Rhetorical analysis methodology in American History X

American History X

An exercise in and a meditation upon subversion, the film American History X is at once making a bold social and political commentary on the inherent destructiveness of racism and bigotry. At the same time, one could argue it's a tragic ballad for a family riddled with loss. Simultaneously, the film is a subversive series of photographs that illuminate a defiant culture and renegade civic identity. Just as iconic photographs can work to "reflect social knowledge and dominant ideologies; they shape understanding of specific events and periods…" (Hariman & Lucaites, 2002), the successive images of American History X works to reflect ideologies unwelcome to idealistic American sensibilities and rattle one's understanding of America today. If an iconic photo like the Flag Raising at Iwo Jima can reaffirm an individual's sense of collective pride, and shape collective beliefs about world events, than the subversive visual images which appear throughout American History X, have similar but far more disturbing effects. This paper will treat the connected images of American History X as having a comparable impact as that of the iconic photograph as described by Hariman and Lucaites, in this case, however, the influence is mutinous and subverted.

The renegade still images in the film have the impact of shedding light on the disturbing underbelly of American culture and particular American beliefs systems that flourish throughout parts of the country. If certain iconic photographs shape our understanding of particular events and periods, than subversive photography such as that which flourishes throughout American History X illuminates not only the unpleasant fact that racism and bigotry is still alive in America today, but that the average non-bigoted American is resistant to such illumination.

A pervasive image, one which appears in the film American History X and on the movie poster is a defined and muscled Derek Vinyard (Ed Norton), bare-chested, with a massive swastika over his left pectoral muscle, and his right hand placed gently there, over his heart, in rapt devotion and reverence, tinged in hostility, to his bigoted beliefs. Such an image denies the pride that Americans can have about their often bloody and shameful collective history: that slavery and segregation have been abolished, as well as racist legislation like Jim Crow Laws, the Chinese Exclusion Act and skewed, corrupt ruling of cases like Plessy vs. Ferguson. Vinyard's allegiance to the swastika is an allegiance to an idea that the America of today is perhaps not as equal, peaceful or harmonious as the average American would like to believe. The image is a shattering of the idea that the past was terrible, but the present is better. Rather, Vinyard's right hand pressed against his swastika-inscribed heart both repels and evokes revulsion. Iconic photographs stir a sense of nationalism and pride "they also illustrate the ways that visual communication can underwrite polity by providing resources for thought and feeling that are necessary for constituting people as citizens and motivating identification with and participation in specific forms of collective life" (Hariman & Lucaites, 2002). An iconic photograph can invoke a sense of inspiration and a commitment to collective ideals, and a sense of history, perhaps bloody and unjust a one time, but now reformed, improved and all together better. While it's true as Wrange points out, "Man's conscious declarations of thought are embodied in a mosaic of documents, in constitutions and laws, literature and song, scientific treatises and folklore, in lectures, sermons and speeches" (1947), iconic photographs are also forms of collective declarations of thought. Just as Neil Armstrong declared that it was one small step for man and one giant step for mankind, the image of Armstrong planting the American flag on the moon encapsulates this idea with just as much articulation.