as a reminder of a time when African Americans were treatedas inferior, as subhuman. Unfortunately, the television executive clearly doesnot accord the same meaning to the object as does Sloan. Soon Delacroix’soffice is filled with these Black collectibles, objects that have been reducedby him to pieces of decorative art, to mere images shorn of any historical sig-nificance. Manray likewise seems to accord no cultural or historic significanceto even the most patently offensive of images. He decorates his own high-riseManhattan apartment with cardboard cutouts of characters from the MinstrelShow, and responds to Delacroix’s gift of tap shoes once worn by Mr. Bill‘‘Bojangles’’ Robinson by noticing what a nice sound the taps make.

Lee clearly affixes at least part of the blame for this lack of historicgrounding to the indifference of contemporary African American youth.Manray in particular is subjected to scorn in this regard: He shrugs offSloan’s surprise at his lack of knowledge about the heritage of blackface

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performance by claiming that reading ‘‘hurts my head,’’ and has no idea whathis partner is referring to when he announces that he is leaving the showbecause ‘‘I’m not going to drink the Kool-Aid.’’ Yet a contemporary mediasociety that refuses to keep young audiences connected to any sort of histori-cal or cultural foundations is also brought under active scrutiny in the film.When a radio show host calls him to task for perpetuating tired stereotypeswith his Minstrel Show, Delacroix points out that slavery has been overfor 400 years, and that African Americans need to ‘‘move on.’’ And whenManray’s partner points out that it is hardly a ‘‘new millennium’’ at CNS, that‘‘It’s the same bullshit—just done over,’’ Manray’s patent inability to under-stand his friend’s concern is telling. In an age when images and ideas areconsistently presented as new, any sense of grounding in history or traditionis all but lost, and with it any ability to establish a substantial sense ofauthenticity, racial or otherwise.

That names—whether assigned by others or claimed by oneself—arealso critical to Lee’s observations on the authenticity of the Black experiencein Bamboozled is without question. For the director, names become claims to asense of realness in an otherwise fractured postmodern quagmire; numerouscharacters in the film use an act of self-appellation to either abandon a ‘‘true’’Black identity or to stake a claim to one. Incidentally, it is interesting to notethe extent to which the characters’ patterns of language use in the film come toreflect the names they choose for themselves—from Delacroix’s insistence onpurity of both grammar and diction to Big Blak Africa’s exaggerated ghettorapping. And Sloan’s liminality—her ability to communicate effectively atboth extremes of the symbolic continuum—is a constant reminder in the filmthat one’s language patterns are as much an artificial marker of identity as isthe name by which one consciously chooses to be known.

It becomes evident at some point in Bamboozled, for example, that PierreDelacroix’s name is as artificial as his effete accent—yet in the context of thefilm, the often humorous efforts of a Black man to divest himself of alltrappings of Blackness are clearly treated differently than those of a characterwho seems to be attempting to secure an even more fundamental sense(or form) of African American identity through the same process of self-identification. In insisting on being called ‘‘Big Blak Africa,’’ Julius declares thateveryone should be called by the name they choose—yet if this is so, how is‘‘Big Blak Africa’s’’ identity claim any better, any more ‘‘real’’ than Pierre’s? Leeraises this very question when Julius asks his sister why she keeps calling himby his ‘‘slave name.’’ ‘‘Big Blak Africa’’ isn’t hard to say, he points out; it isn’t asif he’d chosen to call himself by a series of unpronounceable tribal clickingnoises. Julius’s return to his roots, then, is incomplete at best. By calling himself‘‘Africa’’ rather than a more authentic tribal moniker, he both embraces anddiscounts his heritage. He has, in effect, turned his identity into a free-floatingsignifier all its own, shorn of all but the most insignificant of connections to anytangible past. The same can be said of Pierre’s father, Junebug, who has forged

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an identity of his own based on yet another ethereal racial ideal—in this case,an ideal founded in his profession as a comic on the ‘‘chitlin circuit.’’ WhereasBlack (2003) claimed that Junebug is the film’s only character to establish apure Black identity, Lee would seem to suggest that even this man’s sense ofself is constructed at best; ‘‘Junebug’’ would seem to be no more an authenticgiven name than is Pierre’s.

