American History X (1998), written by David McKenna, directed by Tony Kaye, and re-cut by Edward Norton, follows the life of a young neo-Nazi, Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton), starting from his time as the charismatic leader of a skinhead gang. The movie, like the riots, takes place in Los Angeles, California. The audience follows Derek from the crime which sends him to prison, up to the present when he is released from his three-year sentence a changed man. The story is told from the perspective of Derek’s younger brother, Danny (Edward Furlong), who idealizes his older brother. Using an essay assigned to him by his principal (Avery Brooks) as a narrative tool, Danny chronicles the life of his brother, focusing on the common themes of racism, hate, and intolerance that move the characters toward the film’s inevitable end.
This film was released six years after the L.A. Race Riots, at a time when many movies opted to focus on lighter issues, virtually leaving the problem that had sparked such a great disaster unnoticed. American History X, on the other hand, tackles the issue head-on, capturing the ideals and struggles of 1990’s America both through narrative and filmic technique. By using a shot-by-shot analysis of one of the opening scenes of this movie, I will show how filmic techniques such as framing, camera angles, high contrast lighting, shadows, monochrome filming, and sound help American History X paint a picture of the racism and inherited intolerance that reflects the dominant ideology of the era while at the same time illuminating the need for change.
Before diving into the bulk of this discussion, I feel the need to justify my choice in what I will refer to throughout this paper as the “dominant ideology” of the 1990’s. Though mainstream America preferred to consider itself an accepting, multicultural country whose issues of racism had been buried with the end of segregation and the civil rights movement, I believe that this was somewhat of a façade. The real dominant ideology was hidden under a thin layer of dust, waiting for a gust of wind (in this case, the Rodney King case) to expose it once again. If racial segregation had truly been a nonissue in the 1990’s, then the Rodney King incident would have been an isolated one and the riots would never have occurred. Instead, the King trial sparked an explosion that had been building for years, fueled by the people’s common, though perhaps hidden, beliefs of racial segregation and inequality—the truly dominant ideology of the 1990’s.
The clip of interest for this paper takes place at the beginning of the movie from 4:34 to 4:55. In this scene, Danny has just woken up to find a car of black gang members trying to rob his brother’s truck. He interrupts Derek who jumps out of bed and grabs a gun to deal with the problem. Below is the clip with the scenes labeled at the bottom.
Shot One consists of Derek and Danny going down the stairs. The main motivation for this shot is to establish Derek as the dominant figure while portraying Danny as submissive and easily influenced in comparison. A whole slew of filmic techniques are used to accomplish this. The most notable of these are character blocking, framing, and use of camera angles. Below is a picture taken from Shot One:
The shot is filmed from beneath Norton’s character looking up to him. As a result of this positioning, Norton appears to be towering and intimidating, increasing the power of his persona. His body is fully lit with the thickly-tattooed swastika proudly and fully illuminated over his heart. (Reminiscent of the way in which Hitler was photographed…) It is also worth noting the obvious: Derek dominates the foreground. Nothing else pops out of the screen quite like he does. This, combined with the plain, nearly-all white background of the hallway, makes Norton’s character even more defined and pronounced. In contrast, Furlong’s character is barely visible, almost completely blocked from view by Norton. Furthermore, Norton blocks most of Furlong’s light. The result is such that Danny is literally standing in Derek’s shadow. Within three seconds of the shot, the cinematic techniques used within the scene have established Derek as a character of power who is proud of his intolerance.
Blocking and sound continue to establish Derek as the more dominant character as the shot continues. Six seconds into the shot we see Danny leaning over the stair’s railing (see below). Now Derek is physically restraining his younger brother, asserting his control over him. Additionally, the lighting from below strongly illuminates parts of Derek’s arms and chest as Danny remains less drastically lit. At this point the role of the musical score becomes more clear. The score grows more and more intense from the beginning of the shot until around 0:05 when it calms temporarily as Derek calls to his brother to be silent. The audience interprets this as Derek being so in control that even nondiegetic sounds obey his commands.
