'Bamboozled' offers biting cultural satire

Spike Lee's latest film, "Bamboozled," was released in late 2000, but never made it to Bloomington. I should know. Every Wednesday morning when Kerasotes updated their movie times for the coming weekend, I would eagerly log on to the Web site in the hopes of seeing that "B" word in the listings. I got even more excited when the College Mall theater put up the film's poster with the words "Coming Soon" below it. Promises, promises. For whatever reason, the movie never made it to these parts. Spike Lee fans have had to wait until now to get their hands on his newest joint.\n"Bamboozled" tells the story of Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans), an Ivy League-educated TV writer who hates having to stoop to the levels his network asks of him. His boss (Michael Rapaport) admonishes Pierre to come up with a new show that will be hip and edgy (read: more "black"). Disgusted with the lowest common denominator approach and veiled racism of his superiors, Delacroix develops "ManTan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show," a shockingly racist variety hour featuring dancers in blackface, set in a watermelon patch. The idea is to get fired. Instead, the suits love it, the show goes on the air and it's a huge hit. \n"Bamboozled" is satire -- very broad satire. It is not a comfortable film to watch. Minstrel shows and blackface performers are a relic of the early 20th century that most of us would probably prefer to forget, but Spike Lee's job as a filmmaker is to make us remember, and if necessary, to make us uncomfortable. Along the way he deals with the way race is socially constructed and the subversion of black culture by white corporate America. For more than a decade, Lee has made uncompromising films on controversial subjects that always retain an element of fairness. "Bamboozled" treads the thin line between thought-provoking commentary and lopsided rant, and unfortunately comes down on the latter side more often as the film progresses. Still, even if you don't always agree with Lee, the questions his film raises are ones that need to be asked.\nIf it seems unlikely that something as over-the-top as "ManTan" could hit the air, consider such recent UPN sitcoms as "Homeboys from Outer Space" or "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer," a show that was about Abraham Lincoln's sassy black butler (I swear this is true). "Pfeiffer" thankfully lasted only four episodes, but a real-life "ManTan" could always be on the horizon.