Just Watched "American History X" for the First Time.....

Mannnnnn


Racism and bigotry is soo fkn retarded.....

Best line of the film;

So I guess this is where I tell you what I learned - my conclusion, right? Well, my conclusion is: Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth it. Derek says it's always good to end a paper with a quote. He says someone else has already said it best. So if you can't top it, steal from them and go out strong. So I picked a guy I thought you'd like. 'We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.'

I was raised by a very racist father whose major piece of advise to a young man was "always beat a black".... Not beat as in the violence sense but beat in life... I have to admit that I have carried racial issues around with me that were indeed influenced by my dad... But as a soldier that got kicked out of me....
I think that kind of parenting is child abuse and against society.. It is even more poignant when the father is a Jew and should know better after experiencing bigotry himself...
Im glad I have installed something else in my kids... There is good and bad everywhere.. And there are not many races..... Just one....

As what it says in the film..... "Life is too short to be pissed off all the time".....

What a film.......

I loved the film too. I believe it is better to love than to hate, in the face of anything. Because you can fight fire with firewood concerning hate, but that makes you no better than them. And it will erode your entire existence if you let it.

Everyone is doing the best they know how... one day their perceptions will change, just as ours did.

Do not blame your father, he was indoctrinated by his father, and so on... Be happy that you overcame it.

AAC

I too found this to be a very eye opening film! It is one of my favorites. I think that I have bought it 3 times now, due to loaning it out and not getting it back! Thats ok, its a good movie with a message that needs to be shared! I highly recommend it!

I guess some people need a film like this to find out something about racism. Honestly, I found the film chock full of tired themes and a comically predictable plot.

After decades of Norman Lear sitcoms and endless talk-shows discussing the pitfalls of racism, I'm quite surprised we still need films like American History X and Crash to reinforce a message we should have received from TV and movies already. I take it from the OP, we still need them. However, I don't see how people get through life in current America without getting absolutely hammered with the message that racism is bad.

American History X is an excellent film, Norton has another amazing monologue in the 25th hour, where his run of bad luck has him hating everyone in New York but by the end has realized it's all misdirected anger.

Warning: Explicit language.youtube link: 25th hour monologue

Yup, your mind should be sufficiently blown eh? .

It's an amazing piece of cinema, timeless in it's message.

We can learn a lot from that movie.

If it wasn't for the language, sex and violence, I would recomment high school students study it.

~Keeper

That is a great movie. It shows how a person's life can change drastically. Yeah, in some ways, it was sad, but you have to stop and think about the message.

Hi everyone,

to the OP, not too much to add except that I totally agree with you on many of the points you raised and wanted to say as much to re-install in you a sense that you are not alone in your beliefs, indeed billlions of people understand there is only one race.

It's a shame to hear about the views of your pop but he must be old and a new way of thinking has emerged, with the film showing that message, one of hope in people to make their life more positive

quote 'Im glad I have installed something else in my kids' , it's good to have beliefs and its even better when the installed ideas are good ones,

Peace

watched it once like 10 years ago. Liked it all n all, but never re-watched it. It was a strong movie, with its good points, but some times overrated.

reply to post by traditionaldrummer


I didnt need the message reinforced...I have seen racism in all its glory... Its just shocking that it is still a big problem... Not just racism but bigotry in general.... In the end of the day we all get pissed off at what one section of society does and they us.... The tension in the UK for instance with Islam in palpable... The Muslims here do themselves no favours by shouting islamaphobia at any little thing, but a part of that is down to the msm reporting of the war and the odd idiots who march through London with behead unbelievers on their kids bibs...
Over the weekend my brother... Who is just like the films main character before prison... Is going to go on a march against Islam with the English Defense league and has being saying all week "how much he is LOOKING FORWARD to it"... You can infer into that what you will and you will probably be right....
Lets just say I don't let him around my kids by himself... I wont let him infect their minds with his crap... But his girlfriend is half Asian Pakistani.. So i think he doth protest too much!!....

