Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations (Routledge Classics) (23 page)

To insure that Malcolm X would not be a “regular bullshit Hollywood movie,” Lee could have insisted on accuracy despite the fictionalized dramatic context. To do so might have meant that he would have had to make sacrifices, relinquishing complete control, allowing more folks to benefit from the project if need be. It might have meant that he would have to face the reality that masses of people, including black folks, will see this film and will never know the true story because they do not read or write, and that misrepresentations of Malcolm’s life and work in the film version could permanently distort their understanding.

Knowing that he had to answer to a militant Nation of Islam, Spike Lee was much more careful in the construction of the character of Elijah Muhammad (portrayed by Al Freeman, Jr.), preserving the integrity of his spirit and work. It is sad that the same intensity of care was not given either the Malcolm character or the fictional portrait of his widow Betty Shabazz. Although the real-life Shabazz shared with Spike Lee that she and Malcolm did not argue (no doubt because what was deemed most desirable in a Nation of Islam wife was obedience), the film shows her “reading” him in the same bitchified way that all black female characters talk to their mates in Spike Lee films. Nor was Shabazz as assertive in romantic pursuit of Malcolm as the film depicts. As with the white character Sophia, certain stereotypical sexist images of black women emerge in this film. Women are either virgins or whores, madonnas or prostitutes— and that’s Hollywood. Perhaps Spike Lee could not portray Malcolm’s sister Ella, because Hollywood has not yet created a space for a politically progressive black woman to be imagined on the screen.

If Lee’s version of Malcolm X’s life becomes the example all other such films must follow then it will remain equally
true that there is no place for black male militant political rage in Hollywood. For it is finally Malcolm’s political militance that this film erases. (Largely because it is not the politically revolutionary Malcolm X that Lee identifies with.) Even though Lee reiterates in By Any Means Necessary that it was crucial that the film be made by an African American director “and not just any African American director, either, but one to whom the life of Malcolm spoke very directly,” the film suggests Lee is primarily fascinated by Malcolm’s fierce critique of white racism, and his early obsession with viewing racism as being solely about a masculinist phallocentric struggle for power between white men and black men. It is this aspect of Malcolm’s politics that most resembles Lee’s, not the critique of racism in conjunction with imperialism and colonialism, and certainly not the critique of capitalism. Given this standpoint it is not surprising that the major filmic moment that seeks to capture any spirit of political resistance shows Malcolm galvanizing men in the Nation of Islam to have a face-off with white men over the issue of police brutality. Malcolm is portrayed in these scenes as a Hitler type leader who rules with an iron, leather-clad fist. Downplaying the righteous resistance to police brutality that was the catalyst for this confrontation, the film makes it appear that it’s a “dick thing”—yet another shoot out at the OK Corral—and that’s Hollywood. But Hollywood at its best, for this is one of the more powerful scenes in the movie.

The closing scenes of Malcolm X highlight Lee’s cinematic conflict, his desire to make a black epic drama that would both compete with and yet mirror white Hollywood epics made by white male directors he perceives as great, as well as his longing to preserve and convey the spirit and integrity of Malcolm’s life and work. In the finale, viewers are bombarded, overloaded with images: stirring documentary footage, compelling testimony, and then the use of schoolchildren and Nelson Mandela to show that Malcolm’s legacy is still important and has global impact.
Tragically, by the time the film ends, all knowledge of Malcolm X as militant black revolutionary has been utterly erased, consumed by images. Gone is the icon who represents our struggle for black liberation, for militant resistance, and in its place we are presented with a depoliticized image with no substance or power. In Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Richard Dyer describes the way in which Hollywood manipulates the black image with the intent to render it powerless.

The basic strategy of these discourses might be termed deactivation. Black people’s qualities could be praised to the skies, but they must not be shown to be effective qualities active in the world. Even when portrayed at their most vivid and vibrant, they must not be shown to do anything, except perhaps to be destructive in a random sort of way.

The Malcolm we see at the end of Spike Lee’s film is tragically alone, with only a few followers, suicidal, maybe even losing his mind. The didacticism of this image suggests only that it is foolhardy and naive to think that there can be meaningful political revolution—that truth and justice will prevail. In no way subversive, Malcolm X reinscribes the black image within a colonizing framework.

The underlying political conservatism of Lee’s film will be ignored by those seduced by the glitter and glamor, the spectacle, the show. Like many other bad Hollywood movies with powerful subject matter, Malcolm X touches the hearts and minds of folks who bring their own meaning to the film and connect it with their social experience. That is why young black folks can brag about the way the fictional Malcolm courageously confronts white folks even as young white folks leave the theater pleased and relieved that the Malcolm they see and come to know is such a good guy and not the threatening presence they may have heard about. Spike Lee’s focus on Malcolm follows in the wake
of a renewed interest in his life and work generated by hip-hop, by progressive contemporary cultural criticism, by political writings, and by various forms of militant activism. These counter-hegemonic voices are a needed opposition to conservative commodifications of Malcolm’s life and work.

Just as these forms of commodification freeze and exploit the image of Malcolm X while simultaneously undermining the power of his work to radicalize and educate for critical consciousness, they strip him of iconic status. This gives rise to an increase in cultural attacks, especially in the mainsteam mass media that now bombards us with information that seeks to impress on the public consciousness the notion that, ultimately, there is no heroic dimension to Malcolm, his life, or his work. One of the most powerful attacks has been that by white writer Bruce Perry. Even though Malcolm lets any reader know in his autobiography that during his hustling days he committed “unspeakable” acts (the nature of which would be obvious to anyone familiar with the street culture of cons, drugging, and sexual hedonism), Perry assumes that his naming of these acts exposes Malcolm as a fraud. This is the height of white supremacist patriarchal arrogance. No doubt Perry’s work shocks and surprises many folks who need to believe their icons are saints. But no information Perry reveals (much of which was gleaned from interviews with Malcolm’s enemies and detractors) diminishes the power of the political work he did to advance the global liberation of black people and the struggle to end white supremacy.

