Did American History X foreshadow the resurgence of white nationalism in the US?
When American History X was released in 1998, 25 years ago, it warned of a gathering storm of white supremacist violence. The indie crime thriller garnered both praise and criticism, but also a measure of suspicion. Some critics took exception to what they viewed as its "bombastic" tone and "red-meat melodrama," as though the film's racist zealots looked more like caricatures than anything that could have sprouted from the multicultural soil of US democracy.
In the film, a thriving neo-Nazi movement recruits charismatic leaders, scapegoats immigrants, exploits the unprecedented connectivity ushered in by the internet age, and capitalises on long-festering racial grievances in white families – all of which combust into open racial warfare. It opens in Venice Beach, California, where teenager Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) alarms his Jewish high school teacher, Murray (Elliott Gould), by writing an encomium to Adolf Hitler that praises him as a civil rights hero. The black headteacher, Dr Sweeney (Avery Brooks), gives Danny an ultimatum: study under his wing in an ad hoc course called "American History X," or face expulsion. Danny's assignment is to analyse how his older brother, Derek (Edward Norton), got swept into the neo-Nazi Aryan Brotherhood and ended up in prison.
Derek's crime was an act of intense brutality, portrayed in gut-wrenching detail. In a monochrome flashback, Derek, clad only in white boxers and black military-style boots, his chest emblazoned with a swastika tattoo, shoots two black men in his front garden who'd been trying to steal his car in a turf-war retaliation, killing one instantly. The other, wounded but still conscious, lies sprawled in the grass and Derek proceeds to kill him by stomping his head on the kerb. Soon after, police sirens arrive to bathe Derek in shimmering light, and he raises his hands behind his head in an almost messianic pose of martyrdom. From this pivotal moment, the film traces the circumstances that kindled Derek's rage and shaped it into racialised grievances, the hollow disillusionment that follows, and his uncertain quest for redemption.
Writer David McKenna drafted the script in six weeks as the 1992 LA Riots, set off by the Rodney King beating, raged outside his apartment. After finishing a second draft, he consulted with Tony Kaye, a British ad director who had been tapped to direct his first feature film. Kaye led McKenna to a skinhead party where the screenwriter took down information from a white nationalist. "For a half hour I talked to a guy with an M-16 tattooed to the side of his head. It was pretty intimidating, if not terrifying," recalled McKenna. After shooting on the film wrapped, Tony Kaye's behaviour went from mercurial to outright bizarre. At meetings with New Line Cinema representatives, he brought along a religious retinue of a rabbi, a priest, and a monk in a strange bid to convince executives that his film was not a commercial product but a prophecy.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20231102-how-american-history-x-foreshadowed-the-resurgence-of-white-nationalism-in-the-us
I don't know that this is a "classic" film per se, but I couldn't find anywhere else to put this article
= new reply since forum marked as read
I haven't thought about that flic for ages. But now I want to go back and see it again.
It's probably on Netflix or somewhere.
