The French filmmaker and critic Jean-Luc Godard has said that the way to criticize a movie is to make another movie. American History X is an obvious candidate for such a treatment. There is a good deal of heat behind the film due simply to the subject matter. But it's a naive, childish and dishonest piece of work. It reminds a lot of Brett Ratner's Red Dragon really. Like Ratner, American History X's profoundly unlikable director Tony Kaye is a talented visual filmmaker and a very untalented sociologist. He knows how to get the intended effect but he doesn't understand how to use it. He's the four-year-old with his dad's shotgun. It's a fine shotgun but he doesn't understand how to point it, much less why he should or shouldn't point it. To be fair, I guess, Kaye publicly disowned the film in public, saying that he didn't get enough time to edit. I can't imagine any edit though that would solve the underlying problems of the picture, which are rooted in a consistently adolescent sensibility. American History X is an anti-racism tract, the pet cause for teens who want to simulate socio-political consciousness.

Ed Norton plays Derek Vinyard, a powerful and charismatic skinhead who returns from jail a mellow and changed man and finds his younger brother Danny following in his footsteps. The film shows the how and the why of his change of mind and his attempts to show his brother the right path. Taking an ill-fated course in film studies at the community college during high school, I remember our aggressively middlebrow professor (who openly had an aversion to violent films and used Howard's End, Secrets and Lies and Picture Perfect (?) as our texts for the class), saying that American History X was a brutal film but was one he would show to kids who were leading down the wrong path. Looking at the film as a skinhead might, however, we see that the picture would only reinforce such attitudes.

We learn the story of why Derek went to jail. He found a black burglar trying to steal his car. He shoots him, and then makes him bite down on the concrete sidewalk where he stomps on his skull, splitting it in two. The murder has a kinky vigilante kick to it, and when he is arrested Kaye uses slow motion to demonize (i.e. deify) the muscular and shirtless (i.e. sexy) skinhead killer. Norton is fearless here, smiling and raising his eyebrows at the idea of being put under arrest. This isn't the case with the black gang members that he fights against, who Kaye unfailingly directs with glimmers of hesitation and fear in their eyes.

Early in the film Danny confronts some black kids in the bathroom who are beating up the class geek and blows cigarette smoke in their face. The lead one says something like he would kick Danny’s ass, but he has to go to class. Cowardly. When the gang members hijack Derek’s car they do it at night when they think that he’s sleeping. Not only is this similarly cowardly, but it makes the blacks look more like vermin than monsters. (Hmm, that Nazi propaganda that associated the Jews with rats seems to have been a smart move. The rat iconology marginalizes without effectively deifying through demonizing). The black gang members are just boys who clearly could not find the will to do what they do by themselves. The groupthink characteristic of gang membership allows them to suppress the moral consciousness that they possess as individuals. Norton is freed from this sort of humanization, and is allowed to elevate to uber-human, to archetype.

An obvious, if still excellent, complaint to make about the film (spoilers ahead) is that Danny is murdered upon coming to school by a black kid he challenged the previous day. As cinema this is childishly nihilistic enough, but look at what it says thematically. The movie is literally arguing that you shouldn't be a skinhead because black people will kill you. (Again, I must stress that Danny's killer looks out of place with a gun in his hand. Norton does not.) It's also problematic in that this happens shortly after Danny opts to hand in a paper to his black principal, Dr. Sweeney, showing that he has had a change of mind and heart and has seen the light. The shooting is very graphic, very brutal, and thus very cinematic and aestheticized. As a result, Danny is deified in a more direct and traditional way than Derek's triumphant killing: he's martyred.

The martyrdom carries over to Derek of course; Kaye gives us a scene at the end of the movie where he cries over his brother's corpse. But Derek has been deified as righteous before this scene even. Out of prison, he is every bit as articulate and intelligent as he was before going in. He's an anti-racist instead of a racist, but either way he is still a creature evolved beyond that of the human being and that of the blacks. There are never two consecutive seconds where Derek looks anything less than fucking cool. I still cannot help but think that Derek's flawlessness is conditional solely on his whiteness.

