Public Outrage

Bamboozled

SPIKE LEE, USA, 2000; THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Spike lee’s 14th narrative feature is a dramedy edging on horror, with an ironic sensibility sharpened by the director’s bold artistic and technological choices. According to his interview with Ashley Clark for the DVD extras, Lee was motivated by the centenary celebrations of cinema in the late 1990s to consider the darker side of film history. These supplements also reveal the influence of earlier cinematic critiques of the small screen and its manipulative broadcasting, like Sidney Lumet’s Network and Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd.

In a plot loosely borrowed from , creatively frustrated network employee Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) comes up with a plan to escape his contract: he proposes a shockingly offensive minstrel show, enlisting two homeless street performers, Womack and Manray (played by comic Tommy Davidson and tap-dancing phenomenon goes on air.