American History X

White supremacy is on the rise in Southern California. Following the murder of his father, Derek shoots a black person and executes another. The landscape is anonymous. Front yards, backyards, and the dreary repetition of suburbia mark the coast. Not much changes from day to day. Derek’s charisma and persuasive abilities coalesces the collective anxiety, boredom and hatred of the shiftless white suburban male. He uses these frustrations to promote the idea of white supremacy, and to proclaim that America is in the midst of an immigrant takeover. Action is needed, he thinks. So they trash a Grocery store owned by Chinese. And let a basketball game determine the supremacy of the races and who has access to what land.

In Kai Erickson’s book Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance the Puritan’s faced the same problems as the neo-Nazis. The Puritans faced three separate struggles since the 1600s and 1700s. Originally, when the Puritans first washed ashore they faced starvation and the unrelenting environment. There battles were direct. They were fighting against the elements. Then the battle was religious and political. Anne Hutchison questioned the powerful. If in the Puritans eyes, your soul is predestined to go to heaven or hell, and no action on Earth could alter that plan, how could anyone determine that they were worthy of power? So the powerful booted her out of Massachusetts. Later came the witch accusations, witch trails, and witch drowning and witch burnings (and any other bad things you can do to suspected witches). After gaining relative prosperity the Puritans became paranoid of witches. Why? Kai Erickson believes since there physical battles had been conquered, and the land tamed, the new battle was one of things on the periphery. The unseen world became the new menace. The occult, the invisible, became the cause of mass suffering of the people. To the Neo-Nazis the vast invisible oppressor is the Zog machine and the Jewish World Order. Ideas like this thrive with these newbie Nazis.

The 1990s are fairly prosperous. But in the late 1990s movies like American History X, The Matrix, Fight Club, and Office Space, all portray the psychic hardships of the disgruntled semi-affluent. In each movie generally college educated white suburban males see an omnipresent threat or problem that nobody else sees, or has become to deadened to see or react to it. When the world becomes increasingly ambiguous, theories that tap into the mystical universal do well, is something Erickson might say.

Derek sheds this mystism after doing time. Prison is like a personal think tank of Derek. Boundaries are put on him. His intelligence is bounded within the walls. The only person that prevents him from being raped daily is a black man. This along with the self-interest, and doublespeak of the white gang cause him to have a dramatic ideological shift. He rejects his white supremacist past and seeks to escape it along with getting his brother out. But this may no be a movie of shedding hate and walking into the movie with an independent and tolerant mind. Derek sees the death of his father. After that he eventually becomes the leader of a racist organization. Prison changes who he is, but so will Danny’s death. In Totsi, the City of God, and Were once Warriors, the environment and the oppression embedded in it hit everyone the same way. People react in predictable, but not always healthy ways to the environment around them. But in Southern California life really isn’t straightforward, a healthy approach to the world is more likely to come about through the way you look at the world.

American History X. X is an interesting choice for Danny’s teacher to name the class. Malcolm X chooses the name of X when he was in the nation of Islam. It was like a placeholder for him. Since his original name Little was “given to him by white slave masters” X was what he used until, after ultimately leaving the Nation of Islam, he went on a Hajj to Mecca and became El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbazz. The X could be seen as the placeholder for Derek’s mind. The X will be there until something more definitive, true, and permanent comes along for Derek, whatever that might be.

Motorcycle Diaries

Traveling across South America on a motorcycle transformed how Che looked upon the world. Four months of close contact to poverty provided an intimate familiarity with the problems facing the people of that region. Ernesto and Alberto became dependent on these destitute strangers to continue the adventure.

