Analyzing CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Analyzing CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS - Essay Example Such a move depends on the degree to which the African Americans in question have been assimilated (32). The assimilation pushes Africans to formulate a public persona different from their real identities. Bamboozled exposes the historical portrayal of African-Americans in the American cinema. The images at the end of the film are a documentary to the satire therein (Black 20). Understanding the film in a better way calls for putting it in its context before the cinema emerged. Race is a social construction because the stereotypes of blacks reflect the perceptions of American whites (Epp 17). The stereotypes relate to the white dominion over Africans as opposed to the realities of the time. The abolition of slavery never put the stereotypes to an end. There emerged a new form of imperialism replacing the â€Å"noble savage† with the â€Å"ignoble savage† (20). Whether savages or children, Africans were in no instance perceived as being on the same level as whites. Despite not being slaves, Africans were still not given statuses similar to the whites. Certain groups such as the Irish and the Jews had to become whites with resultant stereotyping in the 20th century (Laski 1095). These stereotypes were so widespread that the entertainment industry felt it prudent to embrace them. Bamboozled followed this path. Bamboozled has a unique storyline written in a clever way (Ebert 1). Pierre Delacroix (De La) is an African-American television writer. He navigates a minstrel show complete with three-dimensional characters such as Aunt Jemima, Man Tan, and Sleep ‘n’ Eat. The writer’s intention in the beginning was to invoke popular outrage to facilitate his sacking from the television station (Ebert 1). This would relieve him of the obligations that he considers tiresome and boring. Surprisingly, however, De La’s show succeeds massively to the extent that the outrage against it becomes negligible and irrelevant. Alongside the African-American