Heike Toewe

Heike Toewe is an early stage researcher with interests in film studies, most notably Black film, as well as female iconography and women media heroes. She is currently studying American Studies and Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin, Germany. Further interests of hers include sociological research on gender relations in the labor market.

The Use of Spectatorship in Spike Lee's Bamboozled

Spike Lee's film Bamboozled is a great contribution to the Black film genre. In the film, Lee gives no clear solutions to the social and racial problems that arise as the plot unfolds in the film. Instead, he uses a mixed form of fiction and documentary in order to deconstruct the illusion usually created by fiction.

Through a lack of continual narrative plot, several sequences of Bamboozled function to both disillusion the spectator and also to disturb his passive spectatorship. The main character's self-reflection, combined with his voice commenting from the off, gives the audience the chance to be critical spectators from the beginning of the film onwards. Indeed, the main character is introduced by means of a monologue on irony and critical spectatorship.

Spectatorship proves to be a recurring theme in the film. The story-line concerns the production of a racist show starring 'coons' - as revival of the popular coon shows from the 1930s - by a Black employee of an entertainment company. During the course of the film, one sees the show itself, the show's audience and their various reactions to it. The film narrative structure does not give the spectator any means to escape from watching racism being performed, thus forcing the spectator to look at something that quite simply isn't enjoyable.

In reference to Manthia Diawara, the narrative structure of Lee's film keeps its spectators from assuming a passive state of uncritical identification through the use of reflection and self-reflection implications. The audience watching Bamboozled is watching an audience in the film, and it is this reflective focus on the actual audience itself that practically forces an active self-reflection on part of the movie-goers.

In my talk, I would like to discuss Spike Lee's methods of confronting his audience with racism and his use of a certain narrative structure in order to bring about reflection processes in the audience. As a result, each member of the audience must face the question regarding what makes one a racist. By bringing spectators to make judgments on racism and its manifestations, while avoiding victimization elements or clear demarcation lines, Lee's Bamboozled confronts the audience into thinking without helping it along by providing the good-and-bad structure of the classical film narrative.

held at: Picturing America. Domestic and Global Aspects of US Media Culture, May 19-21, 2005