Bamboozled (interesting movie, mediocre post)

I have noticed that in my writing there is a desire to finish, to close off, to complete, etc, the ideas that I am presenting, typically in a call to action (in my other writings and newspaper articles, most importantly in the Hegemon where I had complete creative control [see MPKB.net for more info though not for many articles themselves]). And while I continue to believe what is most feverently missing from our current lifestyles is real political practice I will seek in this article and perhaps in the future to restrain this impulse to closure, excepting the cases when it is more useful to truly crystallize what I happen to be saying in a 'political' way. (A note: double quotes are actually quoting, single quotes mean that I wish to problimatize the given term).

I saw Bamboozled by Spike Lee last evening, quite an interesting movie. First and foremost in my mind it presents the notion that to appear in the media blacks actually have to be in blackface, whether it is literal blackface, as in the show in the movie, or in metaphorical blackface. Second, it utilizes a series of histories that increased its power and taught me something in relation to blackface in the media and class differences within the black community, both historically and presently, and provided a clear picture of the way class, or at least loyalty to particular class values creates different outlooks and as such the movie provides a set of interesting and differentiated black characters, something that is very unusual in Hollywood films. Third, it notes the extreme marginalization of blacks in the media industry generally like the mass number of artists ready to audition for the entertainment on his show, and the grossness of working within this situation, as is the case in most of the black-white dialogues, which, coming from a black position make whites absurd and offensive, even as they go about things 'normally' (though De La's boss is quite a case).

Moreover this creates a division between survival and riches as success, and the corresponding sacrifices that have to be made either to one's politics or to one's wallet. The ending itself, where one of the black characters who acts in blackface is murdered on the air by black-rapper-militants (who are both correct and perhaps not channeling their energy usefully, or at least to me their character is unclear), who are then slaughtered (excepting their one white member) by the police. This is followed by Sloan, the tv show creator's (De La) aid (both of which are black) killing De La (as one of the militants was her brother) though only after showing him the history he is contributing to strikes me as both a fall back on previous morality play movies, though letting survive the political minded person with middle to upper class values who is disgusted but fails to quit the disgusting show seems dubious at best, and by killing most of the characters off it can be read that even middle class blacks are closer to being violence than whites, an interpretation is not offset by the immediate and brutal destruction by the police.

And while Sloan's killing De La comes across as perhaps accidental, this sealing up of the movie fails to allow for any positive political message whose seeds can be found in the black militants and also in De La's father and the friend of the character who quits before the other is abducted and murdered (both of whom were living on the street). Or rather we end up with principled quitting of the tv industry once by those (black) characters who refuse to mock themselves and as such a set of 'authentic' jokes from De La's comedian father, rather incoherent militants who are political but out-moded or fail to be able to communicate to the other characters, death to the Clarence Thomas like traitor, and a revenge manslaughter by she who knows her history but failed to make others learn from it. Or rather we are left with a tale that makes clear the disgusting marginalization of blacks from media production and the requirement that they put on metaphoric blackface to appear...as well as (perhaps) an attempt to articulate what type of people will be necessary for blacks to "keep on pushing" in a way that is beneficial for individuals and the people as a whole.

I'm not really sure what to do with this though if you've seen it or do see it I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts and perhaps moving forward, and it certainly re-alerts me to the diversity within the black community, the damage done by assuming that whites are those who are human, and makes me think of The Heart of Whiteness by Robert Jensen (a short and very readable rant on whiteness for whites) where he says that sometimes as whites we just have to play the fool in order to get to where we want to be and this is something that I find compelling. I'm rather unhappy with this analysis, oh well...