Bamboozled.

Directed by Spike Lee. New Line Studios, 2001. 136 minutes.

W.E.B. Dubois, founder of the NAACP, once wrote, "It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body."

I introduce my college level students to Spike Lees Bamboozled through discussing Dubois's theory of double consciousness and offering a brief introduction to the Pan-African movement, which first convened in Paris in 1919. Lee's protagonist, Black television writer Pierre Delacroix, is dearly influenced by the movement. Like Dubois, he attended Harvard, and also like Dubois, he uses the term "Negro." Yet he is a psychologically split character who takes on a French name in favor of his birth name and affects a stilted European accent. Students initially do not see Delacroix as enacting a historical construction of global Africaness. Like his white boss, who calls him "homie" and "brother," students feel Delacroix is "acting white."

When Delacroix's efforts at depicting the Black middle class are rebuffed by the network, he counters their narrow constructions of race by creating a program that is as racially provocative and exploitive as possible. He comes up with "Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show," a variety program in which the African-American characters wear minstrel-style blackface and live in a watermelon patch. The show becomes a hit, suggesting we are numb to the contemporary minstrel shows throughout our present day media.

The film contextualizes stereotypical constructions of race within a historical continuum of ideological and political oppression. I ask students to keep a log of semantics (ideology revealed through language) and semiotics (ideology revealed through imagery) as they occur in the film. Additionally, students take notes on occurrences of "doubling," during which the large cast of characters struggle with the gap between how they see themselves and how others see them. Lee represents the characters' split as their reflections emerge in mirrors, on televisions, and as they stand before advertisements of the "Mantan" show. Lee also edits so that his characters do double-takes as they confront their unreconciled identities.

Despite Lee's reputation as a polemist, his film steadfastly refuses to create innocent and evil characters. Complicity crosses lines of race, class, and gender. Furthermore, Lee implicates the audience. Does laughing during scenes of the "Mantan" show make one insensitive or racist? When is satire a form of exploitation and when is it a form of political resistance? Do we internalize stereotypes? How are our own identities manufactured? What can we do to become active critical thinkers as opposed to passive consumers?

Often students express dismay that Bamboozled offers more questions than answers. However, the analytical tools developed during classroom discussion are answers in themselves. By deconstructing semantics and semiotics, by becoming conscious of our own double-vision, we begin to demystify the split between monolithic representations and the layered realities of individual and collective experience.

The historical contexts and ethical ambiguities of Bamboozled prompt students to critique words and images from their daily lives. Our conversations lead us to consider that integration and humanization occur when we represent others, and ourselves, as complex, and contradictory, and full.

Julie Bolt

Bronx Community College