Spike Lee went through over 10 studios before he found someone that would finance the film. Bamboozled begins with the definition of satire. Lee told Charlie Rose in an interview that he put that there specifically for the critics as many times they interpret his films as an angry commentary on society. But, the film is a commentary on the reality that television and performance arts have willingly distorted the identity of black people with minstrel shows, cartoons and cliche performances of black people in order to make people laugh. What is the effect on the audience? And the effect upon those who create the material? These questions are asked in this film, and Lee has answers.
Delacroix seeks to create shows that portray black people in ways that aren't stereotypical but paint them in a realistic positive light rather than the narrow version seen in most shows. Nonetheless, because his boss Dunwitty rejects all of his ideas his only objective is to get out of his network contract by being fired. His plan to do this is to pitch a show so bad that Dunwitty will have to let him go. Unfortunately, Dunwitty loves Delacroix's updated version of a minstrel show which is degrading to black people and sets back the work of people who sacrificed their lives in order that black people experienced the full scope of freedom in America. To make it worse, Delacroix accepts making the show and it becomes a hit.
From here the lure of fame, money and power create a divide. Delacroix and Manray are on one side, caught up in their new found glory while Sloan and Womack represent the side which knows what's happening is wrong. In the end, Delacroix caused his own destruction. He says while he is dying, "As I bled to death, as my very life oozed out of me, all I could think of was something the great Negro James Baldwin had written. "People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead."
Lee's work is poignant, as it declares that our individual choices are what make us who we are, and they certainly can influence a wide range of people as well. So, choose carefully because your life depends upon it, and others' lives do as well. This is not saying that literal death is to come from every choice, but that our choices hold within them reality that the death of our morality, integrity, responsibility to ourselves and one another, to unity and our souls can be created from the seed of our decisions.