In sum, Bamboozled constructs a compelling argument against thepotential success of grounding a contemporary Black identity in a sense ofthe past. So if Lee contends that authentic Blackness cannot come from one’sheritage in a postmodern world, what does he have to say about the possi-bility of founding one’s Blackness in Black behaviors? Again, the directorwould seem to affirm that the absence of any objective models in this regardhas likewise rendered moot any attempt to be authentically Black. Lee’sfilmic statement in this regard is so direct, in fact, that a single example fromBamboozled is sufficiently illustrative. During a break in the Minstrel Show,viewers are introduced to two of the program’s sponsors. The first commer-cial presents clothing mogul Tommy Hilnigger, surrounded by black extrasas he shills his brand of ‘‘authentic’’ ghetto gear—so authentic, in fact, thatit even includes the bullet holes. The follow-up spot features Honeycutt fromthe ‘‘Minstrel Show’’ touting the merits of ‘‘Da Bomb’’—a huge bottle of maltliquor shaped like an artillery shell. Lee seems interested in the meaningsthat might emerge from the juxtaposition of the two ads. In both cases, thecharacters are ‘‘playing black’’—attempting to represent some image ofauthentic Blackness. Is the African American ad any more real, Lee seemsto ask, simply because it portrays the behaviors of actual Black people—oris being Black more than an attitude, more than a series of mannerisms?

By refusing to offer any clear or stable answers to such compellingquestions, Lee invites his viewers to reach conclusions of their own. The resulthas been a broad misreading of Bamboozled as a misguided satire, as a workthat adds its own images to a persistent pattern of media stereotypes ratherthan contributing to their erasure. At any rate, Lee’s comments on the complexnature of racial identity as heritage, as behavior and as pigmentation (a state-ment about the visual dimension of race that will be taken up in the followingsection) have without doubt focused attention on both the possibility offorging a strong racial authenticity in postmodern times and on the persistentinfluence of a contemporary postmodern way of thinking and being.

The Primacy of the Image

A second means through which Bamboozled simultaneously generates andcritiques both the concept of racial identity and the prevailing effects of apostmodernist paradigm can be situated in Lee’s argument about the role ofthe visual in creating and maintaining a contemporary sense of racial self.The director’s near obsession with images is everywhere evident in the

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film; quick glimpses of past media products and longer montages of racialrepresentations litter Lee’s screen. At times in the work Lee seems to turn tothe image for didactic purposes; short clips from ‘‘The Jeffersons’’ and ‘‘GoodTimes,’’ for example, are presented as reminders that television has notentirely divested itself of its stereotypic roots. At other moments in the film,however, the director seems compelled to present images for image’s sakealone. Representations of Black collectibles and still shots from past mediatexts continue to mount, free of any contextual reference by either Lee himselfor by the characters sharing the screen with these images. The result is both acomment on TV’s tendency to present the Black experience as free of anyhistorical grounding and a contribution to that very tendency. Lee might haveintended to remind his viewers that, while a program like ‘‘Mantan’s NewMillennium Minstrel Show’’ might be baldly excessive in character, it is hardlyunique as a depiction of the African American experience. But by presentingclips of 30-year-old television shows along with images of late 19th-centurycollectibles and still shots from 100-year-old films, he effectively places con-temporary viewers’ perceptions of these depictions in the past. Where arethe direct juxtapositions of early television blackface with up-to-date videosfrom White rappers, for example? Such an oversight has certainly limitedthe extent to which Lee’s film might have served as a biting comment onthe redundant nature of mediated African American stereotypes.

Still, Bamboozled is, if anything, an expressly postmodern document—andone has to wonder if Lee’s vagueness in this regard is accidental or carefullyplanned. By ‘‘failing’’ to make an explicit connection between media portrayalspast and actively present, Lee invites his viewers to interrogate their own com-plicity in the perpetuation of these racist images. Manray’s previously notedrefusal to keep up on history is but one example to be drawn from the film.In fact, perhaps the most damning charge along these lines is reserved forSloan. Ever the eager researcher, Lee’s character coaches the street performerson the proper way to apply blackface—‘‘to keep the ritual the same,’’ she sug-gests. She later lectures Manray on the roots of blackface, contending that itsoriginal purpose was to enable Black performers to enter white-only theatersin the early 20th century. Of course, any viewer familiar with the concept recog-nizes that Sloan’s historical claim is several decades too late; blackface was actu-ally first used by White actors in post-Reconstruction era minstrel shows thatviciously parodied African Americans’ supposedly ‘‘uppity’’ and ‘‘uncultured’’behaviors following the abolition of slavery (Black, 2003). One wonders atthe many layers of potential meaning raised by this ‘‘error’’ alone. Did Lee pur-posefully mis-establish the roots of blackface, thus including the historicallynaive members of his own audience in the ‘‘bamboozle’’? Or is the misstatementunintentional—and thus an example of Lee contributing himself to a contem-porary dissociation from history? Such maddening indeterminacy representsthe power of postmodern film to both reflect and constitute a distinctly contem-porary mode of being through a use of the image as free-floating signifier.