Perry’s work has received a boost in media attention since the opening of Spike Lee’s movie and is rapidly acquiring authoritative status. Writing in the Washington Post, Perry claims to be moved by the film even as he seizes the moment of public attention to insist that Lee’s version of Malcolm “is largely a myth” (the assumption being that his version is “truth”). Magazines such as the New Yorker, which rarely focus on black life,
have highlighted their anti-Malcolm pieces. The December 1992 issue of Harper’s has a piece by black scholar Gerald Early (“Their Malcolm, My Problem”) which also aims to diminish the power of his life and work. Usually, when black folks are attempting to denounce Malcolm, they gain status in the white press. Unless there is serious critical intervention, Bayard Rustin’s dire prediction that nonprogressive white folks will determine how Malcolm is viewed historically may very well come to pass. Those of us who respect and revere Malcolm as teacher, political mentor, and comrade must promote the development of a counter-hegemonic voice in films, talks, and political writings that will centralize and sustain a focus on his political contribution to black liberation struggle, to the global fight for freedom and justice for all.

Spike Lee’s filmic fictive biography makes no attempt to depict Malcolm’s concern for the collective well-being of black people, a concern that transcended his personal circumstance, his personal history. Yet the film shows no connection between his personal rage at racism and his compassionate devotion to alleviating the sufferings of all black people. Significantly, Spike Lee’s Malcolm X does not compel audiences to experience empathetically the pain, sorrow, and suffering of black life in white supremacist, patriarchal culture. Nothing in the film conveys an anguish and grief so intense as to overwhelm emotionally. And nothing that would help folks understand the necessity of that rage and resistance. Nothing that would let them see why, after working all day, Malcolm would walk the streets for hours, thinking “about what terrible things have been done to our people here in the United States.” While the footage of the brutal beating of Rodney King shown at the beginning of the film is a graphic reminder of “the terrible things,” the pathos that this image evokes is quickly displaced by the neominstrel show that entertains and titillates.

As sentimental, romanticized drama, Malcolm X seduces by
encouraging us to forget the brutal reality that created black rage and militancy. The film does not compel viewers to confront, challenge, and change. It embraces and rewards passive response—inaction. It encourages us to weep, but not to fight. In his powerful essay “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” James Baldwin reminds readers that

sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.

As Wallace warns, there is no place in Hollywood movies for the “seriousness of black liberation.” Spike Lee’s film is no exception. To take liberation seriously we must take seriously the reality of black suffering. Ultimately, it is this reality the film denies.

15
SEEING AND MAKING CULTURE

Representing the poor

Cultural critics rarely talk about the poor. Most of us use words such as “underclass” or “economically disenfranchised” when we speak about being poor. Poverty has not become one of the new hot topics of radical discourse. When contemporary Left intellectuals talk about capitalism, few if any attempts are made to relate that discourse to the reality of being poor in America. In his collection of essays Prophetic Thought in Postmodern Times, black philosopher Cornel West includes a piece entitled “The Black Underclass and Black Philosophers” wherein he suggests that black intellectuals within the “professional-managerial class in U.S. advanced capitalist society” must “engage in a kind of critical self-inventory, a historical situating and positioning of ourselves as persons who reflect on the situation of those more disadvantaged than us even though we may have relatives and friends in the black underclass.” West does not speak of poverty
or being poor in his essay. And I can remember once in conversation with him referring to my having come from a “poor” background; he corrected me and stated that my family was “working class.” I told him that technically we were working class, because my father worked as a janitor at the post office, however the fact that there were seven children in our family meant that we often faced economic hardship in ways that made us children at least think of ourselves as poor. Indeed, in the segregated world of our small Kentucky town, we were all raised to think in terms of the haves and the have-nots, rather than in terms of class. We acknowledged the existence of four groups: the poor, who were destitute; the working folks, who were poor because they made just enough to make ends meet; those who worked and had extra money; and the rich. Even though our family was among the working folks, the economic struggle to make ends meet for such a large family always gave us a sense that there was not enough money to take care of the basics. In our house, water was a luxury and using too much could be a cause for punishment. We never talked about being poor. As children we knew we were not supposed to see ourselves as poor but we felt poor.

I began to see myself as poor when I went away to college. I never had any money. When I told my parents that I had scholarships and loans to attend Stanford University, they wanted to know how I would pay for getting there, for buying books, for emergencies. We were not poor, but there was no money for what was perceived to be an individualistic indulgent desire; there were cheaper colleges closer to family. When I went to college and could not afford to come home during breaks, I frequently spent my holidays with the black women who cleaned in the dormitories. Their world was my world. They, more than other folks at Stanford, knew where I was coming from. They supported and affirmed my efforts to be educated, to move past and beyond the world they lived in, the world I was coming from.

To this day, even though I am a well-paid member of what West calls the academic “professional-managerial class,” in everyday life, outside the classroom, I rarely think of myself in relation to class. I mainly think about the world in terms of who has money to spend and who does not. Like many technically middle-class folks who are connected in economic responsibility to kinship structures where they provide varying material support for others, the issue is always one of money. Many middle-class black folks have no money because they regularly distribute their earnings among a larger kinship group where folks are poor and destitute, where elder parents and relatives who once were working class have retired and fallen into poverty.