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Spike Lee's film Bamboozled (2000), cinematically stages American mass entertainment's history of discrimination with humiliating minstrel stereotypes which was first brought to film in 1915 by D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. ‘Blackface' minstrelsy is a disturbing legacy that began as a tradition in the early 1800s on stage, with white actors using burnt corks to darken their skin and "allowing them to portray African-American slaves, usually as lazy, child-like providers of comic relief" (4). This eventually evolved into Vaudeville-style parody shows consisting of songs, dances and comic skits. This tradition represented an accepted way of looking at African-Americans and was the first form of American mass culture that created stereotypes. At the time it also eased white tensions about black America and the images served to justify notions of white superiority and power. Early American cinema relied on racial stereotypes and spectacles and it gained much popularity because......

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Approximate Word Count: 2917
Approximate Pages: 12 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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