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In the process of re-presenting in Bamboozled a veritable tidal wave ofundifferentiated images, Lee has also actively contributed to a prevalentWestern privileging of the image over the word (Tyler, 1987). For Lee, a claimto authenticity in a postmodern world would seem to be tied inextricably toone’s ability to master the image—not only those depictions to be gleanedfrom media representations, but also those of the self as a social represen-tation, as a carefully constructed image of one’s ‘‘real’’ essence. As was notedin an earlier section, Bamboozled’s persistent references to other media worksclearly place the film in the pantheon of the postmodern. Yet viewersare never openly invited to understand the film through the critical lens ofoutside texts; on the contrary, visual (and verbal) allusions to past blackfaceperformers and vilified acts by African American stars are thrown on thescreen as only so many more images to be consumed by the viewer.

In fact, what is arguably the core allusion in Bamboozled is a subtlereference to Lee’s own work. In 1989’s Do the Right Thing, a question is raisedas to why the ‘‘Wall of Fame’’ in Sal’s Pizzeria includes only famous ItalianAmericans. Buy your own pizza joint, the owner tells his Black customer; thenyou can put whoever you want on the wall. A decade later, Lee has returned tothe ‘‘Wall of Fame’’ motif, and the wall in question is now comprised entirely ofimages of Black celebrities. The difference is that the images are on the wall ofan office belonging to Dunwitty, a White television executive and a man desper-ate to claim any semblance of Black authenticity. The images become a keyargument in Dunwitty’s arsenal; in fact, early on in the film, the character actu-ally claims to be Blacker than Delacroix himself, and backs up the claim with abold wager: ‘‘I bet you $1,000 you can’t tell me who #24 is on the wall overthere.’’ That Delacroix cannot, in fact, identify the player in question adds evenfurther to Lee’s postmodern argument: If identity is, in truth, founded in imagesof the self and Other, then mastery of the image represents a powerful claim toauthenticity. Shorn of any historical context, postmodern images become what-ever the viewer says they are—and the result is a sense of self that is based moreon the activity of seeing than on any other mode or form of experience.

Again, Lee’s instantiation of this argument becomes in Bamboozled botha comment on the postmodern condition and a contribution to that verymode of thinking and being. The power of Lee’s filmic images—images sopowerful that the work’s verbal content is largely overshadowed—is evidentin the responses of numerous critics to the text. Virtually no review of thefilm in a major media outlet, for example, refers to the script’s rampant useof the ‘‘N word’’—an epithet so universally vilified that it is rarely expressedtoday, even as a direct quotation in print. Yet nearly every review dwells onthe indisputably potent image of blackface in the film—an image so stagger-ingly consequential, in fact, that Ebert (2000) claimed it tramples the rest ofthe material in the film and ends up asserting only itself.

Such a critical reaction seems an honest one, given Lee’s tendencyto himself subordinate language to image time and time again within the

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context of Bamboozled. Perhaps the strongest example of this tendencycomes at the end of the film, as Big Black Africa’s pseudo-revolutionaryhip-hop group, the Mau Maus, prepare to execute Manray for his betrayalof the African American community by participating in the Minstrel Show.The act is presented as the culmination of the Mau Maus’ radical agenda—a visual statement far more powerful than the group’s effort to reclaim‘‘black’’ as a self-moniker by removing the letter ‘‘c’’ from the word (‘‘I don’tknow why they put the ‘c’ in there in the first place,’’ one group membermuses). The gang videotapes the execution in order to broadcast it on theInternet, and a monitor set up next to a bound Manray affirms this intentionfor the film’s audience. Yet the presence of a TV screen image alongside anactual, material human being begs the inevitable question: Which event is thereal one—the execution itself, or the televised image of the act? After watch-ing nearly two hours’ worth of filmic pastiche, the answer should be clear toany viewer. If not, the audience need only turn to Delacroix’s own efforts toconvince his ‘‘Aunt Sister’’ that humans had, indeed, walked on the moon.‘‘It’s true,’’ he remembers telling the woman. ‘‘It was on television.’’

