Postcolonial disgust — a critical reading of Spike Lee’s "Bamboozled" by Kevin Rønaas, p. 1

Postcolonial disgust — a critical reading of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled

Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (2000) radically deploys aesthetic disgust to interrogate the commodification of Black identity in neoliberal, postcolonial culture. Lee weaponizes discomfort, grotesque imagery, and formal abrasion—particularly the jarring contrast between digital video and 35mm film—to unsettle audiences and expose the violence underlying racialized entertainment. Drawing on Kantian aesthetics, Sianne Ngai’s concept of “ugly feelings,” and postcolonial theory from Frantz Fanon and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, I examine how disgust operates not merely as affect but as a critical strategy. The film’s formal excess and confrontational tone are deliberate disruptions of the sanitized, consumable images demanded by late capitalism. Engaging with Fredric Jameson and Mark Fisher, I situate Bamboozled within a broader critique of neoliberal pluralism and repressive tolerance. Ultimately, my goal is to highlight how disgust, mobilized aesthetically, can resist co-option and compel confrontation with enduring systems of racial and cultural oppression.

A defense of disgust

Disgust is a term, both in aesthetics and cultural studies, which has proven difficult to conceptualize or formulate in such a way that the feeling would seem desirable. Perhaps that’s due to the phenomenological intensity of its repugnance, the categorical rejection of its revolt, the total inability to synthesize or consume it as pleasurable. As Kant outlines in Critique of Judgement, only one kind of ugliness cannot be aestheticized without destroying all aesthetic satisfaction, and that is disgust. Because, he says, in that which excites disgust, “the object is represented as it were obtruding itself for our enjoyment while we strive against it” and “the artistic representation of the object is no longer distinguished from the nature of the object itself.” Thus it is impossible that it can be regarded as beautiful .[1] [open endnotes in new window] But is Kant right? And going further, looking past beauty, could one find virtue in disgust — could this impossibility of beauty potentially present a form of radical sublimity — and if so, how?

As Sianne Ngai discusses in Ugly Feelings, due to its unique position as intolerable, disgust has potential as an aesthetic in that it not only challenges our tastes and forces us to consider what we deem of aesthetic value, but it actively demands our rejection and asserts itself outside the spectrum of what we find tolerable.[2] Whereas most aesthetic categories, despite potentially ugly connotations, can be formulated in such a way that they appear aesthetically desirable or pleasurable, disgust is defined by the revolt, repugnance, and rejection it elicits in its subject and therefore appears to negate pleasure altogether.

This intolerability offers a unique conduit to ask questions surrounding what a society thinks is or isn’t tolerable — and by extension, to examine the values inherent to that society. In a late-capitalist world where anything and everything is subject to commodification, the intolerable presents a ripe aesthetic for exposing the boundaries of what a culture finds acceptable and why. Therefore, by embracing the disgusting and inhabiting the characteristics of the seemingly revolting, art has the potential to bring to light prescient discourses surrounding tolerance, biases, history and ideology in a singular and confrontational fashion.

Bamboozled

Few films engage with this aesthetic as abrasively and as thoroughly as Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.[3] For those unaware, Bamboozled is U.S. satirical black comedy-drama film from 2000 written and directed by Spike Lee about a modern televised minstrel show featuring African-Americans donning blackface makeup and the fallout from the show's success. The script traces the rise-and-fall of Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show — a show created by a dejected African-American TV-network employee by the name of Pierre Delacroix (real name Peerless Dothan) as a ploy to get fired by his belligerent and racist boss, who mocks his genuine ideas of portraying black people in a positive and intelligent light as “Cosby clones.” In this way, the film delves into problems surrounding the entertainment industry’s exploitation of African-Americans as subjects, its perpetuating the racist stereotypes surrounding them, as well as its willingness to repurpose anything as a commodity no matter how offensive or harmful it might be to certain demographics within its populace. The theme of tolerance in particular, and the implications of it, in many ways seem to central to the film’s interest — asking questions regarding what’s tolerable, to whom is it tolerable, should it be tolerable and just why is it tolerable? The film goes at this through an abrasive and often cartoonishly unpleasant tone, forcing the audience to navigate whom to empathize with and what to derive pleasure from.

Disgust v. aesthetic pluralism

The most apparent example of this aversive characterization is the portrayal of Mantanand its creator, Pierre Delacroix. To give some context, a minstrel show was a widely celebrated and prevalent entertainment tradition, within both Hollywood and the broader U.S. public, where white actors would don blackface and put on exaggeratedly mocking performances meant to highlight and ridicule African-Americans’ supposed inferiority. As Cheryl Thompson notes in Blackface in Hollywood: Past and Present,

“Blackface minstrelsy has left an indelible mark on Hollywood, shaping racial archetypes and narratives that persist in film to this day.”[4]

The evocation of this bigoted history in the film, thus brings with it a host of associated feelings — such as anger, resentment, even disgust — which become part of the aesthetic experience.

