<p> In his 2000 film <em>Bamboozled</em>, Spike Lee indicted minstrelsy, its black and white perpetrators along with its performers and any audience that claps for Sambo and Zip Coon. Many who saw it in its first run (myself included) were more puzzled than enlightened, but Bamboozled has enjoyed a vigorous afterlife on DVD and in critical discourse. In <em>Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop</em> (W.W. Norton), Lee's film is understood as part of a distinguished lineage of anti-minstrelsy commentary stretching back from Bill Cosby through Ralph Ellison to Frederick Douglass.</p> <p> Authors Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen infuse their fascinating cultural history with tension and complexity by adding that blackface minstrel shows were seldom the unalloyed evil condemned by their critics. And they make further distinctions in their nuanced account. White minstrelsy, in which Caucasians cork up and perform caricatures of black music and society, is racist; black minstrelsy, in which African Americans cork up to entertain their own people and (often) slyly parody the white minstrels, is not. But the qualifications continue, with passing nods to the possibility that some whites in black face were engaged in acts of self-liberation through carnival spectacle and some of their darker counterparts had absorbed their society's racism through their skin. </p> <p>And the controversy in all its shades of meaning continues through the present day. Spike Lee and Stanley Crouch have called out many rappers as modern day coon shows. Taylor and Austen agree, though they add that a little coonery isn't always a bad thing and that black-on-black condemnations of minstrelsy may often reveal class or regional bias. And where do Eminem and Vanilla Ice get off? And yes, there is always the question of context. Is it fine for black entertainers to spoof themselves before black audiences but not so cool if whites listen in and laugh? </p> <p>Spike Lee and Tyler Perry, respectively the most distinguished and the most popular contemporary African-American filmmakers, have snipped at each other over many of these points with Lee representing the analytical heft of W.E.B. DuBois and Perry embodying the Bojangles spirit. Images of minstrelsy, once America's most popular form of entertainment and now a repressed set of archetypes that continue to tug at our culture, “has spawned impressive works of both hilarious, shameless abandon and poignant, deliberate condemnation,” Taylor and Austen conclude. The allure of minstrelsy, perhaps, has made our culture both richer and poorer. </p>
