Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled

Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled offers readers a rigorously researched analysis of Spike Lee’s challenging film rendered through the multi-focal lens of Critical Race Theory. Raengo argues for the usefulness of engaging Film Studies through an understanding of blackness as a complex constellation of discursive modalities that extend across scholarly fields and that cannot be reduced to simplistic frameworks of essentialism. She then realizes her arguments in an eloquently written analysis of Bamboozled that considers it as a visual, an aesthetic, and a fundamentally political text that demands viewer engagement on multiple levels. It is an exciting addition to scholarship seeking to ask new questions about race and American film. * Paula J. Massood, Professor of Film Studies, Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA *
Critical Race Theory and Bamboozled carries off a feat we don’t expect of an ordinary textbook: it delivers a clear, comprehensive introduction to a complex body of scholarship without ever draining the latter of nuance, force, or political urgency. This beautifully written book is essential reading not only for teachers and students who want to adapt the insights of Critical Race Theory to a concrete practice of analyzing film and video images, but for anyone who seeks a better understanding of the racialized structures of power and vision that ricochet between legal, political, and aesthetic forms of representation—and how to read them in everyday life. And really: who doesn’t? * Meghan Sutherland, Associate Professor of Cinema & Visual Studies, University of Toronto *