Malcolm X Movie!

It was so fun to watch the Malcolm X movie. It brought the book and characters to life! It was cool to hear the way Malcolm talked when he was younger and to see the way he spoke as well. Hearing and seeing Malcolm speak made the change in him, after his conversion, so much more drastic. The way he speaks and carries himself afterwards make him seem as though he is an entirely different person.

I was excited to hear some exact quotes from the book. This happened a lot when the movie would flash back to stories of his childhood. To read those stories is one thing, but to see little kids running out of a burning home, to hear the hate in the KKK’s voices, to see the train coming for Malcolm’s father; that was much harder to see than to read. It was so much more graphic and real to me. It’s crazy how blatant racism used to be. Racism today is harder to see because it tends not to be done in such obvious acts. Racism is still ordinary, that has not changed. People just are more often racist in quieter ways.

The movie was good. It was entertaining while very informing as well. Throughout watching the movie, it would become understandable to anyone (not only people in this class) why Malcolm believed what he did. Although I don’t know if (and hope not) all would believe as extremely as he does (against whites), I can’t imagine someone watching the movie and not coming away with a new view point, and hopefully some compassion and desire for true change. The only negative thing for me was how it seemed to drag on toward the end.

It is hard to believe that before this class I had no idea who Malcolm X was or why he is important. “It is not only radical or currently unfashionable ideas that the texts leave our – it is all ideas, including those of their heroes. –Frances Fitzgerald” (Loewen 172) That I did not know who Malcolm X was, when he is so important to the black community, is proof of this statement by Fitzgerald. We need to know these stories.