“I’m sick and tired of niggers and I’m not gonna take it anymore!” From the first performance of Mantan.

We see this in Mantan’s first performance. Up until that point, the film has been presented as a DV-shot procedural of Delacroix’s struggles and frustrations at the network. Delacroix, in his aggressively exaggerated presentation, cadence and mannerisms, as well as his bigoted corporate milieu, may come across as uncomfortable and grating to behold, but his depiction never really passes the threshold into full on abhorrence. But when Mantan comes on, the film breaks into a 35mm film stage-show with the most abrasive racial depictions seen in film since Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's .[5] As Mantan and his buddy Sleep'n’Eat call themselves “coons”, salivate over the “aroma of high cotton”, long for a time when “niggas knew they place”, imitate crack babies, bemoan welfare leachers and announce that they’re “sick and tired of niggers”, a viewer struggles not to experience a phenomenological sensation of shock, horror and revolt which drags you out of the diegesis of the narrative. But this disgust is neither unwarranted, nor unintentional. The film in many ways weaponizes it, evokes it actively, to jolt viewers into awareness of the historical exploitation and capitalization of African-Americans by the entertainment industry and its legacy within the current late-capitalist neoliberal market.

I find this narrative strategy particularly interesting when seen in light of what Ngai calls aesthetic pluralism. Aesthetic pluralism describes how, particularly in an age such as late-capitalism, aesthetic expressions are received as equally valuable and worthy of inclusion – foregoing any “critical discourses of exclusion”.[6] This “pluralism”, at first glance, might appear as a somewhat benign attitude, in that it allows for a multiplicity of expressions and approaches them with an open mind. But such open-minded plurality also risks actively negating critical discussions about what should and shouldn’t be deemed aesthetically worthy – imposing a hegemony of inclusion where expressions that might be actively harmful or exploitative to certain demographics are accepted as legitimate regardless of the consequences they have on society as a whole.

Mantan, and the relation its creator has to it, embodies this predicament. At first, Delacroix pitches the show as a hidden ploy to get fired from his contract, fed up that his racist and profit-driven boss rejects his genuine ideas about trying to create a show that speaks to the African-American middle-class experience in the United States. But after the show becomes a huge success, Delacroix adopts the attitude that the show is a poignant satire, and that his vision of creating a show so unabashedly racist and bigoted that he’d get fired was never true to begin with. This narrative arc exemplifies the potential pitfalls of aesthetic pluralism. If everything is aesthetically worthy, what are the limits of what we find tolerable? Is Triumph of The Will [7] a subversive portrait of Nazi Germany’s self-aggrandizement? Is The Birth of a Nation [8] an ironic depiction of the United States’ fragile foundations? Most would probably answer No, but operating from a pluralist perspective, such discussions are legitimate. Furthermore, does it matter? If everything can be approached as equally aesthetically worthy of expression – in so far as the expression is pleasurable or entertaining – what is to stop whatever horrifying, racist or vilifying expressions that have been or have yet to come? To be approached, recontextualized, consumed, even lauded on the same level as all other aesthetic expressions?

Even more troublesome, and perhaps most important here, discussions arguing against such a position risk becoming totally negated. This is something Herbert Marcuse termed “repressive tolerance”,[9] where he argues that pluralism – in his theory mainly political, but Ngai and this article use the term to discuss culture as well – oxymoronically risks becoming oppressive in its acceptance of any-and-all perspectives and negation of discussions of exclusion.[10] If all perspectives are to be tolerated and allowed into the public sphere, as part of cultural consciousness, what is there to stop these perspectives from becoming viewed as equally worthy or commensurable? One could of course critique it, but in doing so one easily risks becoming or appearing intolerable. As Ellen Rooney points out, this problematic has plagued Marxism since the mid 20th century, where critique of pluralism is viewed as authoritarian or anti-democratic, thus making it irrelevant or incompatible with modern paradigms of tolerance. [11]As such, critique becomes negated while bad faith or insidious expressions are given room to breathe.

In Bamboozled, this dynamic is exemplified in a scene where Delacroix and his assistant have a meeting with his boss and a PR Consultant to discuss how they should manage potential negative reactions to the show. Here, the PR Consultant lays out what she names the “Mantan Manifesto”, indicating some tenets on how the show will guard itself against hostile response.

