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Racial Performance: Bamboozled

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Mikelah Carlson Taylor

This paper was written for a course called “Racial Performance,” a course examining how media present race and performance by people of that race and by others.  Caution: this has very strong language throughout.

The scene chosen for this paper is from the film Bamboozled, when Honeycutt interacts with the crowd in blackface while Manray prepares to go on stage (1:45:25-1:49:05). It is an influential scene because it is not only shocking and abrasive but also looks at the public reaction to the show and how it has changed. The scene occurs right after Delacroix has an odd encounter with his “jolly nigger bank” where, after Delacroix has fed it several coins, the figurine then moves without being touched and continually flings money into its mouth, seemingly on its own. This is important because it lays the groundwork for the following scene, as it shows a transition from Delacroix controlling the blackface figurine to it taking power on its own, representing Delacroix’s own blackface project becoming an entity out of Delacroix’s control. The figurine can also represent Delacroix himself, indicating he has lost control of himself and is instead controlled by greed and a hunger for power and success. In her article “From New Deal to No Deal,” Alice Maurice comments on the significance of this previous scene in relation to the next, saying “the film ties the loss of black identity to a stereotyped blackness performed for public consumption” (200).

The scene opens with Honeycutt dressed in a blackface Abraham Lincoln costume, dancing and yelling into a microphone. He identifies as “Honest Abe Honeycutt,” which is an interesting mix between his blackface character and a man associated with abolition and black equality. The statement being made there is the crowd should not feel bad about the show, but rather associate it with racial progressivism — a “New Millennium.” He throws his hands forward and his head back and yells, “I just have one thing to say: Whooooooweee!” The crowd, a mix of black, white, and Latino people all dressed in the same clothing and painted up in blackface, responds with an emphatic “Whooowah!” and mimics his behavior. In doing so, the crowd immediately feels connected to each other, all wearing the same clothes and makeup and drawing on each other’s enthusiasm. They also identify with Honeycutt and his “nigger-ness,” and as Honeycutt speaks, they respond with “Uh huh” and “Preach boy.” There is a sense of the audience as a church congregation, with a camera shot looking from behind Honeycutt onto the crowd with his hands out like a proselytizing preacher.  As Maurice phrases it, “the scene suggests television as a mass-mediated church, but here, blackface is its communion” (199). The crowd takes up a posture of borderline worship, which can be seen in their fervency and attitude throughout the rest of the scene. Honeycutt then begins with the Gettysburg Address and changes the second line to, “They was kickin’ our black asses,” repeating himself and evoking laughter in the crowd. Although he is actually black, saying “our” while in blackface allows the crowd to consider themselves a part of the people to which Honeycutt is referring, since they are in blackface as well.

Honeycutt runs into the crowd and asks an older white woman with coiffed hair and pearl earrings, “Grandma, ma’am, is you a nigga?” With her blackface makeup only covering her face, she is so clearly white, in both skin color and stereotype, with her hairstyle, jewelry, and white undershirt. Her whiteness is even reflected in the question, with Honeycutt calling her “Ma’am,” a word associated with the relationship between a black slave and a white mistress. She responds with, “Yessiree Bob, darn tootin’ I’m a nigger,” to which the crowd roars in approval. The camera is close to her face and she says her words with a defiant shaking of the head, knowing she is crossing lines, but doing so with pride. The clear departure from proper grammar and the outrageousness with which she says her words points back to what Lott wrote in his “Blackness and Blackface” article, talking about minstrelsy as a “carnivalizing of race” (20). The next person interviewed is what Donald Bogle would call a “coon” character in his article “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks.” He is a white man who rings his hands and hangs his mouth open, breathing heavy and talking with a thick dialect in broken English. This is interesting and important because it is obviously derogatory, but in the background of the shot, a black woman smiles and nods as the man hams up his performance. It indicates a complicity and an approval of this “mimicry of blackness via blackface” as Maurice phrases it.

