Reading Blog #7

The movie Bamboozled had many different aspects of forming and representing Identity. The one that caught my attention the most was of the relationship between the main character and his boss.  In the movie there are several references made by the boss (white male) on how he is blacker than the main character (Black male), and that the main character acts like a white guy.  The boss backs his claims with examples of him growing up in the hood, the way talks and walks, and even references several pictures on his wall of popular African male figures that the media has glorified (and has identified the race as).  He tries to fill the African stereotype's shoes as a white male.  In contrast he also attacks the main characters identity by calling him out on acting like a white guy.  He makes these claims again using a stereotypes of a white male being politically correct, trying to break away from the stereotype by proposing a normal black family TV show,  or by his up-tightness about racial slurs and actions.  It is interesting to see how Spike Lee saw the media's version of the black male and the white male, and then reversed the roles of the stereotypes to people who would not normally fit them.