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The Extent to Which Spike Lee Softened Malcolm X for Middle America
Mastoni
| To what extent did Spike Lee's film about
Malcolm X represent the civil right leader?
Malcolm's life was slightly simplified for
the purpose of trying to reach a mass market.
And it does reach out to its audience beautifully.
The film speaks of a common complaint that
there is a lack of leadership in the civil
rights movement as we come to close of this
century. In a sense, Lee is trying to fill
that void. He has created a kind of iconostasis;
a wall that is at once a display of the patron
saint of Militancy and quite impenetrable
to those with interest in the details of
Malcolm's character. In order to sell him
to a mass market, Lee was forced to soften
both the tone of Malcolm's message and the
content of the theology, and dogma of the
Nation of Islam. The life of Malcolm X is a complicated subject for a film biography. Few people have lived, and been dedicated to, such extremes of vision and character. Outwardly, he appears to have lived several completely different lives. Yet, instead of starting from scratch with new each Malcolm, every metamorphosis was built-on, and of the ruins of his previous life. It can be clearly seen in what ways the realities of Malcolm's existence not only allowed for, but demanded the evolution of one of the most influential leaders and social critics of the twentieth century. It was an evolution replete with contradictions of human struggle and failing. And through these struggles, he defined himself. His crises took him to the very edge of extinction. In addition, each stage of his life brought new vision and understanding of his world. To some, he was a hero whose revolutionary ideas gave voice, empowerment and spiritual liberation to victims of American apartheid. He was the only person with the courage to speak the truth about race in America. To others, he was a demagogue whose hate filled rhetoric set back the cause of civil rights and made the work of other leaders such as Martin Luther King more difficult. It is tempting to choose sides for the sake of clarity. However, after reviewing many of the commentaries and artifacts of, and about Malcolm X, I believe that at different times in his life, he was all of those things and more. Spike Lee's film treated Malcolm's childhood in a series of flash backs and voice-overs. In these, Mr. Lee revealed some of the essences of the character. Malcolm Little (his given name), was of course black. But his mother was the result of her mother having been raped by a white man. The rape had created a family rage that pervaded his mother and Malcolm. Lee film fails to get at the inner pain that must have been the result. Low self-esteem and at time self-hatred must surly have been the by-product of being distant result of this rape. Voice-overs in the film describe, "I know nothing except her shame about it. I remember hearing her say she was glad that she had never seen him. It was of course, because of him that I got my reddish-brown "marine" colour of skin, and my hair of the same colour." "I learned to hate every drop of that white rapist's blood that is in me." The film actual beginning takes great delight in showing Malcolm's teenage years. The Alex Haley book shows a much darker world than Lee is willing to paint. While the film version seems to be enjoying the zoot suitors, ranks of the 'cool cats' in Boston. He adopted the slang and style of dress associated with the crowd. This is quite normal for young teenagers everywhere. What is different and relevant is the reason for adopting the hairstyle called the 'conk'. Malcolm explained the experience: "How ridiculous I was! Stupid enough to stand there simply lost in admiration of my hair now looking 'white' … This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man's hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are 'inferior' - and white people 'superior' - that they will even violate and mutilate their God created bodies to try to look 'pretty' by white standards" (Haley 54). Malcolm's early history is only touched on by Mr. Lee's film. Yet it is the very essence of his character. It was a point of family history that his father, The Reverend Earl little, since before Malcolm's birth had been a target of the Ku Klux Klan. The family was often threatened, their house was burned to the ground and eventually, Reverend Little was killed by the Klan (Myers 14-21). At such a grievous time, one would think those institutions designed to lend support could be counted on or, at very least, not make things worse. However, the institutional racism of both the insurance industry and child welfare succeeded in compounding their problems. Their life insurance company refused to pay after Reverend Little's murder, starting that his death was a suicide. This was a conclusion clearly not supported by the facts. As a result of the poverty that ensued, and the racism that made it difficult for Louise Little to keep a job, the Little's ended on welfare. This was a humiliation of these proud people. Ultimately, this humiliation contributed to Mrs. Little's nervous break-down. According to Malcolm, the child welfare worker's attempt to take her children away, pushed his mother over the edge and resulted in her spending 26 years in a mental hospital. All of this is seen in quick cuts between scenes of Malcolm becoming a thug. At times this fast cutting creates some interesting juxtapositions which give us a glimpse inside the character. At other times, they are confusing or just so much Hollywood trivialization. Malcolm came to believe at a very clearly age that the only way to get ahead in the racist world was to break the rules. He had noticed that the only African-American's he saw with money were gamblers. He observed: " … If you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on his life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely. It's like the Negro in America seeing the white men win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck" (Haley 16). It was on these words that Malcolm Little based his entire approach to life. As the film dramatically shows, this was his model for the workings of the world, his creed. And his low self-esteem as a result of the bigotry, abuse and humiliation he had endured as a child left without the strength to resist such a path, or the ability to foresee its consequences. Thus far in Malcolm's life, he had