In this shot, Derek represents the older generation of the family, both through his physical size as well as his domination and control in the scene. His tattoos are a testimony to the strict and, what appears to be, permanent moral code of intolerance that he lives by. They are, in a way, a metaphor of the ideals that have been imprinted on to him—literally by a tattoo artist, but figuratively by his father (William Russ) and white power role model, Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach). This idea of passing prejudices down generations is an important theme in the film and one which is reflective of the dominant ideologies of racists in the 1990’s. Having Danny positioned in the background of the shot helps to show the continuation of this trend onto an even younger generation. The act of casting a shadow on Danny gives a physical representation to the way in which Derek covers his younger brother with his racist (dark) ideals. Had the movie wished to create a moral divide between the two brothers, I think it is likely that it would have created more physical space between the two and allowed Danny to be more lit during the scene. However, as the film stands, it conforms to and mimics the dominant ideology and allows Danny to be a malleable object floating in the wake of his domineering older brother.
To this point, the film and its cinematic techniques have portrayed Derek as powerful, but this only represents half of his character. The other equally important half is his terrifying, almost monstrous side. At around 0:09 seconds into the clip we see the frame below. The light source used on Norton comes from directly below him. This is very unnatural lighting and it creates eerie, sharp shadows across his body and face. Again, we see that the swastika is illuminated on his chest, but more importantly, we notice the way the odd lighting makes him seem more demonic than human. Light from this angle is commonly used to create “a spooky and unfamiliar look” (Yot), and in this case it is also used to accentuate the animalistic nature of Norton’s character. Between the proud swastika displayed across Derek’s chest and the way light hits him, the director is able to remove the sense of impressiveness that had been created earlier in the scene and replace it with fear and unease. Similar techniques involving lighting are used in Shot Three (below). This time, however, the shadow he casts across the door is even more deranged and dangerous looking, much like a hunched-back creature holding a gun.
The monstrous effects created through lighting have a particularly important role in conveying the film’s ideological message. To this point, American History X could be considered “what a very clever, very subtle white supremacist might produce” (Valdez) in the way that it portrays Derek as a powerful, attractive, and, though it is not really shown here, very intelligent man. One could misinterpret this (as “The Warren” did in his discussion of the film on his blog, “Prison Flicks”) as a means of glorifying Norton’s white supremacist character. However, now that we see that the director has shot and lit him in an animalistic way, it becomes clear that although Derek is shown in an impressive way, certain aspects of his appearance and portrayal are altered to make the audience a bit uncomfortable watching him. This brings to light the unease the film thinks we should feel in the presence of such powerful racism.
Perhaps the most notable aspect of this scene, which has been neglected thus far, is that it is shot in monochrome black and white. This is done to reflect Derek’s view on the world, that people can be seen only in black and white: minorities and the white race, with no in between. This style creates harsh dichotomy and further contributes to the separation between the races felt by Derek. His narrow perspective present during this scene is shown in its narrow color spectrum. In addition, use of harsh lighting and sharp shadows throughout works to further the physical contrast between black and white. In this case, there is no need to imagine how the scene could have been filmed if there were other messages to convey; we see them periodically throughout the movie in scenes that take place in present time. These scenes are shot in full color with less obvious, more natural lighting. The achieved effect is that the film is able to separate Derek as he was in the past and how he is in the present. During the scenes which are shot in black and white, Derek is, “at that point, a white supremacist, and his view of the world is very narrow” (Moore). Conversely, scenes in the present when Derek has reformed are shot with full color and the audience begins to see that he has changed and that he “begins to look at life from a less black and white perspective” (Moore). The transition made from the first half of the film, which is predominantly in black and white, to the end, which is mostly in color, is made to represent the ideological change from closed-mindedness to open-mindedness that has occurred in Derek, and should be occurring in the audience.
