Whole Lotta Trickery Goin On!

If a person watched only the first half of Bamboozled, they would probably come away from that experience convinced that Pierre Delacroix was the trickster. He manipulates his situation by creating a minstrel show, Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show, as a way of trying to get one over on his boss and the network he works for, in order to get fired which would release him from his contractual obligation to the network.

In doing this, he appears to display many of the attributes of the trickster: He undermines the unspoken rules of the culture with regard to race. He pits his intelligence and wit against his racist white boss, who holds the power in the situation. He seeks to enlighten the masses with his show, expecting the audience to respond with outrage. Certainly, he creates chaos, as depicted in the scene where the Reverend Al Sharpton and Johnnie Cochran lead protests against the show. He plays on long-held stereotypes and assumptions of the audience (though he makes the mistake of believing that the audience didn’t really subscribe to those stereotypes).

Had the film ended with Pierre’s dismissal from the network known as “CNS”, and his landing a writing job with another network, where his efforts to launch a new show that would cast black people as intelligent, positive role models, we would all applaud his skill as the trickster in getting over on the folks at CNS. But somewhere along the line, Pierre’s efforts at playing the trickster went horribly wrong, and the situation spirals completely out of his control. He ends up dead, and so do several other characters.

Maybe the real trickster in this film is Pierre’s assistant, Sloan. After all, she is the only one who went into the creation of the show with her eyes wide open, and unlike Pierre, she was able to still keep that focus, even after the show was a success instead of resulting in Pierre’s dismissal.

On the other hand, maybe the racially-insensitive boss, Thomas Dunwitty, is the real trickster. He is, in the end, just about the only character in the movie who has not suffered some sort of loss by the end of the film. In fact, it’s not a far stretch to imagine that for him, life goes on as usual after the deaths of both his writer and his former star, as he viewed their talents as “nothing special” and easily replaced.

If this movie is considered a modern commentary on the trickster figure, I think the message is that you’d better be careful when you set out to play the trickster because things may not turn out the way you foresee and your trickery may backfire on you. Then the joke is on you.