Struggling on Two Fronts

         Stuart Hall’s “New Ethnicities” discusses a shift in black cultural politics from the use of blackness as a unifying label of shared marginalization to a recognition of blackness as a constructed categorization of a socially, economically, and ethnically diverse population.  Hall names My Beautiful Laundrette as indicative of the shift, suggesting that “the question of the black subject cannot be represented without reference to the dimensions of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.”  The conflicting need for solidarity and also for recognition of difference is addressed directly in Bamboozled, as the fictional TV network’s attempt to create and package a safe representation of blackness for consumption by the American public is reliant on homogeneity, and much of the film’s conflict results from the reaction to this representation from its diverse cast of characters, many of whom are themselves actively engaged in representing black culture – through dance, through music, through stand-up comedy, through network television.  Spike Lee’s film serves as a manifestation of the paradox that Hall identifies, wherein a wide variety of black characters from different socio-economic backgrounds are faced with a single, monolithic definition of blackness by the American media, yet are all fighting separate, even contradictory social battles.   

         One of the most striking things about Lee’s film is the juxtaposition of the diversity of his black characters and the singular image of blackness as represented in the use of blackface.  Bamboozled portrays a minstrel show that is modern not only in terms of the era of performance, but also in the fact that it exists amongst a mix of other representations of black culture operating with varying levels of influence and social legitimacy both within the film and outside of it.  The images of early black memorabilia that populate Pierre’s office function narratively like a sort of tell-tale heart – they stare with accusatory eyes, seemingly taking life at the end of the film as a physical manifestation of his guilt.  They also function more literally as a reminder of the particular representation of blackness that Pierre has enabled (that of blackness-as-sameness) in the face of the other more genuine and complex representations of blackness he has seen displayed by other characters throughout the film.  “Black is beautiful” becomes the rallying cry of the TV network, though Lee demonstrates how dangerous this phrase can be when “black” is only acceptable when it is one thing and one thing only, something easily understood and without inherent conflict or complication.  Such is the blackness of blackface, that which is desired and perpetuated by the TV network.  Sameness becomes a tool and a weapon of the culture industry just as it is in racist rhetoric, turning the very different characters of Manray and Womack into the same stereotype, the same color, the same commodity.  It is easier to appropriate a culture when it is made to be seen as one-dimensional.  As Hall points out, the challenge lies in developing a politics that can generate positive results through maintaining a sense of unity of resistance while also negotiating difference of interests, though challenge does not absolve us of the responsibility.