I just saw Spike Lee's Bamboozled. Thoughts...

The issues that contemporary blackface minstrelsy ensues with its high charged images of twisted nostalgia were very clear, albeit the use of them formed a controversy in itself. But herein lies the problem - too many 'albeits'.

The condemnation of blackface through popular satire seems like a brilliant idea, but how do you satirize contemporary blackface minstrelsy by making a movie satirizing contemporary blackface minstrelsy?

Just as the word "nigger" is too negatively powerful to use in jest, for it's obvious historical legacy, blackface is too negatively powerful to use in satire. (And although I am also a fan of Quentin Tarantino's, his concept behind the it's-just-a-word mentality formulates the necessary ingredients for the paradigmatic racist.) I became more concerned with the contorted idea that Savion Glover and the "Porch Niggaz" actually had to apply blackface (in the traditional cork-style of the pasat no less) to film the movie than to allow myself to dig into the satire itself - had the Damon Wayans blackface show actually had a slight bit of humor to it, I'm sure the NAACP would have performed an elaborate strike against "Bamboozled" in much the same way Reverend Al Sharpton did in the actual film.

So good going, Spike Lee. At least your blackface show wasn't funny. God help you if it was.

I found it more than especially ironic that the defying protestors who murder Savion Glover at the end of the movie also used blackface to protest blackface. When the ideological basis of the movie strings down to its most structural level, you have a director using blackface making fun of another director using blackface disturbed by murderers also using blackface, who ironically also protest blackface. It's a miracle. Everybody hates the blackface minstrelsy project, and yet, everybody uses it. The satire seems lost in its own tools.

I think there would have been many other more effective ways of denouncing blackface minstrelsy without resorting to it. Chris Rock (though they touched on him, but only briefly) would have been a perfect example. Take his "Blacks vs. Niggers" monologue, which most definitely was the sparking ignition for his rise to comedy-fame. Who are the biggest fans of that monologue? White people - not just white people; white racists. Why? Because Chris Rock says everything in that monologue that they wish they could say and not get shot for it. "Niggers can't read; books are like Kryptonite to a nigger....Niggers always want credit for shit they're supposed to be doing...Niggers are always blaming the media...etc." Or how about use the same type of intellect that Spike Lee is so famous for in interviews. Why not satirize blackface minstrelsy by satirizng the white suburban (and asian) kids dancing to black gangsta-rap videos, and specifically for the reason that they contain entertainment value through racial stereotypes? There are many ways, and blackface seems like the most primitively in-your-face method of doing it, and it works the opposite end of the ideology (which is always a bad thing).