Watching the video of Malcolm X after reading the book was a good way to fully understand everything that took place in the book and tie everything together. While reading the book I would try to picture things in my head, but since clearly I am not from Malcolm’s generation it was hard to imagine everything. Watching the movie helped make things more clear and realistic.
The beginning of the movie showed Malcolm in Harlem and all of his brightly colored suits. This helped paint a better picture of what the culture was like then. We learn about what happened to Malcolm’s father and family by flashbacks in the movie that are not completely clear without having read the book. The movie also does a great job of showing the Lindy dancing, which is another thing that I am not familiar with so this also made things more realistic.
The movie did a good job of showing how Malcolm changed and transformed from growing up as a young boy without a father facing racial trials, to a young adolescent starting trouble, his involvement with drugs, him losing it, then going to prison, and finally turning into the minister Malcolm X.
In the book we read about Malcolm’s life, but the movie causes us to think about how many people were affected by Malcolm X and his teachings. In the last scene of the movie I think they did a great job showing Malcolm X’s death. In the book we read how it happened, but we do not see all the people that were there or how upset everyone is or the riots that it started. The movie did a great job depicting this last scene and showing the dramatic ending and despair to African American’s that came with Malcolm X’s death.
Kasey,
ReplyDeleteGood post, but to get full credit, you'll need to discuss CRT and the readings in relation to the film. You can add your comments here.
The way that CRT stood out the most to me in the film was tenet number one racism is ordinary. I realize that we use this tenet a lot, but when reflecting on the film it really is outstanding how racism was accepted, and how whites were viewed as dominant. The blacks whole way of life kind of revolved around white people. Malcolm wanted his hair straight. He broke Laura's heart because he knew that Sophia was waiting for him. He kept dealing drugs and getting into more trouble because he wanted to live the rich life, the american dream - the white life. He was so accustomed to all this until he has a revelation from muhammad. It is easy to overlook how ordinary racism was at this time.
ReplyDelete"The notion of progress suffuses textbook treatments of black-white relations, implying that race relations have somehow steadily improved on their own. This cheery optimism only compounds the problem, because whites can infer that racism is over (Loewen 169)." This quote fits in perfectly with tenet one in the CRT. Racism is overlooked. Even though during Malcolm's time racism was much worse and there was much more segregation there are problems today. Do you ever think that just because there is not as much violence that many people still think the same thoughts?
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