In a sense, then, Lee’s film does as much to instantiate the power of theimage as it does to critique that power—a result that contributes in a signifi-cant way to the film’s enduring message about the viability of an authenticracial identity in postmodern times. And what, precisely, is that message?Lee would seem to contend that seeing is important—that it is an essentialmode of being. The visual is everywhere in Bamboozled; we as viewers arereminded of this fact through countless shots of main characters watchingTV, of individuals gazing at themselves in mirrors as they are transformedinto blackfaced representations of their actual selves. And through thesevisuals of the visual, we as viewers are pulled ourselves into a world drivenby the image. Because the image is so primal in contemporary thought, Leesuggests, one’s own image of oneself as a racial being is critically vital; yetat the same time, to try to find one’s sense of self in images alone is adesperate and ill-fated adventure at best. As fragmented, rootless, purelysubjective entities available and waiting to gain any semblance of meaningthrough their articulation as part of a montage or pastiche, images can nolonger be the sole domain of those who have lived in and through them,let alone of those who incorporate them into their postmodern texts. Insum, as both a statement on and an instantiation of a postmodern privile-ging of the image, Bamboozled would seem to offer little hope for a strongracial identity in contemporary times, at least as a process of both seeingand being seen.

The Critique of the Self

Finally, Lee’s Bamboozled takes full advantage of the self-reflexive post-modern ethic to simultaneously present a statement on contemporary racial

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identity and to offer comment on that statement—a complexity that allowsthe filmmaker to construct an even more fundamental and engagingargument on what it means to be authentic in a modern America. In truepostmodern fashion, Lee’s presence is everywhere felt in Bamboozled, pro-viding the director with an opportunity to simultaneously present his filmand to critique its significance. In a sense, Lee as director becomes both aninside participant and an external critic of Bamboozled as it unfolds in cellu-loid time—a complex dual role that is revealed in the first moments of thefilm. Using a familiar cinematic technique, Lee opens with a voice-over, inthis case a definition of both satire and irony. But Lee speaks to his audiencenot through his own voice, but through that of Delacroix, and returns to thismotif at various times throughout Bamboozled. The narrative choice is anunusual one, and leaves viewers to wonder at the meaning behind Lee’stechnique. Are we to assume that the voice is, indeed, Delacroix’s own,and that the film’s key protagonist is attempting through these directstatements to the audience to break down the ‘‘fourth wall’’ and escapethe confines of the screen? Or, perhaps even more compellingly, are we tobelieve that the voice is a disguised version of Lee’s own, and that thedirector is attempting through these asides to insert himself into the filmicnarrative? In either case, the technique emerges as yet another meansthrough which Lee works to dissolve the boundaries between text andaudience—a method that adds undeniable depth to the film’s overall senseof postmodern style while at the same time opening up space for the kindsof self-reflexive commentary that drive Bamboozled’s conclusions aboutnotions of racial identity in contemporary times.

Lee’s self-reflexive stance in Bamboozled is achieved in particularthrough two broad filmic techniques. First, the director constructs his text withvideotape rather than film, and often uses a handheld camera to capture theaction audiences see on-screen. The use of videotape has been recognized bya number of the film’s critics (e.g., Kipp, 2004; O’Hekir, 2000), but none haveactively interrogated the potential meaning generated by such a choice ofmedium. In the absence of any critical analysis, we would argue that theimpact of this decision on the overall film is less important than the specificways in which Lee puts the videotape medium to use. Although the increasedgraininess and instability of motion of videotape does contribute to the film’soverall documentary feel, much more vital to that visual aesthetic are Lee’spatterns of framing and editing. The filmmaker often allows his subjects to fillonly half of the frame, leaving the other half oddly empty; at the same time, hisquick, even jarring cuts from subject to subject and from scene to scene afforda distinct impression of the film as raw, as under assemblage. Far from simplyshowing us a filmic narrative, Bamboozled presents us a film in the process ofbeing made. It is a visual aesthetic that is critical in giving the viewer a sense ofbeing inside a filmic text, of having the opportunity to both experience a filmand to create his or her own meaning out of the experience.

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Such a possibility of double intention is not lost on Lee himself, whotakes advantage of the circumstance by engaging in a second expressionof the self-reflexive postmodern aesthetic—namely, that of offering a simul-taneous critique of his own filmic text. Two specific examples within thework are illustrative. The first finds Delacroix discussing casting choices forthe Minstrel Show with his stable of all-White writers. When he announcesthat he intends to populate the stage with Black performers in blackface,one of the writers asks if the show will include any famous Black actors.Certainly not, Delacroix responds; it would be inappropriate, for example,to hide an actor of Denzel Washington’s caliber behind dark makeup. Leeinterrupts Delacroix’s lecture with a short clip of Washington playing the titlecharacter in Lee’s own film Malcolm X. The moment is jarring, to say theleast; the viewer is left to ponder the possible meanings behind such anunexpected intrusion. On the surface, of course, one might assume thatLee is simply reminding the viewer of Washington’s artistic presence by offer-ing a brief glimpse of the man at work in one of his most celebrated roles.Yet beneath this easy conclusion lurks another, more intriguing possibility.Perhaps Lee is implicating himself for doing precisely that—for obscuringthe real essence of a human being behind a visual mask.

