Bamboozled and Gender

Although the discourse surrounding Bamboozled largely focuses on issues of racial identity, blackness as constructed by cinematic representation--and rightfully so--I think it is by no mistake that the film simultaneously documents a history of gender relations within the black community. The moments I refer to almost seem to be throwaway scenes, lost in the drama of the story, but I think Spike Lee knows exactly what he is doing in the dynamic he creates between his male and female lead--thus, I wanted to look at Bamboozled from perhaps a different perspective than what we will be discussing in class, just to sort of have the ideas floating around.

Sloan and Dela represent a long history of conflict between black women and men. Though we haven't read material about it for this course, Michele Wallace (Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman) and Paula Giddings ("The Women's Movement and Black Discontent" from When and Where I Enter), for example, have written extensively about current tensions that brew between black men and women, dating all the way back to black families during slavery. Black men as slaves were forced to be less than men, were not allowed paternal authority in their families--in this way, women truly became keeper of the household, overseer of the children, backbone of the family. When slaves were set free and black families were left to rediscover their own power structures, it was with man and woman hand in hand, as equals. But in the mid-20th century, when civil rights' movements were gaining momentum and black voices were heard louder than ever before, it was the black man who stood up highest in the effort to reclaim the masculinity that had been denied him for so long, telling the black woman, essentially, to take a backseat--it was his time to finally hold some authority, his time to step up and be heard. And black woman, understanding the black man's plight for so long, was dutiful and told herself that she could wait--she could stand behind her man, she owed him that much.

This, coupled with the emergence of second wave feminism and black feminism created a multitude of tensions, felt most heavily in civil rights groups like the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). The fact that white women could and did enter civil rights organizations like the aforementioned, gain the skills necessary to start their own grassroots organizations, have interracial liaisons with black men (all while black women held virtually no significant roles in these organizations) and then leave, created all sorts of long-simmering tensions to rise to the surface between black women and white women (further derived from the existence of organizations like the National Organization for Women, or NOW, which black women felt did not care in the slightest to understand the concerns of black femininity), as well as black women and black men--animosities that are still felt. Yet black women were still told to bite their tongues and wait their turn--it was more important to be black than be a woman, they said--and I think Sloan certainly deals with this dilemma.

This was perhaps more of a history than I planned on going into, but to return to Bamboozled--Spike Lee's characters feel more fully realized. Though Sloan and Dela are seemingly on the same team in the film, there in solidarity, Sloan is constantly playing second fiddle to Dela--in his personal quest to reclaim his own sense of masculinity and flip the racist media on its head, he ignores any concerns she raises and basically has to coerce her to be on his side at every step. Toward the end of the film he refers to Sloan as "The Help" (referring, of course, to both a cinematic and actual tradition of black women as mammies and maids), and she in turn tells him "If you weren't so busy fucking Mary-Ann, Sue, and Beth, maybe you would have a little bit more stroke in your back." Sloan's anger at Dela for having sex with white women, and Dela's attempt to distance himself from Sloan, exert authority over her and reduce her contributions and intelligence to a stereotype recall centuries of history between black men and black women in America, which all come to a head in this film. Eventually, Sloan has had it--from Dunwitty and his racist colleagues, from Dela and his masculine, condescending elitism, from Manray and his accusation that she got her job because she slept with the boss, so to speak. Sloan occupies this middle ground in terms of black identity, but she also exemplifies the tension that arises when forced to essentially choose between identities, and I think that Spike represents years of turmoil well in his leading figures by not allowing this intersectionality to take place fluidly in his film.