Black And White Vs. Bamboozled

Race is a very major issue in America. It is present in our everyday lives. It is hard for anyone to honestly say that when they see a person they don’t see color. We use profiles of people to describe them. When someone is black we describe him or her as black. No matter what race, religion, or sexual orientation we are we are looked at by society as that. I am a 19-year-old Caucasian male in America and that is how the community sees me. Caucasian people make up the bulk of this country’s population, so in perspective, we should be setting most of the trends to follow. According to DeFleur and Dennis, popular culture is described as being “aimed at large audiences of mainly middle and lower classes of varied education and income. Thus, there was an attempt to reach the largest audience possible with pleasurable, easily understood fare.” In America middle and lower class white people make the trends, but if you look at some of the main parts that make up pop culture, it is cool to be black. The most popular musical artists are of Hip Hop music in origin. Hip Hop is a genre of music st

Bamboozled is a very well made film by Spike Lee that emphasizes on the television industry. It focuses on how corrupt and distorted mass media’s image of black people is. This film makes a mockery of television by having Pierre Delaquox (played by Damon Waynes), a black writer for a major television network; write a show that is so demeaning and outrageously racist to prove his point that the only way white people want to see black people in television shows is as buffoons. He was right. The show, The Mantan Millennium Minstrel Show, focuses on two unlucky black males who live in an Alabama watermelon patch, Mantan and Sleepandeat (Sleep–and–Eat). The two characters are portrayed in the most racist way possible. What was the response to this show? The network, and television community loved it. Delaquox is in shock and outraged at first, but the show’s success soon blinds him to even his own morals as a black male. The critics gave Delaquox numerous awards for his work in writing/creating the idea for the show. This just shows the lack of morals in the television industry. A group of underground rappers called the Mow Mows don’t agree with the show and decide to kidnap Mantan and kill him. The main theme of this film is showing how racist the television industry really is and focuses on how society looks at black people as entertainment.

It is very hard to relate these two films because they are both very different from one another. They both deal with race, but they deal with many different aspects of it. Bamboozled shows how the American public doesn’t want to see the black middle class family on television. It shows how the American public wants to see black people as entertainers. Black and White shows the stereotype of how all black rappers are looked at as gangsters and bad people by society, but it also shows how white people are starting to look at it being cool to be black. One scene, one line in particular, in Bamboozled that really relates to Black and White, is the scene where Delaquox is watching his father, Junebug, perform stand-up in a predominantly black club. Pa

Some topics in this essay:
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