"Bamboozled"
A Spike Lee Joint

Bamboozled was written and directed by Spike Lee in 2000. Damon Wayans stars as Pierre Delacroix. Delacroix is a Harvard graduate and an executive at a large television network, CNS. He is pressed to produce a hit television program by Dunwitty who is acted by Michael Rapaport. Dunwitty is the head of CNS and is posturing as if he is familiar with black people. Jada Pinkett Smith plays Sloan Hopkins, who is a NYU graduate and Delacroix's assistant. Delacroix and Sloane enlist homeless street performers, Man Ray (played by Savion Glover) and Womack (played by Tommy Davidson) to star in their production: "Mantan the New Millennium Minstrel Show." Delacroix makes a great hit with his show in the blink of an eye. Despite the success of the show, black audiences protest the racist content of the minstrel show. Delacroix is a black man who has essentially given up his identity in order to succeed in a white world. The films dramatic ending leaves viewers exposed and raw, forced to question their own contribution to a white supremacist society.

In the very beginning of the film, Delacroix sets the stage by explaining the literary use of satire. "Satire, 1. A literary work in which human vice or folly is ridiculed or attacked scornfully. B. The branch of literature that composes such work. 2. Irony, derision or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidly." (Bamboozled)
Bamboozled itself is satire of the white mass media. Lee is talking about the construction of gendered whiteness in the world of the mass media. He uses the minstrel show format as an example of the destructive stereotypes of African-Americans. The "The New Millennium Minstrel Show" is not is the same old minstrel show constructed in a more modern manner. Lee is suggesting that minstrel shows still exist today, though they aren't always as blatant as the one portrayed in Bamboozled.

A minstrel show was an popular form of entertainment in the United States in the nineteenth century, peaking in popularity around the 1840's. The first minstrel show was staged in 1828. White entertainers, who painted their faces black with burned corks, imitated "gay and foolish blacks," which was the common image of African-Americans created by whites. The minstrel show consisted of short humorous performance, with singing and dancing. Later, black actors as well began to participate in the minstrel shows; they also "blackened up". Essentially, the African-American heritage was distorted, disfigured and taken over by the white media. According to Lee, African-Americans became "puppets" for whites.

Through his film Lee points out that the minstrel show is alive and well in the today's mass media. He claims that the sitcom is the twenty-first century version of the minstrel show. He is quoted as saying "How could anyone think that a sitcom about holocaust would be funny? How could anyone think that a sitcom about slavery could be funny? Let us make no mistake, slavery in this country was a holocaust." (Bamboozled)

Lee points out that there are few African-Americans in positions of power in the television world. Moreover, he points out that the white people in power misrepresent the identity of African-Americans. What we, the audience, are confused with is the identity of Delacroix as an African-American because he does not fit the image of a black man in popular culture. In Interview with Spike Lee, he says as the following. "Bamboozled will educate people of all races and make everyone realize that we should not let the success of a few lead to a false sense of security that might "block the vision of the whole". Since although there may be a few very successful African Americans, there are many who are still confined to playing the modern-day buffoon."

The film Bamboozled is one of the most powerful and provocative films and should not be missed by anyone - especially white folks who believe blatant racism is a thing of the past.

Muslim Stereotypes in the United States

In mass media in the United States, the image of women in Muslim societies has been created with the harem and the veil. We may be familiar with the image of veiled Muslim women as mysterious, sensual, pure, and passive. In Gender, Sexuality, and the Iraq of Our Imagination, Anne Norton discusses how the image of Arab women as "feminine sexuality" and "feminine inequality" has historically been created with the veil. In Gender, Tradition, and History, Juan R. I. Cole breaks the traditional notion of veiling. She states that only urban educated upper-middle class women have veiled, and these women have begun veiling in order to emphasize the modernity of their veiling. Both Norton and Cole discuss the notion of "Orientalism" and how it is presented in United States mass media. In this essay, I would like to analyze the nature of Orientalism that is represented by "the veil" with the perspective of Edward W. Said.

