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“I have a nightmare”
A Review of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” 
by Leonard C. Epafras (ICRS-07/259877/SMU/326)

"Brothers and sisters, I'm here to tell you that I charge the White man. I charge the White man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the White man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There is not place in this world that that man can go and say he created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone he's created havoc. Everywhere he's gone he's created destruction. So I charge him. I charge him with being the greatest kidnapper on this earth. I charge him with being the greatest murderer on this earth. I charge him with being the greatest robber and enslaver on this earth. I charge the White man with being the greatest swine-eater on this earth, the greatest drunkard on this earth.

He can't deny the charges. You can't deny the charges. We're the living proof of those charges. You and I are the proof. You're not an American, you are the victim of America. You didn't have a choice coming over here. He didn't say, "Black man, Black woman, come on over and help me build America." He said, "Nigger, get down in the bottom of that boat and I'm taking you over there to help me build America." Being born here does not make you an American. I'm not an American. You're not an American. You are one of twenty-two million Black people who are the victims of America.

You and I, we've never seen any democracy. We ain't seen no democracy in the cotton fields of Georgia. That wasn't no democracy down there. We didn't see any democracy on the streets of Harlem and the streets of Brooklyn and the streets of Detroit and Chicago. That wasn't democracy down there. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.” (Malcolm X in the opening of the Spike Lee’s movie, Malcolm X)

Malcolm X, the minister of Nation of Islam was walking to a building, accompanied by his friends, when he was spotted by a White young girl. To her enthusiasm to meet such a famous person at the time, she stopped the group. She somehow sympathetic to the horror of the White people treated the Blacks. She displayed her concern, “I am a good person in spite of my ancestors did … what kind a White person like myself can do to help you?” Malcolm X coldly replied, “Nothing,” and moved over her. The conversation took place after an inflammatory speech he carried out in a meeting, to which he said that White people are devils. Right after the speech hordes of journalists pursued him in order to know whether he really said that. “Yes, I said White people are devils,” he replied confidently. It was one of crucial scenes of the movie “Malcolm X” that giving us a larger picture of Malcolm X struggle. That he openly “anti-White,” and some charged him being a Black supremacist. Nevertheless, if we depicting him as simply a demagogue, who sells cheap rhetoric and took advantage from people’s desire of consolation from brutal life, we are completely wrong. Speaking of the history of the Black people in America is the history of long misery. Even though it is a very complex issue, however, there are obvious markers to recognize. The legacy of great number of Black people rooted out from their land and heritage was the nineteenth century slavery – indeed not all Black people in America shared the narrative of slavery. After the abolition of slavery, they still suffered various discriminative culture and policies. The life story of Malcolm X was exactly a story coming out from this core of Black narrative of slavery, discrimination, and humiliation. He was a story of a Black person who wanted to escape from the curse of Blackness by mimicking the White and later he transformed himself to be an alter-ego of the Whiteness. He was the story of shattered family, troubled youngster, prison, and transformation. As a son of a lay preacher of Baptist church, himself a Black-emancipator, religious persuasion (Christianity) though somehow ingrained to his soul, did not so much give him consolation. The latter brought him to embrace Islam as a way to challenge the injustice.
 
It was this vibe that “Malcolm X” the movie was attempted to capture. It is a biographical movie (biopic) of a prominent Black Nationalist figure, Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, 1925-1965) also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, directed by Spike Lee (1992). Denzel Washington was being honored to play the Malcolm X role. Spike Lee seems do not want to lose any important aspect of Malcolm X. Based on Alex Haley biography, in 220 minutes play, Lee divided into three phases of Malcolm’s life, his troubled early life, his conversion, and his activity in Nation of Islam until his death. Despite controversy surrounded, the movie was a huge success; the third in gross revenue, right after “Home Alone” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Before watching the movie I knew very little about Malcolm X. I only knew that he was a Black Muslim who was killed by somebody. Never in my mind flashing a slight knowledge that he was a Black emancipator; Black Nationalist to be precise, standing equally with Martin Luther King, Jr. Judging from my experience, Malcolm X story seemed to be a “subversive” narrative and only conversed among the “radicals”, and Muslims. I got impression that Martin Luther King, Jr. is more famous (and more desirable?) than him because of his non-violence approach to Black emancipation. After watching the movie, I need to revise my understanding.