Other people are interviewed during this scene, but an extremely provocative encounter occurs when a “Sicilian” man is asked by Honeycutt, “Is you a nigga?” The man responds with, “I’m a Sicilian nigga, which means I’m more of a nigga than any nigga in here! You know what they say about Sicilians — we’re darker than most niggers, we’re bigger (looking down) than most niggers, and we rap better than most niggers.” This is an obvious connection between “blackness” and masculinity. Spike Lee is characterizing and personifying the association between being black and somehow being manlier. Lott’s words are appropriate for this performance, writing, “Bold swagger, irrepressible desire, sheer bodily display: in a real sense the minstrel man was the penis…” (25). His “bold swagger” fuels the rap that follows: “I’m white, not black, but not all the time. I’m in blackface and I’m feelin’ fine. No matter what color, no matter what race, you know you’re cool chillin’ when you’re in blackface.” His invitation to find certain privilege in blackface harkens back to Delacroix’s father’s words: “Everybody wanna be black, but nobody wanna be black” (58:30). Blackface is a way to steal the privilege of “blackness” without actually having to be black. This man’s role in the movie is to be an embodiment of this black-masculinity association and the blackface privilege, and to make viewers recognize it for what it is: racist and ridiculous.

Manray plays an important part of this scene as well. While the crowd interviews are occurring, emotional music is playing consistently in the background and the film cuts to bits of Manray going through his routine of putting on blackface before coming on stage. In the first image of Manray getting ready, there is a sign (probably an advertising poster) in the background of the shot that says “SHOCK,” which is exactly what the viewer is experiencing after watching the exaggerated interviews with Honeycutt. The film doesn’t allow the viewer to stay in a state of shock, and rather deepens the emotion with the next shot of Manray, where he is looking into his dressing mirror. In this shot, there are actually two reflections of his face, perhaps indicating the identity schism between his blackface character, Mantan and his actual black self, Manray. The turmoil can be heard in the background noise, with the shouts and cries of the audiences representing Mantan, and the music playing at the same time representing the real Manray.

After the interview with the Sicilian man, the film cuts to a pivotal moment as Manray levels his head and looks into the mirror. Just one face is shown in the reflection, indicating Manray has made up his mind, and the lighting is dark and grim, recognizing the gravity of the decision made. He has thrown down his makeup applicator and leaves the room without putting on his costume, resolute in his choice of identity. Although the scene does not completely end at this point, Manray’s decision has been made, and the viewer feels a sense of doomed understanding. After watching Honeycutt foment the crowd into a blackface-crazed mass, it is clear Manray will not be accepted or appreciated on the stage without blackface, because it shatters the reality they’ve created regarding “blackness.” The scene that follows is the aggressive removal of Manray from the stage, eventually followed by Manray’s murder.

The chosen scene serves to exaggerate and expose the stereotypes knowingly and unknowingly prevalent in the mass media audience. The Bamboozled viewer is reviled by the audience members, but also most likely identifies with them if they are honest with themselves. Spike Lee purposefully puts the shots of the audience interviews in the same scene as the decision for Manray to go out in his real face because it makes the viewer recognize the duality black racial performance contains. It forces the viewer to decide which one is the reality: Mantan and the fervent audience or Manray and the music.

Otto, Bonhoeffer, and Buber

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Mikelah Carlson Taylor

The great thinkers of modern atheism constructed a multifaceted critique against religion, decidedly pronouncing that faith is a thing of the past. Kant looked at Judeo/Christian beliefs and wrote about how the uncertainty and the “unquantifiability” of God points to the impossibility of the existence of God as a known fact. He saw religion as possibly useful throughout history, but irrational and thus irreconcilable to reality, except as a code of ethics. Other thinkers like Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Hume, and Freud echoed Kant’s atheistic skepticism and brought forth their own thoughts to add to the critique. They saw religion and faith as projections and illusions that were holding mankind back from personal and societal enlightenment. With this song set of critiques in the playing field of religious thought, Rudolf Otto, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Buber step in to mount their individual and collective defenses of the Judeo/Christian beliefs. Each theologian examines the critiques presented by modern atheism while injecting their own new thoughts and evidences in favor of religion.