In Gender, Sexuality, and the Iraq of Our Imagination, Anne Norton criticizes how "Orientalism" is created in the Western mass media. As Ella Shohat stresses, sexual images of Muslim women are reflections of the Western male desire for Arab women whose bodies are thought of as exotic. Such sexual images of Arab women are often portrayed in Hollywood's movies. In such Western movies, Arab women are "victims" of Western male sexuality rather than Arab men. In a capitalist society that has connection with white male domination, women's bodies are often used as commodities of men in the media. Second, as Said stresses, an orientalist is a "racist," an "imperialist," and "ethnocentric." The veil has been a convenient material for orientalists to describe women in Muslim societies in comparison with women in Christian societies. The veil is a metaphor of "feminine sexuality" and "feminine inequality" in comparison with Western women who do not veil. The image of veiled Arab women as a major symbol of oppression by Arab men has been created in Western mass media. Norton uses the example of veiled Arab women of American women wearing uniforms during the Gulf War. Veiled Arab women were presented as "gender inequality" in Iraq, in comparison to women soldiers wearing a uniform as "gender equality" in the United States. In this context, the goal of orientalists is to roughly divide the world into two groups: "West" and "East," and to classify West as "good" and East as "bad."

According to Said, the image of the Middle East is captured by negative images in the Western mass media. He asserts that this is the reflection of an unequal power relationship between the West and the Middle East, in place since the colonial period. Orientalists have used such binary categories as West and East or Occident and Orient in order to describe "other cultures." They have used Islam as an intelligible category against Christianity. They have used the veil against Western women who do not veil. This categorization is based on ethnocentrism, which is the idea that one race, nation, and group is better or more important than any other. Today's globalization is a new type of Western colonization, and unequal power relationship between the West and the Middle East is more distinct than before. In a capitalist society, women's status is degraded because men's role at production is more valuable than that of women as reproduction. Western men, especially white educated upper-class men have wielded enormous economic power over the East. The highly sexualized image of veiled Arab women found in Hollywood's movies is a product of Western men. Arab women's bodies are gazed as exotic, sexual objects for Western men. As Said stresses, "Orientalism" reflects Western power.

Especially since September 11, Western mass media have presented negative images of the Arabs and the Middle East. As a result, many Arabs and Muslims have been facing serious race discrimination. From another point of view, we need to review the history about the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East. Why was the US attacked? Why were the targets the world trade center building, the Pentagon, and Camp David? Today's topic in the media is about Iraq. As Norton mentions, we have negative images of Saddam Hussein and Iraq during the Gulf War. But to me, President Bush is also a scary presence. He is a warlike politician. I believe that Bush's stance is this: if he does not make war, he will not be able to keep up the economy.

De-essentialists use a variety of categories in order to describe Muslim women, such as where they live, what their class is, their level of education, and their age. In Gender, Tradition, and History, Juan R. I. Cole breaks a traditional notion of veiling by looking at the diversity in Muslim women. In Western mass media, the images of veiling as a "traditional" practice and as a big symbol of oppression of Muslim women have been created. However, she stresses that such a variety of categories should be used in order to de-essentialize Muslim women. First, she states that Qur'an, which is a holy book of Muslims, does not force Muslim women to veil. Second, she states that the concept of veiling ranges in different areas. The region of the Middle East is very large; the north is Turkey and Cyprus, the south is Arabian Peninsula. The east is Afghanistan and the west is Morocco. Because the Middle East is such a large region, the concept of veiling in each area should not be unified into a single regional notion of "the Middle East." For example, because pre-Islamic Arabia had a torrid climate, women put on veils. Finally, she states that only urban educated upper-middle class women have veiled, and these women have begun veiling in order to emphasize the modernity of their veiling. The modernity of veiling that Cole mentions here means that veiling represents Muslim women's prestige and these women put on veils in order to emphasize political statement. To some Muslim women, veiling is a way to protect from sexual harassment. To others, it is a statement of defending their culture against Western incursion.

In conclusion, it is clear that the veil is not the only problem for Middle Eastern women in terms of sex discrimination. All women across the world are oppressed in a different way in a patriarchal society. Imagine the juxtaposition of these two images: a picture that showed women from the United States wearing a bikini and Muslim women veiling. The question that followed was: "which women are more oppressed?". The answer is that both women are oppressed in a different ways in a patriarchal society. In Western mass media, Western women's bodies are sexual objects and commodities of Western men. Muslim women may not have a choice of whether or not to veil because of the patriarchy in Muslim societies.