So it was poignant with that respect too....

reply to post by yyyyyyyyyy


Just to be clear that my old man has changed his views since then... Now all he shouts about is my stupid little brother and how my old lady needs to learn to cook....

Now I see why I have not been around them for the last 22 years lol

Originally posted by eNumbra
American History X is an excellent film, Norton has another amazing monologue in the 25th hour, where his run of bad luck has him hating everyone in New York but by the end has realized it's all misdirected anger.

Warning: Explicit language.youtube link: 25th hour monologue

Edward Norton was phenomenal in American History X (if you guys didnt' know, the oldest sister is actress Jennifer Lien or Kes from StarTrek Voyager). The reason I liked it so much was that it truly showed the disenfranchisment of some particularly white youths in todays age and how some where pushed into racism. It showed him normal and a father (who was killed) who had racists leanings to then his father gone and Norton going full speed into the Neo-Nazi world and then realizing in prison how in a hate filled society, organization or anything that the hate can be used against it's own members. Life is truly to short to be mad, it truly is. Much of everyones hate is truly misplaced anger just like in the 25th hour. He was hating everyone and everything in that 10 minute diatribe, and in the end I think he realized that he was made and hateful at that time because he got the short end of the stick (going to prison, losing everything he built, thinking he was cock of the walk etc.).

I showed alot of hate when I was a child and in my 20's, and it wasn't until someone pointed it out to me I started to think. I had a bad attitude and giving off poisonous atmosphere around me. People will walk away from you and/or turn their back on you if you are always a negative person or showing hate or literally making a good day into a bad day. People and everyone in general like to be happy or comfortable or for the most part being optimistic about life and their future. When someone like you or me who may or may not start to gring their "karma" around and it's bad at that, people will laugh and smile in your face, but they will slowly start to keep away from you. My hate was misdirected from my family life at the time, a stepfather that knew I wasn't his child and a mother that "knew she had a new man but wanted to get rid of the old child" syndrome (this happens more than people like to know or say).

And for the one poster who said why is it that we keep seeing films like this. It's because people forget, just like the OP's father who was racists but was Jewish. He should know from his own life and his people life what this does to a society and for him to do that he forgot something on the way to middle or old age. He and others need to be reminded that vigilance is the price of everything from freedom to evil emerging again to cause problems and pain.

reply to post by Yissachar1


When I was a child my mother used to warn me to never put objects, or food, in, or around, my mouth while out in public. Her words used for discouraging this act were "Do not put that near your mouth because a 'n-word' may have touched it!". Knowing my mother now, I couldn't think of a phrase more contradicting of her character? These are statements suited for only the highest degree of ignorant bigot, of which my mother is certainly not, yet she often readily said them? As if saying things like this aren't bad enough, she said them to small children!

If this was considered child abuse it would, in many cases including my mothers, be an indirect brand of it. To unknowingly inflict harm is hardly comparable to doing so knowingly. I'm more curious of how these traditions go on being practiced and unquestioned despite the obvious? Why we continuously embrace wrongdoing as long as it's a popular flavor of it?

My mother would never say or do anything to hurt others, not even behind their backs. She was programmed to interpret this as anything but racism. If this was, in her mind, hurtful and wrong in even the slightest degree it would devastate her. She is also intelligent enough to see this is wrong, yet she did not? I didn't fall for this as being okay, so why did she? I grew up in the '70's before racism became the hot topic it would be later, yet I knew this was wrong.

Why am I in the minority here? Why do most people need great movies and songs performed by popular superstars to identify wrongdoings? Why does it have to be trendy and orchestrated in order to be noticed?

Besides all that, I too liked the movie.

reply to post by Yissachar1


I wasn't as impressed with the film when it first came out as a lot of people were, and I watched it again about a month ago and was still pretty underwhelmed. I guess that's partly because I grew up in/around the punk scene, so I knew a ton of skins (both racist and non-racist) which made much of the background and character development feel like old hat to me.

