No one – and I mean absolutely no one – could have made a film like Bamboozled other than Spike Lee. This isn’t only due to the fact that few filmmakers have dedicated so much of their platform to continuously exploring different aspects of race relations throughout history, but also because Lee possesses a skillful anger that pervades so much of his work. He’s a bold filmmaker whose intentional disregard for subtlety makes his work so compulsively effective, while still allowing him to exercise a kind of artistic integrity that has set him apart as one of the finest filmmakers working in the medium currently. Bamboozled is a terrifying film for a number of reasons, and Lee crafts what is essentially a horror film, only stopping short of the actual tangible qualities that normally go into scaring us, but retaining every bit of disquieting malice that makes them so effective. Lee is certainly not a filmmaker we can accuse of ever not doing enough to tell his stories – the only reason he remains a divisive voice in contemporary cinema is because of his refusal to abide by conventions or play by any conceivable rule, other than making sure to make use of every corner of his rapidly-growing platform to make some statement, whatever it may be. Bamboozled is, without question, his most divisive film, which it has consistently used to its advantage, invoking discussions that a more nuanced or subdued film would not have dared. In many ways, while not encapsulating the true scope of what Lee could do in the way some of his other films do, both narratively and structurally, the film is the perfect embodiment of the unmitigated genius of a director who has never been one to settle for the status quo, turning what is essentially an anecdotal concept into one of the twenty-first century’s most disconcerting portrayals of race that remains just as timely and terrifying today as it did twenty years ago.

There’s a quality about Lee’s films that is almost universally applicable to all of them – they tend to hold up exceptionally well, not only from an artistic standpoint (with some of his directorial style remaining quite profound to this very day), but because they explore timely themes that have, for better or worse, never gone out of fashion, at least not in the way socially-charged films tend to. The difference between good satire and great satire is that the former will speak to the issues of the day and be irrelevant the next, while the latter lingers on much longer, going from the entertainment of one generation, to the historical documentation of another. Bamboozled unequivocally belongs to the latter category, being a work that situates itself as being less-inclined to being a momentary piece of entertainment, and more as an essential text in which evidence that supports the numerous themes can converge, in order to not only make a statement, but convey a much broader message at the exact same time. Lee is very good at this – looking at all of his films, they tend to take a multimedia approach, employing fragments of everything from literature, television, music and current affairs, into a compelling living scrapbook of a particular set of issues. In this case, representations of race in the media take centre-stage, which is a topic that has perpetually been relevant since inclusion became a necessary footnote on the agenda of every member of the industry, whether sincere or just a way of filling in a quota. Lee, when taking on this issue, was certainly never going to be subtle – and the criticisms of Bamboozled as being in poor taste, while perhaps too hasty (as it doesn’t consider the full scope of what the film is saying, as there is far more to it than meets the eye), do carry some relevance, if at least for the fact that the director outright refuses to be anything but confrontational of this issue, going to some unexpectedly dark places to tackle this subject – it’s bold in theory, it’s hideous in execution and its entirely necessary.

Twenty years on, Bamboozled is as profoundly unsettling as it was at its inception, and whether you want to attribute this to Lee’s seemingly infallible ability to always capture the zeitgeist by consistently having his finger on the cultural pulse to the point where he makes works that are ahead of their time, or the more unsettling fact that these issues are still relevant today, decades later, it’s difficult to deny the exasperating brilliance of this film. This is a film that intentionally seeks to be divisive, which can be seen from the opening moments, in which digital filmmaking is employed, not only as a means to explore the technology, but also to take advantage of the rough, unpolished appearance that it offered films in its infancy, which complements the unsettling nature of the story around it. Bamboozled is raw in every conceivable way, lacking the precision or outright visual splendour of many of Lee’s other films, which some may chalk up to the fact that he may have been trying something new, without taking into account the narrative significance it has. It all works towards constructing a film that isn’t supposed to ease us into our seats and relax us, but rather the contrary – Lee wants us to feel some genuine emotion, whether it be rage, despair or unbridled fear, all of which are simmering below this film, reaching a breaking point, after which there is no return – Spike Lee is here to say something, and he’ll be damned if he’s not going to get the message across, regardless of how many viewers may be bewildered by his frank an unapologetic approach. While he’s certainly proven himself to be a supremely talented director in a multitude of ways, Lee is first and foremost an artistic provocateur, and his incredibly detailed method of dismissing the entire concept of going about telling a story like this in an understated, measured manner has truly been one of the aspects that has established him as an essential voice in cinema over the past few decades.

