Sinner, Saint, Troublemaker, Savior, Racist, Ex-con, Family Man, Rifleman: Spike Lee Creates a Brand New Myth
Published Thurs. Nov. 19, 1992
UCSD Guardian Hiatus Arts & Entertainment
Backstory: My most high profile entertainment feature as a Guardian staffer. This profile of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X was the lead entertainment story in that week’s Hiatus entertainment section. I did contribute smaller film and music reviews through the late ‘90s.
As a filmmaker, Spike Lee tends to wear his ethnicity on his sleeve as he works “the system” to finance his art. In the process, he has helped popularize black culture as part of the bigger picture of American pop culture.
Now, Lee has undertaken the task of education everyone about Malcolm X, one of the most significant, revolutionary thinkers of the 20th century. In the 27 years since Malcolm was assassinated, virtually a whole generation knows him only as a historical figure or by his somewhat intangible influence on black consciousness.
Malcolm’s contemporaries may remember him as any of the following: sinner, saint, troublemaker, savior, racist, ex-con, family man or rifleman. He came to symbolize the violent alternative to Martin Luther King’s doctrine of passive resistance although he was committed to non-violent Muslim ideals. He didn’t preach violence as philosophy – he preached it as self-defense.
Today’s generation of blacks may know him only through rappers like Public Enemy, who use Malcolm as a symbol of rage. They’ve gutted the symbol of its spirituality, of any ideals of self-reliance and self-determination. They shame his memory by reducing him to a marketeer of hats and hip attire.
Spike Lee, of course, understands his complicity in that chain of events – his merchandising arm was the first to produce the omnipresent “X” hats. He is the last person who wants to place Malcolm X, one of his idols, on the shelf next to Batman and the Ninja Turtles. Yet he recognizes that while Malcolm X is important as a historical document, it also must be entertaining enough to do well at the box office.
And Malcolm X is great entertainment. If this is big budget myth making, at least it’s a fairer myth than its predecessors. As storytelling, it captivates the audience for a full three hours and 20 minutes. It’s told in three parts -- each with a distinctive visual style that make this make this film as complex and constantly changing as the man himself.
On screen, Malcolm Little’s (Denzel Washington) early years are depicted as vibrant and warm, full of the kinetic energy characteristic of Lee’s best work. Stylized movement with period music and dancing help draw the audience into the past when Malcolm and many other black youths gamely strove for whiteness. He has his hair “conked” (painfully straightened) and several characters comment how “white” (good) it looks.
As victims of an inherently racist society, the blacks of this generation have two choices: voluntarily submit to a subservient role or fall into dissolute lifestyles just to survive.
Malcolm’s father is murdered by white men, and his family scattered. An articulate youngster, he is enticed into the fast-paced life of the streets. He leaves his “good” girlfriend Laura and strays toward a life of crime, aided by his “jungle fever” attraction to a white woman. Laura ends up as a prostitute, and Malcolm lands in prison.
Malcolm’s stint in prison is the pivotal chapter in Lee’s film. The visual picture shifts into a colder tone through cinematographer Ernest Dickerson’s use of blue filters. A convict named Baines introduces Malcolm to the Nation of Islam, which preaches self-discipline, the evil of the white man and the rightful place of the black race in the history of the world.
Malcolm drops his “slave” name of Little and becomes Malcolm” X.” The new Malcolm is unveiled in a tour de force scene with co-star Christopher Plummer as the prison chaplain. Malcolm stuns the chaplain with a biblically-documented, logical argument that Jesus Christ was actually a man of color. This skillfully rendered scene captures the beauty and audacity of the man and the film perfectly.
In time, Malcolm becomes disenchanted with the hypocrisy (promiscuity) of Elijah Muhammad. Eventually someone gave the order to silence Malcolm -- the script stops just short of showing Elijah himself ordering the murder -- and his fate was sealed.
Malcolm officially broke from the Nation in March of 1964 and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. By all accounts, he emerged from Mecca ready to embrace a more universal message of brotherhood. Perhaps he was ready to become a symbol of anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism, an international revolutionary with a place in history alongside the likes of Castro and Guevara.
Malcolm’s new philosophy would never be completely realized. As he drives to the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan on February 21, 1965, the foreboding air is hauntingly conveyed through Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” on the soundtrack. By the time Malcolm steps up to the podium, there is a sense of serenity, bordering on surrender. The gunshots come as no surprise. He lies, finally silenced, on the floor, arms extended as if on a cross.
There are several wonderful performances, especially Washington as Malcolm X. His portrayal of the man-in-transition works – fast and loose during his wild, younger days, controlled and disciplined during his Muslim years. Freeman, Jr. is sinister and calculating as Elijah Muhammad. Delroy Lindo, as Malcolm’s early crime boss, achieves the same calculation with ominous warmth. Spike Lee himself shines with an effortless and lighthearted spin as Shorty, Malcolm’s partner in crime. Only Angela Bassett, as Malcolm’s wife Betty, fails to spark.
Malcolm X captures a powerful sense of loss, yet it doesn’t allow one to walk out grieving. At the close, Ossie Davis reprises his eulogy (“our shining black prince”) and assorted children recite expressions of black pride. Lee even travelled to South Africa to film Nelson Mandela reading one if Malcolm’s speeches. After Aretha Franklin’s inspiring “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” Arrested Development pumps some hip-hop energy into the proceedings and wraps everything up with a return to the present.
With Malcolm X Spike Lee crafts a new myth while retaining the appeal of a Hollywood epic.