Abstract

The first time the author watched Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, the film literally moved her body 3000 miles. In this video reView, Bamboozled moves the author again, this time to the very space that gives the film its continued, urgent relevance: the archive. In moving and being moved, the author surprisingly discovers a little-known archival collection in Buffalo, NY that directly relates to Lee’s film and its usage of black memorabilia. ReVIEW BAMBOOZLED: ARCHIVAL AFFECTS chronicles the author’s journey into this archive and her remarkable discussion with the archivist and her research assistant about the stakes of that collection, Spike Lee’s film, and the affects of both. It also reViews archival practice, showing the tensions of working with what the archivist acknowledges to be, in some ways, “the uncollectible.”