In the recent stream of award-winning films, those depicting marginalized groups are frequently championed. Some of the most groundbreaking films of the last three decades, like Moonlight and Roma, have been headed by marginalized peoples created for marginalized audiences. Yet, there is an equal amount of marginalized representation made by non-marginalized writers and directors, such as Emilia Perez and Green Book. The first of these two films has come under fire for the misrepresentation of Latino peoples, the overt bigotry of the leading actress, and the lack of Latino voices on the project; the latter for its passive representation of Black people in a narrative many detract as outdated.
I am particularly interested in Green Book and its controversy over the depiction of Black characters. My question is: what’s the problem with writing about marginalized people as a non-marginalized person? More specifically to this article, what’s the issue with white people writing about Black stories?
Since the advent of film, Black people have been pivotal in the evolution of the medium and the boom of Hollywood — for the wrong reasons. Represented in tropes like the domineering brute, the servile fool, or loud mouthed comic relief, Black people have been made passive in a film industry fueled by white supremacy. Even as Black people across North America fought for equality in the mid-20th century, their narratives in film remained stagnant. As Black culture gained traction through music, art, and politics, Hollywood continued to reinforce the status quo, aimed at fulfilling the cultural curiosity of an “othered,” or foreign, Black society. Whether it be the era of Blacksploitation or slave-dramas like Roots, Black people continued to have their agency denied and be subject to white exoticisation. Even with Black creators seeing success throughout the industry, film studios only wanted to further the image of Black people that white audiences were used to.
Cut to 1999, director Spike Lee is disillusioned with Hollywood and mainstream media. Ever since 1989, when his film Do The Right Thing was snubbed at the Academy Awards and Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture instead, Lee believed the industry only wanted to see Black people in traditional racist stereotypes. Black filmmaking had seen a boom during the period, with the cultural zeitgeist of gangster rap and slavery dramas like The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer. However, Lee saw Hollywood twisting old negative racial stereotypes into new forms of neo-minstrelsy.
The previous ten years had seen the release of Soul Man, a comedy about a white kid dressing up in black face to secure a college scholarship; the rise of Quentin Tarantino and his co-opting of the N-word and black struggles; and the popularization of films like Boyz n the Hood, depicting gang violence between young Black men. Even as Lee made a name for himself with Malcolm X and Jungle Fever, all the accolades and money were being tossed to projects about Black tragedy or passivity. From his malaise, Lee would create his 1999 masterpiece, Bamboozled.
The film’s premise centers on Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans): an astute Black TV executive struggling to launch a successful Black series centered on positivity. He is juxtaposed against his woefully misguided white boss, Mr. Dunwitty (Michael Rappaport), who is arguably a reference to Tarantino. Fuelled by Dunwitty’s desire for a “real” Black show, Delacroix sets out to make the most offensively racist show imaginable, to get himself fired and ruin Dunwitty’s reputation. Recruiting two homeless street performers, Delacroix pitches “Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show” to great amusement from Dunwitty. What ensues is a mix of Mel Brooks’ The Producers and Sidney Lumet’s Network, involving the minstrel show’s meteoric rise and spiral into insanity as both Delacroix and the performers grapple with their dehumanization. Lee’s characters — Delacroix, Manray/Mantan, Womack/Sleep n’ Eat, and Sloan Hopkins — portray different feelings and insecurities about Black struggle, from poverty to family, to performative blackness and self-hatred. Yet, what truly furthers the movie’s message is how Mantan gets approved, produced, and catapulted into stardom.
The fictional TV network, CSN, is entirely white with Delacroix as its only Black writer. Delacroix is Harvard-educated and very obedient to his white superiors, despite harboring a deep hatred for their ignorance. His main concern is working towards a big paycheck. He is a diversity hire, appointed by CSN to meet the need for a new, funny Black TV show – a trend Lee was very keen on in the late 90s – under the supervision of his boss Dunwitty. Dunwitty is an obvious victim of corporatized, misinformed race-consciousness; he has posters of black athletes and actors in his office, he argues with Delacroix that he’s “more Black” than him because he’s married to a Black woman, he rejects projects of Delacroix as “not Black enough,” and throws around the N-word willy-nilly.
When Delacroix runs the idea for his minstrel show in the Caucasian writers room, they are hesitant, feigning their progressivism and tolerance — but they eventually fold with Delacroix’s insistence of “satire” and his identity as a Black writer. Ultimately, blatant displays of racism cause concern in this media order. But as Lee shows, they end up being accommodated by whites under the guise of Black representation. As long as a Black person is okay with it, they won’t mind.
Bamboozled was always seen as a heavy-handed, if not angry, film. Admittedly, the premise of a full-blown minstrel show being adopted by a major network shocked many audiences and critics alike. The film tackles a handful of Black insecurities and cultural stigma in a disparate narrative that varies from raucous laughter to discomforting silence: audiences were overwhelmed.
Yet, in the context of Spike Lee and his experience with Hollywood, the massive shift towards tragic Black stories wasn’t too different from the era of Hollywood that demeaned Black people through minstrelsy. The premise of a minstrel show being put on TV could only exist with non-Black writers and execs like Dunwitty, just as it did during the early 20th century. If we relate Bamboozled to recent films like Emilia Perez, turning to Spike Lee reveals the pitfalls of misrepresentation in film and how its insidious implications plague progress overall for marginalized peoples.
In the same way the producers of Emilia Perez misconstrued the trans community, Bamboozled acts as a blunt, glaring example of misrepresentation in a seemingly enlightened media order. In a zeitgeist that focuses on trans issues, there’s a vacuum for mainstream media to tell and profit off of them. Just as Black issues were exploited with Blacksploitation and the gangster films of Spike Lee’s era, contemporary trans issues are under the same scrutiny with the release of Emilia Perez. The identity politics of both pieces highlights the importance of tolerance versus understanding. While the racial fetishism of Dunwitty could count as “tolerance,” it stems from a complete lack of understanding: an understanding that is, moreover, specific to the marginalized group, rather than being co-opted for the non marginalized as well. It’s this understanding that’s lost on the nearly all-French directing team of Emilia Perez; feigning tolerance, the movie falls flat because of their misunderstanding.
Special thanks to the Black Student Network for their screening of Bamboozled this past February.