Navarro 1

Claudia Navarro López

Jeffrey Baus

American culture in film

4 oct 2022

To make the hero not just “the hero”

Malcolm X is a 1992 movie directed by the American filmmaker and actor Spike Lee. The film tells

the story of this popular Afro - American and muslim human rights activist from his childhood to his

murder. It’s fair to assume that Lee carries out a biographical movie, however, not the typical

biography of the hero. It’s interesting to remark that the mechanisms used by the director to narrate

Malcolm's story break with the classical cronologic structure of life stories. The director uses the

flashback resource to introduce key information about the life of the main character, such as his father

murder. In my opinion, it’s positive to not divide the movie in chapters, to make everything a

continuum. It’s always easier to understand the choices and attitudes of a person when you have all the

cards laying on the table. A non chaptered structure makes the story more human, since life itself is

non chaptered. Besides, it’s stimulating to talk about the portrait that Spike Lee offers of the activist.

We find in this film a non-idealized vision of Malcolm. It’s worthwhile to ask ourselves: how does the

director achieve this? The film provides a multifaceted and versatile image of the character: we can

discover many Malcolms presented throughout the movie. We find the troublemaker type, the

repentant criminal type, the religious leader type and many others all in the same person. In my

opinion, this is what makes the movie believable and truthful. Is plausible to say that the director gets a

thorough profile of Malcolm X largely because of this intention of showing the multiple faces of him.

Spike Lee really knows how to represent the human condition in all its complexity: he knows how to

create persons, not just archetypes.

● How can we interpret the change in Malcolm’s way to style his hair?

● What is the meaning behind the “Jesus was probably black” discourse?