by Matt St. Amand

Created on: October 03, 2010

I just watched American History X, a 1998 film in which Ed Norton played a skinhead, Nazi white power guy who goes to prison for killing some guys (black) who were trying to steal his car.

He is sent to prison, where he learns to love and finally see life from others' perspectives, aided by a small, sassy-talking black kid with whom he works in the prison laundry. For, in prison, the impossible happens: the white supremacists aren't quite as committed to the cause as Ed Norton's character. He "disses" them because of this. And then horror - they rape him in the shower to demonstrate that he shouldn't judge them.

Let me tell you - I've never been to prison, but if I were in the shower, I'd not only have eyes in the back of my head, I'd sure not loiter around when everyone else suddenly walks out. But Ed Norton insisted on having his Calgon moment, filmed as though it was going into a Calvin Klein commercial, with water drops flying around in slop motion and hyper clarity.

If prison rape provides the kind of clarity of mind portrayed in American History X, then I'm inclined to recommend it for every politician now in office.

When Ed Norton is not being raped in the shower or lifting weights in the yard, he works in the laundry - hard-hearted at first, quiet and sullen, filled with angst and white pride. But his hard white heart is no match for a TV-stealing man/child who bends over backwards to sound natural and ghetto with his too-many "Ah-ight?"s.

The black kid spins the wisdom of the ages in rapid-fire ghetto-speak. What he lacks in size, he makes up for in heart. I wanted to vomit.

The writer and director of American History X got hold of a Big Idea. Worse, a Lofty Idea: racism is wrong, whether practiced by whites OR blacks.

What a revelation!

And with this fresh, never-before-thought-of truism in hand, the writer and director sought to make The Most Powerful Film Imaginable based Upon This Truth They Founded.

Yeah.

Clearly, the idea was too much for them, overwhelming them, drawing out their inner Martin Luther King, Jr.s, their latent Gandhis, their cellar-dwelling Mother Theresas, their closeted Nelson Mandelas.

On a practical level, the writer had Ed Norton's character orating with enormous speeches, literally quoting facts and figures, government budget sums, statistics, census data, while pumping up skinheads in a vacant parking lot before they raided and vandalized a Korean-run grocery store.

Elliot Gould - he of the sad-eyed-liberal-of-the-lowlands - was nothing

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