‘Bamboozled’: Spike Lee’s pertinent masterpiece
Read More
Credit: Jose Cruz
Why Spike Lee ranted “f**k John Ford”
A prolific icon in the history of late 20th-century cinema, few directors quite had an impact like Spike Lee, becoming a pioneering voice for black creatives at a time when such voices were kept silent by the industry. Instilling a pertinent message of civil rights into almost each and every one of his movies, Lee has forced Hollywood to consider its place in the conversation, creating such passionate movies as Do the Right Thing, Get on the Bus, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman in order to do so.
Raised in a middle-class area of Brooklyn, Spike Lee attended Atlanta’s Morehouse College in 1979, where he would major in communications and direct his very first Super-8 films. Such would lead him to release his feature film debut, She’s Gotta Have It, in 1986, a contemporary love story that was heaped with praise at the Cannes Film Festival upon its release, described by many as being ‘Godardesque’.
His work at the end of the 20th century couldn’t have contrasted much more with the more classic films of such fellow American filmmakers as Samuel Goldwyn, Howard Hawks and John Ford, who each thrived in Hollywood’s golden era with their western-focused releases. Attempting to take national cinema in a far different direction, Lee has always been very critical of such aforementioned names.
His opinion on this exploded onto the public in 2020 during a speech associated with BAFTA, in which Lee spoke out against the racism that pervaded the industry throughout the 20th century.
Discussing his undervalued 2000 film Bamboozled, a complex satire following a television executive who creates a modern version of the minstrel show in order to be purposefully fired and to ridicule his racist boss, Lee goes into a passionate rant against the industry. “This movie is about demonisation and degradation of black people. That’s what Hollywood does. Imagery is powerful,” the director states, holding back before attacking specific industry names.
As Lee continues, he praises the work of modern black filmmakers, such as Barry Jenkins and Jordan Peele, who have each carved out their own filmmaking niche, before going on to state, “the fight has always been about who is going to tell the story. That’s what makes history”.
Indeed, throughout the history of Hollywood, it is white filmmakers who have long benefited from the industry’s systemic racism, with Lee adding, “those people have done a lot of damage,” making reference to not only the producers who fed into that system but also the filmmakers and actors who created racist pieces of cinema that perpetuated the idea of non-white people as being ‘evil’.
Pinpointing the exact figures of his annoyance, Lee adds, “I’ve never been a fan of John Wayne and John Ford and that cowboy bullshit. I hate them: Native Americans depicted as savages and animals…Fuck John Wayne and John Ford”.
Take a look at the discussion between Spike Lee and BAFTA, below.