Perhaps the most important provocateur to work in cinema (or at least the most palatable), John Waters, once stated that in order to have good taste, you need to appreciate bad taste. This was in reference to the camp sensibilities of his films and how he appropriated the trashy and inelegant in his work. A similar concept went into the making of Bamboozled, a film that tells a story that isn’t so far removed from the kind of cheap, disposable media that inspired much of Waters’ career. Lee is traversing an impossibly narrow boundary with this film, and in the process taking on an endless amount of theoretical content that remains starkly resonant to the present day. He is primarily putting together an indictment on the entertainment industry, one that proposes to have the best interests of the general public at heart, but will betray their good intentions when it comes to making a profit. The media is a minstrel show, which is not something that is unique to Lee’s work (there have been numerous satires that have attacked this very concept, most notably Sidney Lumet’s Network, which is openly referenced in this film), but it certainly hasn’t been subjected to the gleeful anger with which Lee attacks it here. This is primarily a work of metafictional cinema, especially in how it explores the hypocrisy of the very industry that made its existence possible. Like all the best satires of its kind, Bamboozled is almost cannibalistic, with Lee clearly demonstrating a keen awareness of the artistic consequences that come with setting this film loose – which is essentially the reason why very few could have convincingly put this film together since it takes an enormous amount of self-assuredness to create something that extends beyond cheekily poking fun, and actually runs the risk of being repulsive, but just as it’s about to cross that threshold that leads into the realm of the taboo, Lee pulls back, with the message teetering dangerously close on complete eruption.

However, despite the anger that simmers beneath this film, Bamboozled is surprisingly proactive. Putting aside his socially charged intentions, one of Lee’s most fascinating qualities as a filmmaker is that not a single frame of his films are wasted. They each carry some meaning, which makes a film like this, in spite of the apoplectic satire, remarkably lucid and free of self-indulgence. The difference between good taste and bad taste is timing, and there hasn’t been a work of satire in recent memory that embraces both with the kind of attention as this one. This isn’t just an aimless work brimming with fury – Lee is far too creative an individual to reduce his multitude of ideas to essentially a long visual essay. Instead, he employs a kind of subversive comedy that panders to our inherent appreciation of the absurd, while gradually declining to the point where it becomes almost unbearably terrifying. The audience is tasked to constantly question how far the director is willing to go with this story, with the film proving to go further than any logical person would have expected. Lee pulls out all the stops, gradually allowing the surreal comic genius of it all to deteriorate until all that is left is anarchy in the most distilled, unsettling form imaginable. What starts as a joke keeps going, until we’re confronted with the raw truth – the novelty of satire eventually declines to a point of disquieting terror, embodied through the characters played by Savion Glover and Tommy Davidson, who have the difficult task of taking on two different personas each – the logical-minded, modern African-American men looking to be a part of the new America, as well as the crude caricatures of black culture, representations of opinions that are archaic, but not all that outdated, just far more subdued than they are here.

Like any work of satire, Bamboozled is far more effective in practice than it is in theory, and the further we break it down, the more the film loses the raw brutality that takes the audience by surprise. Lee is an absolute genius, and while he has made many films that touch on different issues of the African-American experience, Bamboozled is one that is perhaps his most polarizing, not only because it isn’t fearful of the repercussions that could come from putting this film out there, at the risk of some faction of myopic viewers not understanding that its a satire (which seems implausible, but experience has taught one to always assume the worst), or more socially-conscious viewers seeing this as regressive when in actuality, it embodies the true spirit of what satire is supposed to be. As a species, we seem to have grown to believe satire as simply being biting chunks of current affairs siphoned through the lens of darkly comical, delightfully quirky humour – we have lost the acclimation to works that not only unsettle us but tear us from our position of comfort and instead confront us with reality, verging on outright terror. There are simply not enough works that are nearly as intrepid as what Lee does with Bamboozled, and to find the poignant honest in this film is almost a revelatory experience. The fact that this film is both a historical account (as evident by the chilling final sequence, in which Lee presents a montage of real-life footage of media representations of black culture) and a haunting manifesto on the current state of the industry, is exceptionally terrifying and speaks to a higher sense of despair that is broadcast consistently throughout this film.

As much as one thinks this will be a bold and entertaining affair, there are few films that leave the viewer as exhausted as this, in the best way possible – to have the air knocked out of you by a work of art is always quite an experience, and is undeniably the sign of success, even if it isn’t the most pleasant experience. This isn’t the easiest work to discuss – not only is it layered with meaning that takes far more in-depth introspection than can be afforded in a single piece, but also since my own perspective is inherently not going to be fully-encompassing of the multitude of harrowing themes Lee presents here. Ultimately, Bamboozled is a provocative work that operates as a comedy only in appearance – there are few films as intentionally unpleasant and uncomfortable as this, and the pure chaos he infuses into every frame is beyond comprehension. While commenting on a lack of subtlety and a bold approach is essential to discussing Lee’s work, Bamboozled appears to be something else entirely, a ferocious satire that isn’t satisfied with just deconstructing preconceived notions and long-held biases, opting to rather be a haunting evisceration of the institution and those who, whether directly or not, perpetuated and dissipated these biases. It is a relentless work of pure, unbridled fury produced by an artist who manages to say more with a single scene than many do with entire films. Bamboozled is an honestly unforgettable experience, a stark adventure into the callous, abrasive underworld of the entertainment industry, where the unassuming viewer is invited into this idiosyncratic arena of persuasion and forced into a position of subservience into the vision of a director who, quite frankly, has had enough. While he is a director who has worked in many different genres and whose most distinctive trait is that he doesn’t necessarily have a single style, Lee makes a film that stands out in his oeuvre – it wasn’t successful at the time, and it still struggles to be viewed as the towering masterpiece of satire it is today. However, there’s very little doubt that he did something incredible with Bamboozled, a daring and bold work that is relentlessly committed to a message that transcends the form and needs to enter into the active discourse and reach some kind of resolution, sooner rather than later.