Sweeney is played wonderfully by Avery Brooks; like Laurence Fishburne, Brooks is a black actor who not only conveys a great sense of strength and masculinity, but also intelligence. He's not only bigger than you, he's smarter than you. Fishburne's career defining moment is in Deep Cover. Paul Giamatti tests out potential new black cops with the question: "What's the difference between a black man and a nigger?" Fishburne smiles and sneers, and then smoothly answers, "Only a nigger would answer that question." Brooks produces that same feeling; he's completely unfuckable because he is four, five and six steps ahead of you. As with Fishburne, it's actually extraordinarily difficult to find a role that would actually be suited to Brooks' talents and persona. I suppose this and his work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is a start. He is the most successful foil to Norton, the only one that is up to the level of his superhuman capabilities. (Later in the film we even learn that he has two Ph.D.s!) But later in the film we are given a rather gratuitous scene (possibly one, as suggested by a deleted scene supplied with the DVD, that would fulfill a subplot that Kaye intended to throw out entire) where Sweeney comes to Derek asking him to talk to his old friends and find out why their leader has been put into intensive care. Sweeney shows an embarrassing bit of desperation in coming to Derek about this, giving Derek an inordinate amount of power in their relationship and cementing our perception of him as the most powerful character in the film.

Complicating things further is the fact that one of Brooks' earliest acting gigs was the title role in the 1987 made-for-HBO version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. (The latest and probably the very last version of the historically important and literarilly negligible Harriet Beacher Stowe novel. For my money, the worst movie I have ever seen. Although, Patch Adams, Assignment Terror, and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold come pretty damn close. In any case, as Walter Chaw is fond of saying, there is a level in which cold is just cold.) Brooks has been called "aggressively noble" in this film, and there is this lingering sense in which his character is little more than a "good nigger." You see, good niggers want to help white people and bad niggers want to hurt them. Both good niggers and bad niggers exist only in reference to the white characters, and so basically, good or bad, they are still niggers. Deification through demonization has increasingly been the more comfortable position for a film to take toward its black characters (although of course giving the black characters all three dimensions would probably be the MOST comfortable one). I don't feel that the deification through nobilization of Sweeney is a true deification, as it seems to be too connected to Derek's growth. There is never the sense that Sweeney is an independent entity. In a roundabout way, the film is again reinforcing the idea that blacks are inferior to whites.

The neo-Nazi movement is lent a great sense of machismo in the film. We see this in the killing of the black burglar of course, but had it stayed on a purely experiential level it could possibly have been excused as just hipster music video masturbation: art for art's sake. But this attitude seems to be embedded into the very fabric of the film. Before post-prison Derek, liberal attitudes are embodied by the women in the family, his mother and his sister. Liberal anti-racist attitudes are established as feminine and racism is again reinforced as masculine.

In prison, Derek alienates the group of skinheads he's with, angry that their leader is buying drugs from the Latinos and selling them to other whites. In an attempt to humble him, the skins pay off a guard and gang-rape him in the shower. This facilitates his conversion to liberal thought. Feminization. Derek gets a job in the laundry room folding sheets. His partner is Lamont, a black thief who will eventually bond with him about how much he misses sex. He advises Derek to stay with the skinhead clique, because without group protection the brothers will eat him alive. When Derek leaves prison he gives Lamont a warm goodbye and indirectly thanks him for taking care of him. Lamont is made into a "Mammy" figure, problematic enough in terms of the film's attitudes toward race (the Mammy figure is one of those "good niggers" I mentioned in reference to Sweeney, only worse -- there are only trace elements of deification), but also again reinforcing the anti-racist attitudes as feminine and the new Derek as feminized.

