Film Analysis Of Bamboozled: A Satire

In Marlon Riggs’ 1992 documentary film titled Color Adjustment, Riggs, the Emmy winning producer of Ethnic Notions, continues his studies of prejudice in television. The documentary film looks at the years between 1948 and 1988 to analyze how over a 40 year period, race relations are viewed through the lens of prime time entertainment. The film examined many of television’s stereotypes and mythes and how they changed over the years.

Hairspray is a musical which stars a good natured overweight teenage who helps integrate the races in a popular teen dance show, the Corny Collins Show, in segregated Baltimore. It focusses on racism and segregation in the 60’s, but has the underlying theme of equality for everyone in spite of their race, class, sexual orientation, gender or outward appearance. Tracy Turnblad, an overweight teenager, finally gets a spot on the “Corny Collins Show”, a teen dance show she has always dreamt of being on. She is disturbed when she finds out the “Negroes” are allowed to dance on the show occasionally. She fights for integration despite being bullied and mocked. She catches the attention of the town’s resident heartthrob, Link, although she is not seen as “conventionally pretty”. Although Hairspray seems to support racial integration and feminism, there are aspects of the movie that prove racist and anti-feminist. I will prove this by highlighting some post-colonial concepts in the movie and using feminist concepts.

Percival Everett’s short story entitled, “The Appropriation of Cultures” explores themes of irony and absurdity. The irony lies within each and every page. The story begins with Daniel, who is a young and successful black man with a degree from Brown University. He is also a musician and frequently played old tunes with a group of musicians. The story then shifts as white frat boys make suggestions of what the musicians should play, “One night, some white boys from a fraternity yellow forward to the stage at the black man holding the acoustic guitar and began to shout, ‘Play ‘Dixie’ for us! Play ‘Dixie’ for us!” (91). As the reader, I was confused as to why Daniel would go ahead and sing the song. It’s clearly offensive because it is known

A Time to Kill is a remembered experience that brings up the question, “Is a father justified to kill the young men who raped his daughter?” There are many fallacies used throughout this trial, such as, Appeals to Trial, Ad Hominem, Authoritative Warrant, Hasty Generalization, Claim of Fact and many others. The trial also used Ethos, Pathos and Logos to get its point across. If there were no fallacies, ethos, pathos or logos used, then the trial wouldn’t have been as strong as it was illustrated to be in the movie.

In early 1900, Patrick “Pat” Chappelle founded The Rabbit’s Foot Company (or, The Rabbit Foot Minstrels) as a roaming, tented minstrel company. Chappelle, equipped with a strong entrepreneurial spirit and notable talent as a banjo guitarist, was to become the figurehead of one of the most successful vaudevillian entities in U.S. history, and, perhaps most importantly, the first exclusively black-owned and operated traveling variety shows in the country. Despite this evolution to “variety show,” The Rabbit’s Foot Company “came forth in the unmistakable form of a minstrel show.” To define, minstrel shows oft manifested as sketch, musical, and variety performances that targeted and mocked black people using blackface and exaggerated stereotypes

“Imaginary Witness” Hollywood and the Holocaust is a documentary directed by Daniel Anker that explore the treatment of the Holocaust in Hollywood film and how it dealt with the holocaust. The documentary starts with the 1920s talking about the lack for portrayal in Hollywood movies about the rising Nazi threat back and the uneasy relationship between the Hollywood studios, also to explore the history of the holocaust in Hollywood films. Moreover, there were some compelling portrayal of life under the Nazis and how it affected the Jews. It determinately split into two parts: how the Nazi Germany was presented on Hollywood screens before the war and how the Holocaust was depicted on Hollywood screen after the war. “Imaginary Witness” spends most of the time talking about the postwar transformation of the holocaust from something survivors never wanted to discuss. The film showed the interviews with Steven Spielberg, Sidney Lumet, and others. Daniel Anker’s fault Hollywood foregoing the holocaust during the war. The “Imaginary Witness,” Is a terrific

Minstrelsy first emerged in the early 1800s and became excessively popular. In today's world we have access to media of all sorts including the Internet, television, etc. In a time when none of this was accessible, minstrelsy became the go-to approach to intertwine current politics with entertainment. In other words, it was a earlier version of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Some aspects of minstrelsy would be considered harmless by today's culture. There was singing, dancing, and comedy. One practice that emerged, however, was the blackening of one's face with burnt cork or shoe polish. These white men would emphasize the shape of their lips and then parodied their speech patterns. These blackfaced characters became a huge success but brought

In Brent Staples article “Just Walk on By”, Staples shares his thoughts on the way marginalized groups interact. He uses his own experiences as a young African American man to shed light on how people can have implied biases that affect the way they treat other people. Staples does this to demonstrate how society develops preconceived notions in the minds of individuals about marginalized groups, primarily African American men, which are often a flawed representation of the people within these groups. The rhetoric he uses is key to developing an understanding persona and an emotional appeal that exposes the implied biases of people without alienating or offending the audience, to whom-- among others-- he attributes these biases.

