Response to "Bamboozled".

In class, we watched "Bamboozled", a film about race in the television industry. I thought the movie was somewhat confusing because Pierre seemed like he would maintain his role as the moral, honorable character that he was in the beginning when he first hatched his plan. Towards the end, however, we see he's been ruined and actually is not much better than those he was protesting against. When he attempts to sabotage his assistant, Sloan, all respect for his character was lost. It seems Pierre convinces himself that his show is "okay" when the money starts pouring in, even though the original idea was to come up with the most outrageous, stereotypical show that he could.

The purpose of this, of course, was to illustrate to the network people how far they had gone as far as pushing stereotypically black comedy. I agree that we need to put an end to formulaic black television. Disregarding sports, news, and reality shows, it seems like black people are only on TV if it's for comedy (either sitcom or stand-up). It is almost as if "black" is a genre. Moreover, it seems that people really don't know where to draw the line on stereotypes. During the scene where Pierre, Dunwitty, Sloan, and the public relations advisor met, one of the characters said, "It can't be racist because the writer is black." I feel that this statement is, unfortunately, the opinion of many. Oftentimes people will use this as a justification. They will claim that it's okay for them to say something about a group of people because someone of that group said it themselves. To me, this is taking something that one person says and assuming that it is the opinion of their entire group. Whether it be a racial, ethnic, religious, or...