In the first phase of his life, Malcolm X was portrayed as a troubled young man who wanted to emulate “the White”, by for instance, by straightening (conking) his curly hair and his obsession with White girl. His father was killed by Ku Klux Klan, the White supremacist group, and his mother institutionalized afterward. He later on moved to a detention home where he was the only colored child. Since early time, he living in the twilight zone, a tension pulls him as a Black, induced by Black emancipation idealism coming from his late father, but also a strong feeling toward the “White” world. In one scene, Malcolm was visualized demanded his White girlfriend, Sophie, to kiss his foot toe and spoon-feed him; probably a sign of supremacy he could not get in the real world but in the enclosed romantic realm. “In fact I got called Nigger so much, I didn’t think that was anything wrong … I thought it was my name,” recalled Malcolm of his childhood in a detention home that furthered his difficulty to comprehend his world. He was very smart and critical, for example he put a difficult question to the chaplain during his sentence at the prison about whether Jesus is white or colored. 

The most anticipated part of the movie indeed is his conversion to Islam and the following life. After the conversion, following a custom among Nation of Islam followers, he changed his last name to “X.” “X” is a symbol of blotted out history of the Black/Colored people in the American history and the alteration of his family name that originated with White slaveholders. It is a sum up of his unknown African tribal name of his ancestors; a sign of total submission of African heritage into American history. At this point, Islam was put in a complicated relationship to which the “conversion” from “White” wannabe to “Black.” Through the conversion he found a specific linguistic tool to alter his people dark history, however, interestingly not by immediately adopting Islamic/Arabic name – it was later on after the Hajj then he became more orthodox.

 “I am not here this afternoon as a Republican or a Democrat, not as a Mason nor as an L, not as a Protestant nor a Catholic, not as a Christian nor a Jew, nor as a Baptist nor a Methodist, in fact not even as an American … because if I was an American the problem that confronts our people today wouldn’t even exist … I am standing here because I’m a Black man.” He rejected social integration and racial equality as Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for. He took radical way, even to certain extent, more radical than Elijah Mohammad’s. He charged the White man openly and eloquently. In a television talkshow, Malcolm described of these two kinds of Negros/slaves: the “house slave” and the “field slave.” “House Negro, he lives in the house, next to his master in the big house, either in the basement or up in the attic … he dressed pretty good … he loves his master.” He contended that the house Negro is mentally co-opted by the master and address himself “we” as he identified with the fate of his master. When the “field Negro” persuaded him to run away from the house of slavery, “he said ‘why’? … I’m not going to go anywhere.” House slave/Negro is a person almost complete surrender to the master’s narrative. His habitus is his master’s habitus. He ate what master ate. He embodied and acquired certain set of disposition dictated by his White master. Therefore, Malcolm X stood against this “house Negro” mentality; against his fellow Black who adopted White way of life and way of thinking. He mobilized himself against of God being White, of “Black” in dictionary, which connoted to “destitute of light, darkness,” of Jesus’ Whiteness, and of “the Plymouth Rock landed on the Black people.” No wonder his harsh accusation toward the entire White’s society offer himself for disapproval, as a “Black supremacist,” “anti-Semite,” and once by the FBI as a communist sympathizer, for his “leftist” leaning. His speech was sitting right at the center of racism ideology who believes in racial hierarchy. It was in this discourse the “White” people and “Whiteness” is the impure outcast.

However, the matrix of African American struggle is somewhat paradoxical, as the movie tells us. The war within is no less fierce than the main struggle between “White” and “Black.” It includes the struggle between “ghetto” and “bourgeoisie” Black; between “house” and “field” Black; “authentic” and “inauthentic” Black; or even between “Northerner” (Malcolm X) and the “Southerner” (Martin Luther King, Jr.). However, the movie also presented nicely the conflated world where the general lingo of African Black intruded into Islamic-specific discourse. Biblical and Qur’anic prophets’ names, “Moses, Solomon, David …” uttered by Malcolm like those names are belong to everybody and easily crossing the border between Black Muslims and Black Christians in America. Malcolm X was fluently in quoting Biblical verses in many of his speeches, for example the speech he addressed in respond to the killing of Kennedy, “The Holy Bible teaches us that what you reap is what you’d sow.” And when he described his conversion in prison, he used the narrative of the conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. One striking view in the movie was the affinity of Nation of Islam gathering with Black church or Pentecostal church Sunday service; including the affirmative responds by the audiences of the points made by Malcolm. The culmination of this conflated world, and I think it was intentionally put by Spike Lee, was when an old Black woman met Malcolm, a day before his last speech in Manhattan giving her encouraging words for all of his effort, “Jesus will protect you.” This is a family business then; no matter you are Muslim or Christian. This is a matter of justice for the oppressed people. This is what the meaning of Malcolm X struggle for African Americans, that is his Islamic conviction is only one of many facets of his history in the struggle for emancipation. His complex personality, his life narrative, his background, and American social setting, all contributed to the development of his philosophy and action. To a point, Islam for Malcolm X is a “goal mobilizer,” a vehicle to gain the goal of Black freedom. “Islam is the only religion that addresses the need and the problem of so called Negro in America, especially in slum and ghetto … Islam is the only way out of drug, crime, unemployment, prostitution, alcohol, gambling, …, “ said Elijah Mohammad, the Malcolm X’s mentor. “I am saying what the Bible says, I say what Koran says, I say it justice,” further boost the intersection of his Christian heritage and Islamic conviction. To some extent, Malcolm preaching, especially if we look up close his earlier “new-born” Muslim days, he was a kind of reacting to the Church’s (“White” Christian) failure to address the fundamental problems of Black community. By being aware of this complexity, we can understand why Malcolm X can be standing for everybody who struggles for emancipation, transcends the traditional religious boundary.

