Meanwhile, for those who have created it and who play in it, the show becomes an escalatingly malignant force. Bamboozled tracks its impact on all fronts, diving into melodrama for its domino-effect tragic conclusion. Even for Lee, the net is cast too wide here. Yet there is absolutely no denying the acuity and power of Lee's satiric vision. He's working in the classic Augustan tradition here, the tradition of Swift and of Pope.
Nothing is sacred.
No one is spared. The ecstatically appreciative audience for Bamboozled' s appalling modern minstrel show is both black and white. The PR hotshot hired to anticipate and head off trouble for the show is a woman named Goldfarb, with a PhD. in African-American studies from Yale. And so it goes, in classic Spike Lee style. The prime target may be African-American TV sitcom, but that's just a starting point.