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Uncle Remus and the race war (cp. Preminger's The Human Factor), a long piss on Song of the South and the society it represents. Ralph Bakshi has no use for the honey Disney pours on minstrelsy, his "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a magnificent Scatman Crothers number ("I've been red, white and blue'd on") that sets the furious tone. From Crackertown to Harlem and the top of the heap, a change of scenery for Br'er Rabbit (Philip Michael Thomas), Br'er Bear (Barry White) and Preacher Fox (Charles Gordone). The Super Fly rise for one and the pugilistic ring for the other, meanwhile the reverend meets his match in Black Jesus' cousin, naked before the bilked congregation on an electrified cross. "Segregate, integrate, masturbate," down go the police and the Mafia, one and the same. (The crooked flatfoot is dipped in blackface and left to shoot it out with the NYPD, the Godfather is a bloated subway gremlin with a brood of sodomites.) Miss America the statuesque bimbo, she spreads her torpedo thighs and sweetly cries "rape." "Aw, I shoulda fucked her when I had the chance..." The cartoonist's mind and the pungent icons within, a history of caricatures dilated and detonated. Ugly images for an ugly situation, figures elongated and bulbous with the revulsion of bigotry, the cultural Tar Baby that grows stickier with each stab. Bakshi lets his trenchant fireballs zigzag and collide and, at times, spin into private reveries—the doleful sister rocking with child recounts the tale of the straying cockroach she came to love, a rat floats into the monologue and is blasted between the eyes after flashing the Mickey grin. "I didn't wanna be hurt no more. You know what I mean." Vehement, plaintive, vibrant voices for a fable told in the middle of a failed escape. Lee's Bamboozled takes up the exorcism.
--- Fernando F. Croce |