The movie is somewhat dramatized the reason of Malcolm X’s dissociation from the Nation of Islam. The obvious reason of this was the flame he ignited through his comment on the Kennedy’s death, which put the Nation of Islam in a difficult position. Responding to the assassination of the United States President John F. Kennedy he was widely reported saying, “chickens coming home to roost … chickens coming home to roost never did make me sad; they've always made me glad.” This provocative statement immediately forced Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam to withdraw Malcolm from public presence. Nevertheless, the more fundamental reason for his withdrawal, according to the movie, was that he felt “betrayed” by the misconduct of his mentor, Elijah Muhammad, of the suspect of adultery; furthermore, was the assumed a murder scheme orchestrated by the elites of Nation of Islam to him. One of the most disturbing presentations was the closeness of Malcolm X with violence. One of the movie scenes was portrayed Malcolm X with AK-47 guarding his house. The other was the mob-like arming preparation by presumably, Nation of Islam killing squad. The mode of presentation may give us a false impression that Malcolm and Nation of Islam competition was no more than mafia rivalry. 

After his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm shifted his radical dichotomized notion of Black and White people to more inclusive terms. Egyptian Gazette (August 25, 1964) once quoted his remarks, “We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored. We will never be recognized as citizens there until we are first recognized as humans.” His view now, apparently getting closer to the civil-rights movement formerly he derided. His shift of understanding might significantly be informed by Islamic theology and his experience in Mecca, to which during his pilgrimage he was sitting, talking and praying with other fellow Muslims coming from different colors, nations, and countries. This liminal stage of his life pushed him to conclude, “I believe that the true practice of Islam can remove the cancer of racism from the heart and the soul of all Americans.” Upon his return he organized a press conference, where he stated that, “Today my friend is Black, red, yellow, brown, and White.” This statement may further a possibility of cooperation across racial divide against the evil of racialism. 

In the one of his famous speech (supra), he said that “We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare,” as to utter “I have a nightmare,” the nemesis of “I have a dream” (of Martin Luther King, Jr). Malcolm X felt that the Black living in the hell and wanted to wake them up from the nightmare, not a dream of wonderland. Wonderland is a phantasmagoria created by the White, and not for the Black. In the Greek mythology there are three important gods related to sleep and the subconscious reality: Morpheus (dream), Phobetor (nightmare), and Phantasos (Phantasmagoria). In The Matrix movie (1999), there is a John the Baptist-like figure, the precursor of the coming of Messiah, or the usher to the new redeemed world. His name is Morpheus. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Morpheus, the person who dreamt the coming age, and Malcolm X was the Phobetor, the person who proclaimed the end of the nightmare. 

Malcolm X zealotry and his fixed goal of Black emancipation will inspire us and to the yet-to-born generations. His attraction is irresistible. And Denzel Washington has successfully adopting his charm that gives the effect so that we the audiences heard the voice of Malcolm himself. It is correct to say something about “Malcolm’s magic,” because he was a magic, a magic of a “field Black.” Malcolm X is a magnet of a new moral authority; he stood against moral hypocrisy and insincerity of his time and within his movement and also today. 

 “This is a person who is an icon, and he means very conflicting, very different things to people. We're not a monolithic-thinking people, and people are starting to realize that. There's not one way of looking at Malcolm X," concluded Anthony Davis, the composer who wrote music for opera entitled “X (The Life and Times of Malcolm X)” in 1986.