Derek's girlfriend in the film is played by a Fairuza Balk, an actress who seems to cheerfully embrace being cast as a white trash skank. She represents the skinhead ideals that he casts aside. The film doesn't bother to give him a "good" girlfriend after his conversion, excluding I guess his sister and his mom. I'm not sure that I would make note of this if this was the only thing, but in light of all the other elements in the film this seems to contribute to the perception that he is now a peacenik fag, definitively feminized through anal rape in prison. Balk is interesting in the film. She's definitely a sexual being -- our very first look at her is when she is having sex with Derek -- but she's ultimately more boyish than girly. She talks and acts comfortably as one of the guys. She fits in appearance-wise, wearing cropped, nearly gender-neutral dyed-black hair and the same punk outfit as all the other skinheads. Her relationship with Derek is very much that of a peer that he happens to have sex with.

As an armchair sociologist, I have to wonder if there is a greater sense of gender equality within white-supremacist movements. Remember that males-only country club that some women wanted to get into? I remember hearing that the Ku Klux Klan was protesting on the women's behalf. The idea, I think, is that they are fighting a war and they don't really have the time or resources to discriminate against warriors that happen to be female. Yeah, I don't know. I'm curious about it. The liberation of women has been tied to the liberation of minorities for a long time, going back to 19th century abolitionism. There are certainly many similarities between the two concepts, but are they really the same issue? It seems to me that one can be both a white supremacist and a feminist without contradiction. (With that said, I feel that I have to add that while I have rarely seen the traditional family structure being lauded by white supremacist groups (in the little research that I've seen), I haven't seen many women assuming many high leadership roles.)

The skinheads in American History X are homophobic. That seems to be why it takes a shower rape to sober Derek up. (And shock the audience of fellow 13-year-old boys, who will find the political attitudes enlightened but still retain a deep aversion to the idea of two guys "doing it".) But interestingly, they see masculinizing Balk to be positive. The skinheads accept that gender is not innate but is socialized, but they also believe that the female gender is inferior (and undesirable) to the male gender. There is equality between the sexes in that masculinity is accessible to both men and women.

I can imagine that the idea could really push itself under the fingernails of some feminists, as feminism has had difficulty producing a concrete testable definition of what exactly the ultimate goal of the movement is and how much value should be put onto gender. I mean, the idea of something like "equal pay for equal work" seems to make the assumption that one's value as a human being is synonymous with economic worth. It's an easily measurable goal, but I have my doubts if it ultimately amounts to little more than assimilating to norms already set by men. Is this really the final destination for feminist women? The skinhead perspective toward gender equality says that it is, that masculinity is the end goal and so women should strive to be more like men. There is little doubt there because they have provided a solid, concrete answer.

Still in my armchair, still doing sociology, let's move onto criticizing some other aspects of American History X. I've been holding onto the notion that the skinheads are essentially just a gang for white guys. That the reasons that people become skinheads has a lot to do with why inner city blacks join gangs. Essentially it provides them with protection and a sense of pride and respect in their community. The movie dances all around this without ever actually making the connection. Danny explicitly says in the film that they were tired of being "victimized" by the blacks in the area. They formed this organization because they wanted to take it back. The film features a basketball game where the whites play against the blacks for use of the basketball court. We can easily picture a rival black gang being substituted for Derek's friends. Yes, there is certainly an unspoken subtext about which race is biologically superior. But it seems to really come down to the more practical issue of turf. They want it to be a white-only basketball court.

Derek's best friend before going to prison was the unlovably obese Seth. Gradually, we can begin to gain some sympathy toward him. We see that he works as an exterminator. In a deleted scene included on the DVD, we see that he feels insecure about his weight, that he feels unattractive. Without becoming a white supremacist, we detect that he really wouldn't have very much at all. (This deleted scene, where Seth and the head leader of his group (played by Stacy Keach) talk shop over burgers and then verbally assault an interracial couple, is probably better than anything that was left in the movie. It may have made a very good short film, like a perverse episode of Richard Linklater’s Slacker. I was reminded of the short scenes in Harmony Korine’s A Crackup at the Race Riots: praise. The scene doesn’t fit in tonally with the rest of the film, because it makes the skinheads figures of fun and doesn’t take them dreadfully seriously. Probably not the best approach, but it at least works).