Ernesto saw the inequality that was embedded in the geography of South America. At one point after rolling into town, Ernesto and Alberto have to decide where they are going to sleep. In the mansion on the hill or with the poor people. They choose to sleep among the poor people. It is no accident of what choice they make. In this movie the poor share food, shelter, and provide emotional support to Che and his friend. Of course people from the elite class help him out. But the aspects of wealth provide a barrier for compassion. When his motorcycle breaks down a mechanic refuses to help them because they have no money. Only when he sees the fake newspaper clipping heralding them as handsome glorious disease fighting doctors (too many adjectives? –Yes) are they assisted. There are initial pretensions between him and his friend in regard to class. Alberto pleads with a wealthy landowner that he is a doctor and that in being that deserves to sleep in more respectable surroundings. But after endless miles through the diverse terrain of South America provide an immutable bond to the struggles of the people.

Segregation is a common element in this movie. The poor never live among the rich. Even among the nuns class-consciousness exists. The lepers, though known not to be contagious, are separated on an island to live among themselves. A river separates the doctors from their patients. Che both emotionally and literally overcomes the separation between these two groups when he swims to the other side.

Che notices how constant poverty eviscerated the lives of the mountain people of Peru. Having food to eat and having a place to sleep become luxuries that are too expensive for the millions of poor to obtain. Class inequality causes people to participate in the destruction of their own land. Many gather in early morning for the possibility of working in the coalmines. Some are chosen, but are still facing low wages, and likely an early death. These things become ingrained in Guevara’s mind. These are memories that provide the seeds for his revolutionary ideology.

When Che moves beyond the comfortable existence of the middle class he sees first hand the hardships of reality. This movie is incredible. The still video photographs of the people of the America’s are composed beautifully and the movie is sentimental and meaningful without being pointlessly nostalgic or didactic. Being a constant witness to the geography of any land and people has the power to change the philosophy of anyone. A broken down motorcycle provides Che and Alberto to the path towards seeing humanity as a whole. It is impressive how much Che learns from his journey, and the dramatic change it brought to his life.

South Africa (Beat the Drum)

AIDS is gargantuan problem in South Africa. One in 5 people have HIV or AIDS, and in total 5 million people of South Africa have it (CIA world factbook). Various articles discussing the matter note that the life expectancy has decreased by 10 years because of it, and that only until very recently has the government taken truly meaningful steps in addressing this disease.

In this way the movie is a public service announcement. It follows a boys journey to Johannesberg. It is a high risk world. Truck drivers pick disease laden prostitutes off the sides of roads, and despite the immense risks follow their desires.

South Africa is a diverse country. According to wikipedia, it is more known plant life than almost any other country in the world. But the movie shows mostly a dry, somewhat flat, farm community of South Africa. The other world they show is Johannesberg which is busy, thriving, slummy, and dirty all at the same time. The negative or positive aspects of the city are emphasized dependent on what economic situation you are in.
But AIDs spreads across all economic barriers and geographic terrain. In a way AIDS thrives so much in this world due to the interconnectedness that is caused by a global economy. Economic necessity has forced many South Africans from farms to cities, and within the cities. The constantly changing life of the population leads to interactions of every kind, and with this an AIDS epidemic that cannot be localized or controlled. From reading, it seems that AIDs has hit the poorest communities the hardest. With poverty often comes a lack of education, self denial, and superstitions associated with the contraction of the illness.

There isn’t any government leadership on addressing the AIDS problem in this movie. Most people are ignorant, or don’t care about the illness. The movie addresses a great and terrible problem, but it comes across somewhat forced. A rich white guy who doesn’t give a damn about anything but money (although previously he once had a heart), suddenly after discovering his activist son has died (is on the verge of death)of AIDS focuses his finances towards the creation of homes for orphans and creates a work place that provides voluntary and free AIDS tests.

The movie does show that paths necessary in addressing the AIDS problem. In the small town, people step forward to vocalize that there is a problem going on. They are specific about the origins of the illness, and the importance of being tested, and what measures to take to decrease the likelihood of transmitting the sickness. Despite the constant stream of horrible things that happen in this movie, there is an upbeat and positive tone to the production. This is a movie that shows the devasting effect that AIDS has on South Africa, and also shows the ways common citizens can take in trying to remedy one of the greatest problems facing the world.