When the major networks announced sitcom line-ups for fall 1999, not a single minority person was cast, though minor networks featured “The PJs” and “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer,” both filled with Black stereotypes. In Bamboozled, Director Spike Lee delivers a riposte to the networks, critiquing even the portrayal of Blacks in “The Jeffersons” and “The Cosby Show.” At the beginning of the film, Continental Network System Vice President Dunwitty (played by Michael Rapaport) demands at a staff meeting of his team of writers that they must come up with something new. Afterward, Dunwitty tells Pierre Delacroix (played by Damon Wayans), the only Black writer on the staff, that his proposed series about successful Blacks will not sell, so he must think up something spectacular. Delacroix soon spots two panhandlers, Manray and Womack, and decides to design a minstrel show for them as “Mantan”(played by Savion Glover) and “Sleep ‘N Eat” (played by Tommy Davison), who respectively tapdance and tell self-deprecating jokes as slaves on an Alabama plantation. Designed by Delacroix as a satirical response to Dunwitty to end Black stereotypes, he says “I want them to be offended. I want to wake America up.” However, the show proves to be a smash hit among White Americans, who give Delacroix an Emmy. Ultimately, the former panhandlers cannot take the humiliation and quit. After the film ends, a montage of clips shows how Black performers have been demeaned over the years on film and TV (but excludes Jinn’s bumbling valet, the Steppin Fetchit of last year’s Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace). Although longtime filmviewers are well aware of the sad history of how Blacks were exploited over the years, Spike Lee informs the younger generation anew but appears not to notice the nonstereotypic roles of Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, and many others. MH