Just rented the DVD of Spike Lee's film Bamboozled, a biting satire looking at racial humor in popular entertainment. A very strange film. It centers on a black TV executive who, tired of prodding from his wanna-be-black boss decides to get fired by producing the most racially-offensive show he can possibly come up with. But instead the "Mantan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show" is a huge hit.

If nothing else, the film gives you a fairly in-depth overview of the history of minstrel shows, blackface routines, and pickaninny imagery. And it makes you think about the ways stereotypes are still used to get a laugh.

Interestingly, most of the action in the movie was shot using consumer-grade Mini-DV cameras and edited digitally. The idea that you can use this type of equipment to produce a studio-grade movie release is very exciting. Movie making is becoming less mystical and easier for anyone with an idea to try. Hopefully at some point this will result in a wider variety of material making it into the local multiplex.

An interesting comment is buried in the director's voiceover on the DVD. Spike Lee says:

In my opinion, this gangsta rap is the 21st century version of minstrel shows. And what's sad is these brothers don't even know about it.