The film reminds me of that popular criticism of many gangster movies, the 1983 version of Scarface in particular, in that while the evil protagonist dies at the end he has a hell of a good time up until then. I’m also thinking of the similar and rather poetic coda to Richard Kwietniowski’s Owning Mahowny. The obsessive gambler played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in therapy. He’s asked to rate the thrill he feels when he’s gambling on a scale of 1-100. He says a hundred. Then he’s asked to rate the biggest thrill he has ever had outside of gambling. He says it’s a twenty. The therapist asks how he feels about living the rest of his life only hoping to ever reach a twenty. That’s an even greater problem for American History X. Whereas Derek seemed to be a greater being while a skinhead, we have to really worry about Seth. Being a skinhead isn’t even a hundred for him. Could he possibly even hope to reach a twenty without it?

I really believe that racism serves a very specific social function. If it didn't, then I would sincerely doubt that it would be in existence. But the film doesn't seem to really want to go out and be about this connection. It seems to see white supremacy simply as an ideology and a learned behavior. The film is hung up in seeing it as a political position and not as a social phenomenon. Sweeney talks to Derek and says that he spent all his life blaming things on the system, on God and on white people. That he was filled with hate. He's trying to say that he was just like Derek really. In stressing the political nature of white supremacy, the film keeps its skinhead characters from ever being defined by their environment. They are being converted completely through ideas and dialogue, not circumstance. This provides the film with yet another racist subtext really; in labeling white supremacy a negative ideology it is being labeled an ideology all the same and puts these white gang members on a level far beyond that of the black gang members, who are purely social products.

The film wants us to believe that Derek learned racism from his father at the dinner table one night. Derek talks about how he is reading, oh, Native Son I think it was, for English class. His dad then goes on a tirade about affirmative action. The scene has been justifiably criticized for providing an oversimplified motivation for Derek's beliefs. But it's even more problematic than that. Dad is more Archie Bunker than David Duke, you see. Although he uses the word "nigger" once, he seems to be more anti-affirmative action than anti-black. Big difference. Huge. He's a firefighter and he complains that two newly hired black guys scored lower on the test than two white guys who were not hired. He is concerned that he has two guys protecting him who aren't as good. Would he be just as concerned if two white guys scored worse on the test and got hired over two blacks who scored higher? Probably. He even finishes by telling Derek to read the book and do good on the test, but to not stop questioning the stuff that he is being told. That's actually sound advice. I think that he would be almost as ashamed as Derek's mother of the way his son ultimately turned out. The rationale that the filmmakers seem to have for putting this in the film is to show that hate begins with being against affirmative action. They don't distinguish between anti-affirmative action and anti-black, you see. Their blanket liberal attitudes are designed to destroy all healthy political discourse.

Looking at American History X as a moralistic anti-gang film, it doesn't measure up to those early nineties luminaries Boys N the Hood and Menace II Society. Boys N the Hood is a very good movie, but there were times when I wondered why they just didn't move out of the hood. The far bleaker and far stickier Menace II Society holds onto its message much tighter. It argues that it really isn't your fault that you're in the ghetto. But it's sure as hell IS your fault that you're staying there. I've probably attacked Boys N the Hood elsewhere on the Internet for the inclusion of Laurence Fishburne's father character, who is brilliant and strong and obviously John Singleton's mouthpiece. Singleton is simple-minded and Boys N the Hood is a fairly simple-minded movie, and it's too easy to focus on that and ignore those moments when the film really takes off.

But in light of American History X I've found that kind of simple-mindedness to be surprisingly virtuous. The simple-minded Singleton at least trusts his audience to pick out the message from time to time. And his simplicity is clean. There is a lot of soapboxing in American History X, but it doesn’t seem that they are on the right soapbox. All three films argue for the values of the filmmakers' parents. In the case of Boys N the Hood and Menace II Society those values are those of black conservatives. In American History X it's those of white liberals. I'm not sure if my position is one of white hyper-humility, but I somehow don't think that the white liberals quite know what the fuck they're talking about.