Bamboozled: Black People and White Man Essay

In 2000, beef up lee(prenominal) wrote and directed the take Bamboozled. When discussing his sarcastic film, Spike lee side claimed, I want deal to think near the power of images, not expert in terms of race, but how mental imagery is employ and what sort of social impact it has how it influences how we talk, how we think, how we view one another. . . how film and television charter historically. . . produced and perpetuated distorted images. Spike Lee cert personally conveyed this essence in Bamboozled. Images are powerful and carry massive social impact. They should neer be perverse.Are all Afri usher out Americans either lazy or dim-witted or happy servants, always ready and willing to entertain the White cosmos? The short answer is, no. However, throughout the 1800s and un beatly 1900s, slicey people believed this. The ultimate question is, why? As explained in the film Ethnic Notions, this false perception grew and grew, even past the time of slavery, due to images. Derogatory images of African Americans as happy servants or savages, were everywhere they were published in childrens books and slapped on cans of food to be used as a marketing tool. deal bought into this perception of African Americans, as they became acclimatized to it. Today, our society bids to believe that times have changed and there is no long-life an issue of race or false perception of African Americans in the media. However, Spike Lee argues, A new phenomenon has emerged in film in recent years, in which an African-American character is imbued with special powers, filmmaker Spike Lee told a student audience ? This new image is just a reincarnation of the same old stereotype or mimicry of African Americans ?Lee cited four recent films in which there is a magical, mystical Negro character ? in The Legend of Bagger Vance, a black man with all these powers, teaches a young white antheral ? how to golf like a champion ? How is it that black people have these powe rs but they use them for the benefit of white people? Spike Lee seems to be under the impression that African Americans are still misrepresented in the media. They have only improved their ability to mask the fact. inconclusive image is still there, but it is subtle. His film Bamboozled ripped viewers eyes bulky open.The film explored and demonstrated two images of African Americans. The first image, is the ignominious firearm who is just like the White public or the Asian Man or the Middle-Eastern Man a man who can be fatty and successful like Pierre Delacroix in Bamboozled a man who can be poor and when without money will do almost anything for it like Manray and Womack. However, when Pierre Delacroix pitched television shows about a Black Man living in an upper-middle-class white, suburban neighborhood, his superior, Thomas Dunwitty turned them down, they unquestionably dont want to see dignified black people on television. However, the network would allow Pierre Delacroi x to create a show which blatantly write downs African Americans a show which goes back to the 1900s, to the time of black expression and minstrel shows a time when black people were considered subhuman. This is where Spike Lee demonstrates the other image of the African American an image that the media has gently hale down viewers throats. Spike Lee, however, did not do so gently. The fictional television show in Bamboozled, Mantans New millennium Minstrel Show, starred African Americans in black fountain acting like buffoons.It might as well have been an authorized minstrel show in the 1900s. There was dancing and singing. The two of import characters hid from the White Man in a chicken coup, saying aint nobody in here but us chickens 4 The creator, Pierre Delacroixs initial intention with this show was not to degrade his own race. It was to break the stereotypes. 5 He figured the nation would be shocked and outraged Instead they ate it up. The studio audience dressed-up i n black face.Children trick-or-treated in black face. It was the latest craze of the nation. Black face is an act which digs back to a time of slavery, a time where African Americans were considered inferior. It was now socially acceptable to publicly suck up a moment in history that pained African Americans. People figured its on TV, its OK The black man was degraded, as he has always been, but in Bamboozled no blessing was spared. Spike Lee used the film in a intermixture of ways.He attacked todays media and the way in which it portrays African Americans. He explored the wide scope of African Americans lives, which is no divergent than the lives of any other race. He demonstrated the consequences of greed and sacrificing ones dignity. Furthermore, he exposed society for what it really is mindless. The majority of a people does not question the media. Instead it swallows images whole, even if those images are as false and misleading as a painted black face.