In the 19th century, the history of American entertainment had one popular and peculiar form that was referred to as the blackface minstrel act. The act was supposedly an American indigenous act that was performed by artists who were black faces. At first, the act was predominantly done by white people who wore black faces to depict how African-Americans spoke and acted, but eventually, there was a recorded increase in African-Americans themselves who too wore the black faces. The acts included a variety of comic acts, African-American music, comic skits, and dancing (Minstrel Show). However, with the shows’ popularity, it was also quite clear that the acts were highly depicted as racist towards the African Americans. This notion comes about from the fact that the acts portrayed African Americans as lazy, ignorant, and as those who loved music and dancing regardless of any other facet of life. Surprisingly, the history of the minstrel acts has over the time infatuated both black artists in the modern day and a clique of white artists locally referred to as “wiggers” which translates to white artists who want to act as black artists (Blacking Up: Hip-Hop 's Remix of Race and Identity).

The film 'Ethnic Notions ' illustrates various ways in which African Americans were impersonated during the 19th and 20th centuries. It follows and shows the development of the rooted stereotypes which have generated bias towards African Americans. If a film of this kind had such an affectionate influence on me, it is no surprise people adopted these ideas back then. The use of new and popular media practices in those days was more than adequate in selling the black inferiority to the general public. The only purpose of these stereotypes gave a false narrative of black people. They were and are still propaganda to encourage the white society that slavery was "great" and black is inferior.

Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing portrayed the struggle between young Blacks and the problems that they face. They are put in situations where whatever they choose to do could be considered wrong by people that aren’t Black, hence the title Do the Right Thing. How do they know what the right thing to do is? Has the violent culture in their neighborhoods and their relationship with police officers given them limited choices? Do the Right Thing brings about many questions, while also leaving it up to the diverse audience to decide what they feel the right thing is. The movie also brings about the animosity that is forced between different ethnicities and races because of the way the culture in America has been

There is a clear through-line in our nation’s history of blackface. As a detrimental tradition, the practice reflects a collectively low opinion of African-Americans, so much so that it became feasible to reduce an entire group of people to caricatures. When Rondrich describes minstrelsy as the “first truly American band” based on its origin within and its reflection of our past beliefs, I found it a sickeningly accurate statement. It is rather astonishing how music has been used to disseminate racially charged imagery—in this situation, Adorno’s fears of music perpetuating group-thought was startlingly supported.

Throughout history, many cultures have passed down stories through oral tradition. Though the manner in which spoken word is delivered has changed over time, the fundamental core of the timeless tradition has stayed the same; Words have power. They can be used to spread joy, hope, and keep entire cultures alive. August Wilson’s play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, focuses on the power of the blues to tell the stories of numerous African-American individuals, as they struggle to find meaning and justice in an unfair society dominated by a hateful majority.

In this world of advanced technology where people are connected to the internet like neurons are connected in a giant brain. The television has become the spotlight technology in today’s generation. Generation after generation people are evolving and getting more advanced, so has the way producers are using television as a source to persuade the audience. Especially, reality show directors use every information they possibly can about the contestants to make their show popular in the culture. The reality television impacts the world in a negative way. Reality television influences the culture by giving the young girls ' false expectations, stereotypes, and racism.

In the play, The Mother-Showman says: “The ugliest creatures in creativity. Alive! See a living misfit with yr own eyes.” During another show The Mother-Showman says: “She’s been in civilization a whole year and still hasn’t learnt nothing! The very lowest rung on Our Lords Great Evolutionary Ladder! I kick her like I kick my dog!” African people were viewed as uncivilized beasts, thus, inferior to Europeans. Further, criticizes racism based on differences in physical appearance. In the play The Negro Resurrectionist recalls a historical extract of Robert Chambers that says: “With an intensely ugly figure, distorted beyond all European notions of beauty…” Further, because of African people inferiority, it was believed that they had less developed anatomical structure. The Baron Docteur during his study of Hottentot’s biological anatomy writes: “The condition of … presented rather anomalous character. This condition interests us because of well-known fact that in the chimpanzee, and all inferior Primates, a considerable portion of this muscle…” Finally, Parks highlights the difference in the language that the play is written. When African people, The Chorus of the 8 or Venus Hottentot, speak there is a distortion in the language. For instance, The Chorus of the 8 Human Wonders say: “When I was birthed intuh this World.” Here the distortion is represented by “uh” sound. However, when the characters of white people speak there is no distortion of