Blackface in Bamboozled

In the film Bamboozled, the character Manray plays a character called Mantan in a show called Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show. This show, produced by Pierre Delacroix, an educated African American man, is essentially a revitalization of the historical blackface character, such as we saw in class in the film Check Doublecheck with Amos and Andy. The show, like any minstrel show, was intended to be laden with racism that was extremely degrading to blacks, labeling them as stupid, illiterate, and incompetent.
In its racism, Delacroix hoped television networks would reject it, and that it would open the public’s eyes to the fact that racism is still rampant today. However, his show becomes a big hit, and the two main characters of the show – Manray and Womack – go from street life to fame after the first episode. Delacroix’s attempt to make a satirical and critical representation of the racism he, along with many other African Americans, was still subjected to in modern day America was not perceived as a backhanded slap to the white audience, but rather as a brilliant new comedy.
Corrupted by his fame, Delacroix gladly buys into this misrepresentation and perpetuation of traditional, white, American racist views about African Americans. His show continues to air, featuring Mantan and Womack as illiterate, slow-in-the-head, dancing buffoons. Manray is oblivious to the historical degradation of blacks that he is contributing to by starring in such a show, and Delacroix denies that he is perpetuating racist ideology and racial hierarchies with his show. The only voice of reason in the film is Sloan, played by Jada Pinkett Smith. She is the only one who sees the history of blackface in early films in this so-called “New Millennium Minstrel Show” and its connotations for African Americans.
Blackface characters, such as Amos and Andy, the mammy, and the ‘faithful souls’ we saw in Birth of a Nation, created stereotypical roles that heavily influenced the type of roles available to African American actors today. Racist images of blacks as illiterate, as sexual predators, and as racially and biologically inferior to whites were maintained and exaggerated at the expense of the African American actors’ pride and dignity. While some African American actors rejected these roles, many allowed themselves to be type-casted, some even performing in blackface (like Manray/Mantan); many allowed themselves to perpetuate this misrepresentation of African Americans and their culture solely for the material benefits/wealth.
Bamboozled, then, is a commentary on the ways in which African Americans were, and continue to be, misrepresented by the media. Furthermore, considering Manray’s murder by the Mau Maus at the end of the film, it is a commentary on how African American actors who allowed themselves to be placed into these stereotypical roles were judged and rejected by their own culture/people. Sloan’s role is the mediary that allows the film’s audience to see both of these negative aspects of blackface – historically and in the remnants of the stereotypes that continue to humiliate African Americans today.