Rudolf Otto came from a strict Lutheran background that allowed for little freedom and pleasure. He brought this background into his work as he found true freedom and life in religious thought. He desired to stir up some life in the religious world and defend faith against its atheistic critique. He argued there is an innate condition in man called the numinous, which allows man to desire and experience that which is greater than the rational world; a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This is caused by the reality of a wholly other. He argued there is something about the religious experience that always resists being explained away. The religious experience is something that cannot be quantified, but Otto resists Kant’s conclusion of a thus lack of existence of God. The numinous, says Otto, does not contradict or obliterate rationality, but rather complements it. Otto argued there is something (God) that is set apart and holy, inciting a response within a human that is both awe-ful and fascinating, as well as fearful trembling-evoking. This is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans Otto refers to, and it is something that cannot be contained by the rational world-it is an overabundance. Otto argues this holy experience was not included in Kant’s a priori critique, and thus remains uncontested.

Bonhoeffer’s thoughts on faith walk hand in hand with Otto’s defense of faith. Bonhoeffer lived in a time of great turmoil, and the World Wars of his generation left people wounded by the church and its feeble apathetic response to the evil in the world. He wrote much of his work from prison, in an uncomfortable and scary condition. He defended the Christian faith with four arguments: faith as polyphony, faith as a world come of age, faith as living before God as if there were no God, and faith beyond religion. Bonhoeffer likened faith to a polyphony — that which, due to one constancy, can be multidimensional. He argued faith allowed mankind to reach its fullest multifaceted potential, like the beautiful symphony of voices in Les Mis’s “One Day More,” with a variety of different notes and words, all bound by a common strand of music. With faith, Bonhoeffer says, man and society reach their full potential.

He continues in his defense of faith by seeing faith as a world come of age, as before God, and as beyond religion. Unlike the atheist claim religion is the opiate of the masses that keeps society from thriving, Bonhoeffer looks at faith as a means to more fully understand the world. God is not a machine or an answer to the misunderstood, but rather that by which we further our knowledge of the world. Science and faith happily and effectively coexist in the world that has shown many mysteries can be solved by science. Faith is no longer a mind-numb religion bent on condemning and avoiding the advancements of the world (retreating into adolescence, as Bonhoeffer says) but rather an accompaniment to technology and science. Faith is now about living out the Word of God, showing belief through example. Christians are now Shalom-bearers, bringing universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight, as our friend Dr. Cornelius Plantinga says. Faith allows man to realize his full potential and create a world striving toward fruitfulness and wholeness. Bonhoeffer takes faith out of the context of antiquated, oppressive religious stereotypes and reveals its inspiring power and freedom.

Buber points as well to the freedom and wholeness that come from faith. He argues there are two types of relationships in the world: the I-it and the I-Thou. He argues mankind longs for, and is made for, the I-Thou relationship of encounter and personhood over the I-it world of experience and objectification. The external Thou that is the greater being/force/entity (God) allows man to fully understand himself (I). When man sees the world in the I-Thou perception, as Buber says is intended to be, he achieves a greater self-knowledge and self-capability. It “unlocks” relationships from the modern utilitarian, objective constraints and allows man to engage in genuine, honest relationships with others and with the world around him. Buber defends against the critique religion keeps man from his full self potential and understanding, arguing religion is the lens we best see the world in an I-Thou manner, thus resulting in a deeper and more sincere reality. It is through faith man can be the best and most true self he can be and it is faith that allows him to see the Thou, as the imago dei, the personhood of his fellow man.

With their beautiful, intricate, and thoughtful defenses, Otto, Bonhoeffer, and Buber level their attacks on the modern atheistic critique of faith. Their works are realistic arguments in support of faith and cause the atheist to be challenged and the believer to be inspired. Their works lead the reader to a greater and deeper sense of faith, holiness, and mystery, and challenge the believer to deepen his thoughts on what he believes. Bonhoeffer in particular inspires believers to live out faith rather than contain it in the wooden pews of a stone church. He challenges the modern Christian to bring Shalom to the world and “to live in the light of the Resurrection.”