That Lee may well have intended just such a reading of the scene isreinforced at the end of the film when a visibly distraught Sloan stumbles intoDelacroix’s office, gun in hand. The character forces her boss to play a videotaped montage of grossly stereotypical images of African Americans culledfrom a century’s worth of depictions in the U.S. media. ‘‘Look to what youcontributed to!’’ Sloan screams at Delacroix, obviously referring to his owncreation and silent support of an ever-increasingly offensive Minstrel Showon CNS. But Sloan’s condemnation is not reserved for the former PeerlessDothan alone. Clearly aware that the postmodern image, shorn of all senseof historic roots or evaluative tradition, becomes whatever the consumer ofthe image wishes it to be, Lee turns Sloan’s diatribe into a condemnationof the director himself. This is the ultimate irony of Bamboozled, an irony thatis only possible through the self-reflexive aesthetic of the postmodern text.By battering his viewers with seemingly endless montages of racist imagery,Lee himself is responsible, in at least one sense, for re-presenting (and thusreconstituting) a racist way of seeing in 21st century America. And the ironygoes further: We as viewers, in consuming these images, are also culpable intheir reification. To what extent do these filmic reprobations speak to ourown attempts to create and enhance a strong sense of racial identity in acontemporary America? Lee would seem to suggest that, at heart, we areall aware of our own efforts to constitute ourselves as images, and that suchefforts are flawed and insincere from the start. Coupled with his simultaneousstatements about the improbable nature of authenticity itself and the primacyof image over real experience, Lee’s postmodern take on racial identity todaywould seem to be pessimistic at best.

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CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Based on the meanings to be drawn from Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, whatsense could there possibly be in pursuing a strong sense of self as an AfricanAmerican in a contemporary postmodern society? Time and time again, thefilmmaker seems to argue that there simply is not; a combination of enduringstructures of domination and marginalization, an image-oriented culture thatcontinually privileges seeing over being, and a heady dose of interferencefrom within the Black community itself has—in Lee’s mind, at least—eliminated any possibility of a tangible racial identity emerging from suchmulticultural, multi-mediated chaos.

Interestingly enough, the problem of a postmodern identity has beenraised in other contexts, and in particular in relation to postmodern feministthought. Such a turn to the contemporary literature on feminism is, on onehand, a valuable reminder that Lee’s film is clearly not a statement on thenature of a monolithic African American identity at all, but rather a treatiseon the qualities of a decidedly male African American identity. How couldBamboozled speak to a sense of female racial authenticity when Sloan is theonly significant female character in the film, and when Lee’s depictions ofwomen as both members of the Mau Maus and as characters in his parodic tele-vision commercials represent them as little more than objects of the male gaze?

Such a feminist reading of Bamboozled, although beyond the scope ofthis essay, would certainly reveal many additional insights into the ways inwhich postmodern film can forge and reinforce viewers’ sense of self. Ourconcern at present is the extent to which postmodern feminist scholarshiphas itself dealt with the notion of identity. How can one construct a notionof ‘‘woman’’ at all, Moya (2000a) has asked, when postmodernism eschewsthe very idea of a single woman having any thought or experience that couldbe accurately (and uniformly) extended to all women? After all, postmoderntheory suggests that difference is either entirely internal and fragmented, orthat it is a mere discursive illusion (Moya, 2000b). Even so, Moya suggests,there is a possible solution—a view of identity as a series of small ‘‘unities’’with a handful of others rather than as an identification with a large, indeter-minate mass.

What would such a process of identification mean to the ‘‘authentic’’African American experience? Lee’s solution is even more radical. Affirmingthroughout Bamboozled that he will put up with any Minstrel Show indignity‘‘as long as the hoofin’ is real,’’ Manray eventually determines that even thepure tap talents of ‘‘educated feet’’ can be perverted when they are reducedto an image. Announcing that ‘‘I’m not playing myself no more,’’ the charac-ter makes good on his threat—he mounts the stage as himself, sans the oblit-erating smoothness of blackface, and begins to dance. It is a radicaltransgression, a sin that ultimately leads to Manray’s death�and a bold

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statement of identity that echoes Nietzsche’s (1911) notion of the will topower as a will to will. In the end, both Nietzsche and Lee seem to suggest,to be is to will to be—to be oneself as natural will (Centore, 1991), withoutartifice, without image, or representation or expectation.

It is a lonely place to be, perhaps—but perhaps the only place left fora battered African American identity in a postmodern world.

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