Shot Four is perhaps the most influential shot in this scene. In the shot prior, we see Derek peering into the door’s peephole. In response, the next shot shows from his perspective, through the peephole, the black man standing outside on the porch. This effect (often called the ‘fisheye’ or ‘peephole’ effect) is achieved by using a wide-angle lens that captures a hemispherical range and creates a distorted view (Wikipedia). The symbolism created by this shot is pretty clear when keeping in mind the film’s themes of racism and intolerance. Derek is looking out of his house into the world, but in doing so is also looking at a black man. His hate and intolerance are so strong that they heavily distort his perception of the world, and this is reflected here by the physical distortion experienced in looking out the peephole.
The audience looks at Shot Four and accepts with little difficulty (due to continuity editing) that the perspective which they are experiencing is Derek’s. What they do not acknowledge consciously, but is nonetheless more important, is that by participating in and actively watching the scene, they too are accepting the Nazi perspective as their own. This notion, understandably, may be a bit hard to swallow at first. For evidence I look to Laura Mulvey’s article, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. In her essay, Mulvey suggests that in the case of women in cinema, the camera adopts a patriarchal view of the female, cutting the woman into pieces, transforming her from a human into a spectacle for the male viewing pleasure. She goes on to claim that in being actively entertained and enjoying such films, the audience too is adopting the dominant ideology of the patriarchal society (Mulvey). The same concept can be applied to Nazism in American History X. We as an audience watch for our enjoyment as Derek gazes, vision distorted by hate and intolerance, at the black man, and in doing so, we are subconsciously accepting his views. This is not exactly a comforting thought; but it is, nonetheless, important to acknowledge so that we may better see how the movie draws the audience in on the ideology on which it is commenting. By experiencing the ideology first hand and being made uncomfortable by it (by means discussed earlier), the film is more successful in actively engaging the audience and forcing it to take a step back and question what they had so readily accepted.
This concept of being drawn into film, or any medium of art in general, is referred to as suture. Becoming sutured into the film allows the audience to transform the two dimensional film on screen into a three dimensional realm. Typically, suturing is made possible by utilizing off-screen space through shot-reverse-shot sequences or, as we saw before, through point of view shots. The end result of these efforts is that the audience allows what they know to be false (i.e. the events occurring on screen) to be accepted as true. What can be said of the events occurring on screen can also be said of the ideologies which are being portrayed in the film. In his essay, The Tutor-Code of Classic Cinema, Daniel Dayan refers to the suturing process of classic cinema as “the ventriloquist of ideology” (Dayan, 31). In this he means that as a movie pulls us the audience into the world which it portrays, it subtly leads us to follow its ideology. This can be seen in the scene from American History X which we have been discussing. Suture is another way in which a film’s form (technical moves) helps to convey its function, or ideological message.
The L.A. Race Riots serve as an interesting back drop to contextualize the racism and hidden dominant ideology of the 1990’s, which can be found mirrored in American History X. The shots observed from the beginning of the film work to portray Derek as a powerful and domineering character full of hate. At the same time it characterizes his younger brother as impressionable. Through filmic technique, the director shows how racism and intolerance are passed down generations, such as from Derek to Danny, indicating how the films form coincides with its ideological function—a theme which is common throughout this discussion. The true gravity of the shot-by-shot analysis comes through in Shot Four, when we realize that by accepting Derek’s view, we as an audience are excepting his ideology as our own, even if only temporarily. We, in a sense, are readily accepting his Nazi point of view. Ultimately, the film is presented in a way which reflects the dominant (though hidden) racist ideology of the 1990’s, but succeeds in portraying it in such a way that the audience realizes it needs to reevaluate its values and redefine what they have accepted as their dominant ideology.
Works Cited:
Dayan, Daniel. "The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema."Film Quarterly. 28.1 (1974): 22-31. Print.
"Fisheye Lens." Wikipedia. Wikipedia- The Free Encyclopedia, 2009. Web.
Moore, Julie. "Analysis of American History X." Associated Content 09 Jan 2009: n. pag. Web. 4 Dec 2009.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen. 16.3 (1975): 198-209. Print.
Valdez, Joe. "American History X (1998)." Distracted Globe 04 Mar 2008: n. pag. Web. 4 Dec 2009.
Yot, Richard. "Itchy Animation." Digital Paint. 04 Dec 2009. Itchy Animation, Web. 4 Dec 2009.
