Malcolm X and The use of Docudrama to narrate history

Based on Alex Haley's biographical book about Malcolm X (who also wrote the book), Spike Lee's film Malcolm X is one of the most vivid and widely accepted examples of Hollywood's transformation of autobiography into big studio motion picture. What is different about Lee's Malcolm
X is that it uses it base as an original autobiography to present messages about race and institutional oppression during Malcolm X's time as well as for the period it was created in.

Similar to Haley's book, Spike Lee's films address the central subject of race in America and the effects it has on the African American male.  Alex Haley depiction of Malcolm X life as told to him by Malcolm, shares the same perception as the movie. Haley recounts the life of Malcolm X in chronological order from Malcolm Little in Nebraska and Lansing, Michigan to Detroit Red in the streets of Roxbury and Harlem to his future as Malcolm X and El Haj Malik Shabazz. Lee condenses the life of Malcolm X by placing much of the drama of his criminal past squarely in Boston, instead of in Harlem and Roxbury as they were noted in the book. Lee's film places the scenes of Malcolm's childhood juxtaposed to other scenarios without taking away from the integrity or outline of the autobiography. The early events of Malcolm's life such father's murder, his mother's institutionalization and the burning of his house by the KKK were told or shown with great accuracy and suggest the effects of accent the effects of violence, racial oppression and youthful nihilism have taken upon the Black community of America.

Lee also takes liberty with the use and creation of characters and events such as Brother Banes of the Nation of Islam. While Lee altered some of the book characters' roles for the movie, Banes is a complete creation of Hollywood. Instead, Banes acts as a composite of multiple characters such as Malcolm's older siblings who brought him into the Nation of Islam and fellow prison inmate Bimbi. In the book Malcolm told how he was introduced to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad by his own blood brothers and sisters. Malcolm's brother Reginald told him about the devil white man and the brain-washed black man, and Malcolm's sister Hilda told him about Yucab's History. Through dialogue, Lee is able to use the character of Banes as a personification of both Malcolm's naive dedication to the Nation of Islam and his later betrayal.

Another area that is noticably different from the book is Malcolm's relationship to Black women. While it is mentioned significantly in the autobiography, Malcolm's relationship to Sophia, it is a relationship that comes after multiple relationships with Black women. Lee uses this relationship with Sophia to accentuate the self hatred and amoral life Malcolm led prior to joining the Nation of Islam. Another difference between the movie and book is that Malcolm spoke very little about his wife Betty in the book, yet Lee made her a main character in the movie and gave her many of Malcolm's sister Ella's character traits, particularly her strength and pride.









Malcolm's story ended right before his death, but both Lee and Haley had their own very different epilogues.  Lee used his epilogue to illustrate Malcolm's effect on the world after his death. He showed actual filmclips of Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mantelet, the real Malcolm X preaching, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Jackson, an Olympic raised fist for Black Power, and the Ossie Davis Eulogy found in the book and previous documentary. These scenes ground the work in history as well as continue the work of Haley by finishing the story he had yet to write.

One of the most profound scenes in Malcolm X is of young male students in a classroom learning about Malcolm on a holiday dedicated to him (which does not exist) standing and declaring "I am Malcolm X!"  to imply Malcolm's influence extended beyond black males to include other males of color.

From "A Birth of A Nation" to "Amos & Andy: Check & DoubleCheck"

Hey Followers,

This summer as I wrap of this undergrad experience, I'm in a Film Class at Michigan which deals with the brief history of Blacks in Cinema. As a African American Studies Major and lover of all Black Arts (except Tyler Perry Films) I wanted to be able to use my blog as a forum to talk about the films we watch, what other films I recommend, as well as put some of my more critical and "scholarly" writing on the blog. I've even thought about putting up old essays on here, but I don't want people to search and use my stuff for reference (or plagiarism) like I know I could of others. lol

Anyway, a few years ago I did an independent study project with professor Robin Means Coleman at the University of Michigan ( I was actually published and had my research presented at the University of Michigan UROP symposium in 06) on the film Candyman as the modern representation of A Birth of A Nation and the the Brutal Black Buck character.

While the Brutal Buck character featured within "Birth of A Nation" presents an argument that Black males are Bloodthirsty savages whose sole purpose is the consumption and destruction of white women and their purity, "Check and DoubleCheck" presents a paralleled image of Black males being childlike buffoons. 

Check and Double Check is a 1930 comedy based on the "Amos & Andy" radio show. Instead of hiring Black actors for the roles, the creators of Check and Double Check hired program creators Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll to perform the roles themselves in Blackface. Amos and Andy are actually secondary players in their own movie. Amos and Andy operate a bare-bones taxi service in Harlem, struggling to keep their vehicle running and their tires inflated. When their lodge-master, Kingfish, offers them a lucrative job ferrying Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra to a gig in the Upper West Side, they jump at the chance. At the party, the two men run into an old friend, Ralph Crawford, who needs help finding the lost deed to his deceased father's house in order to prove his worth to his prospective in-laws.

Like A Birth of A Nation,  Amos & Andy: Check and Double Check works to promote White Supremacy and the stereotype of Black Americans being less intelligent than White Americans.  Throughout the film, the characters introduce each other as being "incompetent." The arguments between Amos & Andy in reference to who is in charge of their the taxi company suggest a theme that Black males are power hungry and manipulative within their interpersonal relationship. The slapstick nature in which they operate the business echos A Birth of A Nation's suggestion of the ludicrous idea of Black control and self determination.

The White American actors in the show this ludicrous nature of Blacks in society by attempting to capture the Black American vernacular heard and the stereotypes associated. The actors do this by  using bad grammar and by mispronouncing and chopping words and making it the punchline of the joke. There is never a "g" at the end of verbs ending in "ing. Many of the Black characters studder and their lack of formal education is the center of jokes within the film.

Both A Birth of A Nation and Amos & Andy: Check and Double Check operate on fictionalizing the idea of Blacks as anything other than subservient. In A Birth of A Nation, D.W. Griffith shows that a Black South is cause of alarm and uses the white womenhood and humanity as the target of Black consumption. Black politicians and communities are seen as a problem.  Check and Double Check furthers this suggestion in that all of the Blacks are either manipulative or incompetent and need to help of Whites (as Andy mentions in that the best times of their life were on the plantations of Georgia). 

These films work to position whiteness as the social norm and Blackness as the other. As in Birth of A Nation and previous Blackface minstrelsy, stereotypes are used as important anchors where the performers are able to suggest what reality is and what Blackness is within this reality. Amos and Andy and D.W. Griffith in A Birth of A Nation present a statement that Blackness is a social imperfection and its men are inferior to White men and are incomplete without White society.