First, the “manifesto” suggests that the show should employ black staff as a veneer to protect itself against accusations of racism, attempting to render accusations of bigotry as ethnically irrelevant and oxymoronically racist in-and-of themself.
Second, it states, “Let the audience decide!” – ultimately foregoing any responsibility for what is entered into the public sphere, rather letting the audience, or the market, decide what is or isn’t tolerable.
Third, it attacks its detractors directly – “Who put these critics in charge anyway? (...) These so-called cultural police?” – framing any and all critique as a form of censorship attempting to limit or control the cultural diaspora.
Fourth, it again implies that its critics are bigoted and intolerable – “Who determines what is black?” – arguing that the characters of the minstrel show are worthy of representation along the same lines as anyone else, thus arguing for commensurability.
Five – “Mantan is a satire.” – which, as discussed earlier, functions as a get-out-of-jail-free-card for exaggerated portrayals of ugly stereotypes.
Something whichtenet Six – “If they can’t take a joke, you know what? Eff’em!” – confirms, but also makes actively oppressive – in that all critique is rendered as an intolerable lack of humor or understanding of pleasure which seeks to control what the audience can or cannot enjoy.

Thus, the show is free to be as vile or racist as it wants without ever having to answer for it.

Pluralism and ideology

The irony here is that none of these tenets merge from the actual creators themselves, but are rather corporately mandated from their white bosses. This may point to an ideological and historical dimension inherent to aesthetic pluralism. As Ngai, Rooney and Hal Foster argues, aesthetic pluralism is almost intrinsically connected to the values of the era of late capitalism, the ideology of neoliberalism and the culture of postmodernism.

“Pluralism, more than any political theory currently in circulation, dominates our way of understanding democracy to such an extent that ‘democracy’ and ‘political pluralism’ tend to be perceived as identical (...) commentators from disciplines across the humanities have increasingly used ‘pluralism’ and ‘postmodernity’ as synonyms for each other.”[12]

Postmodernity as an epoch is fruitless to discuss without an understanding of its leading mode of cultural expression – postmodernism – and its dominant ideology – neoliberal late-capitalism. As Jameson outlines, postmodernism can be understood as the cultural expression or logic of late-capitalism that emerged after the end of World War 2, and which permeates itself throughout the present-day. It crystallized through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, where a series of crises such as “the oil crisis”, “the end of the international gold standard”, “the end of the great wave of 'wars of national liberation' and the beginning of the end of traditional communism” – was countered with the rise of transnational conglomerates in tandem with the widespread dominance of mass-media (through print, internet, television, film) – which led to a global post-industrial economy where everything, not just material resources and products, but also immaterial dimensions such as culture itself, became transformed into commodified aesthetics and consumable products.[12]

And this cultural logic, where all and anything is subject to commodification, has, as David Harvey explains, direct ties to the ideology of neoliberalism where the goal is to establish and maintain a political-economic system that seeks to maximize the role of markets while minimizing state intervention.[13][14][15] From such a perspective, where the primacy of the market and consumption is the ultimate ideal, pluralism becomes the leading virtue or ethos of the age, ensuring that any-and-all commodities are received with the maximal potential for success. And as such, from a structural or industrial perspective, the true value of an aesthetic expression is measured in how it performs in the market. Which ironically, as the novel Erasure [16] and its film adaptation American Fiction [17] highlight, mostly leads to a sort of anti-pluralist hegemony where only profitable or successful representations of identities are celebrated and produced, no matter how limiting or reductive they might be.

In Bamboozled, this reductionism is perhaps made most clear in the conversation Delacroix has with his father, and the voiceover that follows, after watching his father perform a rather successful, but commercially modest stand-up routine. In the green room, they discuss his father’s career with Delacroix critiquing his father’s lack of financial success and arguing that it must be a sign of his inadequacy as a performer:

Delacroix: “How did you end up here?”
Father: “I got too much pride. Too much…uh…dignity…integrity. I can’t do that Hollywood stuff, man. I can’t say that stuff they want me to say.”
Delacroix: “There’s gotta be something more than that. I mean – reality. I mean, maybe you weren’t funny enough.”
Father: "You must be crazy man. Didn’t you hear that audience tonight? They were with me.”

Although his father seems to be satisfied with his craft, Delacroix critiques him afterwards, calling him a “broken man” and “a strong man with conviction, integrity, principles – and look where it had gotten him.” Delacroix announces that he has chosen a superior artistic path:

“I had to ask myself, did I want to end up where he was? Hell, emphatically, no!”

Artistic endeavor is thus reduced to market activity — success or failure determined by its life in the market.