established a system of thought and a working code of ethics. To get ahead, one must cheat. Whatever it took to 'live the good life', it was worth the risk. As he had 'no mercy or compassion' for society (22), he saw no harmful consequences in the application of his system of thought. The result was, by the age of twenty, Malcolm Little had become a drug dealer (and user), a pimp, a numbers runner and a thief. "A woman was nothing but another commodity" said Malcolm (134). He was cheating the system exactly the way he set out to do. It is likely he would have continued to operate under this code of conduct if he hadn't been forced to reevaluate it. Prison was his first real proof that his approach to life was seriously flawed. In prison, he realized that his system of thought had failed him. This is where the film makes several departures from the facts. In the film, Malcolm is given instruction into the Nation of Islam by a fellow inmate named Brother Braines. Malcolm's Biography tells it a bit differently. Malcolm received a letter from his brother Philbert. The letter told him that the Holiness Church would pray for him. At first Malcolm was 'in no mood for such a nonsense' but several letters from the family, and with nothing else in his life, he began to consider that they might know something he didn't. His brother Philbert's first instructions were simple ones that rang true to Malcolm because they had been his mother's advice many years earlier. Philbert said, "Malcolm, don't eat any more pork, and don't smoke anymore cigarettes. I'll show you how to get out of prison" (155). There is a little in the way of a serious exploration of the ideas of the Nation of Islam. Not that I'm expecting a major theological discourse. What's troublesome is that the omissions are designed to avoid offending middle America by shielding them from the laments of their beliefs that might be considered by the uninitiated as offensive or ever laughable. The actual religious instruction in the film is somewhat reminiscent of Yoda teaching Luke Skywalker in Star Wars movies. It lacks substance. But on a dramatic level, it works quite well. While in prison, Malcolm had abandoned the failed system of thought he had used as a young man and had adopted the "Nation of Islam". It is in excerpts of Malcolm's speeches during this period that the film is at its most effective. This is partly because of Denzel Washington's amazing ability to become Malcolm X. Washington said, "Everything I have done as an actor has been in preparation for this" (Randolf 125). Malcolm X spoke of both black and white America in ways that tried to knock down walls rather than build bridges between the races. This often offended people of all races who saw their own views as more reasonable and healing to America's racial wounds. Malcolm's ideas were uncompromising. His words cut like a knife to the heart of racist America. This is the greatest barometer of the character of Malcolm X. The following passages, from late 1963 and March of 1964 (one month before his pilgrimage to Mecca) show him as a man so passionate for justice, that he would let no pretense of civility stand in his way: "The civil rights struggle involves the black man taking his case to the white man's court. But when he fights it at the human rights level, it is a different situation. It opens the door to take Uncle Sam to the world court. The black man doesn't have to go to court to be free. Uncle Sam should be taken to court and made to tell why the black man is not free in so-called free society" (Breitman 53-54). Malcolm's cogent remarks were often intended to shock the comfortable, self-righteous attitudes of 1960's middle America. At that time, he was not interested in making allies of white people. He was interested in waking the nation to its legacy of racism and oppression. The following excerpts are from letters Malcolm wrote just a little over a month later. In the film, they were read by Malcolm's wife Betty (Angela Basset) over the most amazing footage of Malcolm in Mecca. These words suggest an epiphany, and offer no less than a massage of hope and healing that was new to Malcolm. 4/20/64 "Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colours and races here in this ancient holy land … I have eaten from the same plate with people whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white - all the way from Cairo to Jedda and even in the Holy City of Mecca itself - and I felt the same sincerity in the words and deeds of these 'white' Muslims that I felt among the African Muslims … " (Lee, Malcolm X). Malcolm's return to America, the attacks on his family and Malcolm's assassination at the hands of the Nation of Islam and/or CIA (Laurino 15-22) are handled with great cinematic flair. But ultimately it is Malcolm's Hajj, which makes the film memorable as cinema, because it imparts both the epic and personal to work. It is impossible to capture any human being in a single work of art. So it is unfair task to place on Mr. Lee. Ideally, one should place truth before image, style or profit in the attempt to make any work of art. This after all is what is supposed to set an independent film-maker apart from Hollywood. There are some highly successful aspects to the film. However, one wish Mr. Lee had been more conscious of his subject and less conscious of the target audience. Shelby Steele in his article for the New Republican wrote, "It was Spike Lee's unthinking of loyalty to going racial orthodoxy, I believe, that led him to miss more than he saw, and to produce a film that is finally part fact, part fiction, and entirely middlebrow" (30). It is not just politics that gives this film its 'middle of the road' quality, it is the film industry itself. Whatever Mr. Lee choose to say about Malcolm X, his approach had to be entertainment first, and history second. WORK CITED Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973. Laurino, Maria. "Who Killed Malcolm X." Village Voice. 26 Feb. 1985: 15+. Malcolm X. Dir. Spike Lee. Perf. Denzel Washington, Angela Basset, Albert Hall, Al Freeman. 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks Production, Warner Brothers, 1992. Malcolm X Speaks. Ed. George Breitman. New York: First Grove P. 1966. Myers, Walter Dean. Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1993. Randolph, Laura B. "Denzel Washington and the Making of Malcolm X." Ebony Dec. 1992: 124+. Steele, Shelby. "And big. Malcolm Little." New Republic. 21 Dec. 1992: 27-31. |
