While watching "Bamboozled", "Chappelle's Show" kept popping into my mind. When Dave Chappelle came back from Africa he explained that he walked away for his hit show because he felt like a prostitute and "socially irresponsible". The outwardly racist and stereotypical words and images that he put on the screen to be funny became funny to the wrong people. Dave was filming a sketch about a minstrel show in black face and a white person on the set started laughing at him, not with him, at him. White people were coming up to him on the street quoting lines from his sketch about a white family named The N-----'s much like in Bamboozled when white people show up to the taping of "Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show" in black face calling themselves "N-----'s" and "C---'s". I think Dave Chappelle's realization parallels Pierre Delacroix's realization that instead of discrediting those racist words and images by shoving them in the face of society he was reinforcing them and making it seem OK, funny even. What surprises me is that Spike Lee pushed this idea so far he missed the fact that he too was enabling and even force feeding the racism and the stereotypes.
Interesting Side Note: Paul Mooney and Mos Def appeared in "Bamboozled" and "Chappelle's Show".
Interesting Side Note: Paul Mooney and Mos Def appeared in "Bamboozled" and "Chappelle's Show".