Journal: American History X

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Giving more insights about how racist ideologies are born or even transmitted from one generation to another is probably the main mission of this movie. This is definitely a movie about racism which does not follow the traditional way Hollywood has of showing the victim’s side of the story. The audience of this movie will be attached, this time, to the racist’s point of view, thanks to the help various film elements and a literary design that are used to force the viewer to empathize and maybe even like the hero/bad guy of the story. On the tape of an interview Derek gives after the murder of his father, he tells what he believes to be the reason behind the tragedy. He affirms that people like his father, "a decent hard working American", were getting robbed out by social parasites – namely, according to him, blacks, Asians, browns - minorities that went to America, he adds, only to exploit it and not to embrace it. He gives the examples of the poor white European immigrants communities which were able to succeed after a few generations to support his opinion that the social issues are in fact racial issues. He goes on saying that every crime in US is crime related: immigration, Aids, welfare. Derek is seeing in the background crying as he is being comforted by his mother. He is dressed as a teenager as the mise-en-scène here tries to make the actor, Edward Norton, look the right age for the moment the interview took place. One can easily see the American flag in front of Derek’s house. The filmmaker does not demonise Derek as the bad and stupid skin head. Instead, he is presented as an intelligent young man who believes in what preaches. What he says in this scene is shocking, but before hearing the shocking words, the audie... ... middle of paper ... ...ly until the moment when he rips off his own shirt to show his neo-Nazi tattoos – Murray happens to Jewish. Murray leaves the house under Derek’s anti-Semites insults in shock. The riots of 1992 exposed the racial tensions that are still present in the United States these days; Derek’s transformation in a neo-Nazi is an example of one of the consequences of this tension. This scene opens and closes with a shot of a big American flag hanging on the porch of Derek’s house. The American flag has already made its appearance in Danny’s hands as he was talking with Sweeney earlier in the movie. Cameron, Derek’s Neo-Nazi mentor, will be seen drinking from a glass with the American flag on it. The American flag doesn’t leave room for putting the racist label on anybody else. The racists in this movie are not crazy Nazi Germans getting infiltrated in US soil, but Americans.

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