Description: "An introduction to Critical Race Theory through a close analysis of Spike Lee's film Bamboozled"--
Brief description:
Alessandra Raengoteaches in the Moving Image Studies doctoral program at Georgia
State University, USA. Her research focuses on blackness in the visual and aesthetic fields. She is the author of On the Sleeve of the Visual: Race as Face Value, and coordinator of liquid blackness, a research project on blackness and aesthetics.
Review Quotes: 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 Bamboozledthat 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