I also didn't buy Norton's prison epiphany. It was too clean. Very few people are able to escape from the trajectory of such an ingrained racist mindset so completely and so quickly. Part of the tragedy of having hatred programmed into you from a young age is that even when the group you identify with does betray you in some horrific way, you still can't quite break free. Why bother to set up the environmental programming aspect if you're going to cheat on the payoff? I just felt like it was lazy screenwriting.

I guess as mainstream commercial films go it was pretty decent. But by making good and bad seem to clean and easy to tell apart I think it minimized its actual social effect.

it is a random confusion that you do here, of course love is better then hate but love as what to love objectively and hate as what to hate objectively, what to love objectively is the truth sense beyond all that never end, and what to hate objectively is the nothing certainty sense that is always a concept of past end

so future end is better then past end, perfect equation prooved being here, what is better is future always so that equation is true absolutely

now the confusion you are making by your means harm the truth, you are suggesting to love what is hateful, in that case hating what is hateful is much better, because hating what is not a value, bring out the values that justify freedom expressions of its positive source being existing

truth life is always the dimension of nothing absolutely, truth is about futur certainty as living freedom or freedom moves

so we cant either use the concept of love for needs, you are erasing then the truth and puting it under the concept of nothing and its needs

love is superior expression only for what love is a free move out of any needs or existence attachments facts

believing in superiority is the only right belief concept justification
and the principles bases of superiority are clear from any perspective of absolute objective better then itself

now about racism and such issues, it is always hypocrit means that motivate those drives wills and free expressions, they create what is less to say being more
and it is proven by a lot of powerful organisms in the world

making war to islam is to generalize islam as religion of third world representant and that what israel love to do by deluding the fact of christians in palestine and sending them out

true kind of racism is what like in europ some immigrations are being ignored to not mix with them but this cannot lead to any war if the logic is absolutely achieved, it is the hypocrisy that is responsable of frictions, willing to use what you consider less but by meaning to control their position to be objectively less cannot work
i mean if western civilisation went to do things by itself things would have looked different
what you may consider less you could perceive it more when you are ready for objective free positive sight

i really think that true compassion is the absolute lackness in meaning life by killing

the concept com mean the nothing base as a whole positive certainty source

but it is a passif concept not an active one

saying well to be compassionate you must go and consider what is less to be equal is absurd in all perspective

people should more understand how religions meant to speak to slaves dumb

Originally posted by imans
truth life is always the dimension of nothing absolutely,

correction, i meant to type truth life is always above the dimension of nothing absolutely

when you are using others to live better from that others perspective you are inferior to them at some points so you cant be absolutely superior as they could be superior to you

intelligence of powers in the world know this fact of truth and that is why they mean to acredit some groups that they would also use to justify what they are using

because the concept of superiority is basically of source absolute being

what is taking something from you to live cannot be an absolute source quality, so you wont consider it superior to you since it is always you the reference to anything objectively perceived existing

that is what proove the hypocrisy of some behaviors, what you consider less than what you are you cant then use it as a source of what you are

and by doing it, it is just clearly meaning to oneselves the opportunities in taking advantage from others weakness to profit from powers pretenses as being more

I enjoyed watching it when it first came out...it is a powerful movie with many issues that it confronts...racism being the primary one....

Like another poster mentioned earlier, in prison you dont change your colours so easily, even if your own has done you wrong...I beleive this is (like it or not) the influence of the jewish lobby in hollywood....they couldnt make a movie where he continues to do wrong on behalf of Nazi theology could they?

This movie is similar to the Australian movie with Russel Crowe (before he hit it big in the USA) Romper Stomper....which was also a moving film that touched on several issues....I beleive it confronted the racism issue far better than American History X did.

thou the targetted group were Vietnamese here rather than Blacks.....

Romper Stomper