THE BOOK / autobiography of Malcolm x, by alex haley

In these days of anti-racist demonstrations after the death of George Floyd , there is nothing better than going to the leader of the Nation of Islam to understand what the civil rights movement has been in the United States. Malcolm X comes to be like the reverse of Martin Luther King, the dark facet of the movement, its extreme and tough wing. His autobiography is still highly recommended and much better than Spike Lee's hagiographic adaptation. Despite the title, it is actually a text written by the writer Alex Haleyas a result of the conversations he had with Malcolm X. An authentic bildungsroman in which he recreates with absolute plausibility what was Malcolm X's life trajectory, from his youth as a gangster gang member in the neighborhoods of Boston, his time in prison, his religious enlightenment, his encounter with Elija Muhammad , his entry into the Nation of Islam, his travels through Africa and Mecca and his murder, already told by the author in closing.

I read the play in my university years and, as a good white European outside the sarao, I was shocked. The big disappointment, for me, was the adaptation of Spike Lee, who fails to capture the complex personality of Malcolm X. Lee's great political film is Inflicted on the KKKlan. Malcolm X is an essay for the latter.

EL DISCO / desire, by bob dylan

Desire is one of my favorite Bob Dylan records. One of those records that I never get tired of listening to. I like all the songs. There is a multicultural air that Dylan explored in this LP that makes it very current, with Irish, Italian, Mexican, even African sounds, all music with roots, which is what Dylan likes. And above all some magnificent lyrics, which is what I like. All the songs tell stories.

The one that opens the album is Hurricane , 8 minutes and 33 seconds, which is the best political song I have ever heard. Musically it is a beauty that alternates folk violins with acoustic guitars and a rock rhythm. The text, which recreates the false accusation of Rubin Carter, boxing champion, is as forceful as it is chilling. There are stanzas that give me goose bumps. «Rubin could take a man out with just one punch / But he never did like to talk about it all that much / It's my work, he'd say, and I do it for pay / And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way / Up to some paradise / Where the trout streams flow and the air is nice / And ride a horse along a trail / But then they took him to the jail house / Where they try to turn a man into a mouse »(Rubin could knock a man out with a blow / But he didn't like to show off / It's my job, he said. They pay me for it / And when I'm done, I'll continue on my way / To some paradise / Where rivers flow with trout and the air is pure / And where he rides a horse / But they put him in jail / Where a man is turned into a mouse) Whoever gives more, speaks now or stays forever.

THE FILM / Arde Mississippi, by alan parker

This Alan Parker movie is still one of the best film texts I know about racial conflict in the southern United States. The film, based on real events, is forceful, hard, bitter and beautiful, all at the same time. It narrates the investigation after the murder of a young black man and two white activists during the Kennedy government in the state of Mississipi. As a result, a couple of federal police officers moved to the State and began a very tough investigation in the vicinity of the Ku Klux Klan.

Gene Hackman signs one of the best interpretations of his career giving life to a southern police officer, who comes from a racist background and is the only one who understands the psychology of both the locals and the accompanying agent, a young Kennedian idealist from The time. The latter is played by Willem Dafoe who also embroiders that enthusiastic Democrat whose good-naturedness of course immediately collides with racist Mississippi society and police. And finally, a very young Frances McDormand plays the role of the local police officer involved in the murder. It is, along with Inflicted in KKKlan, my favorite movie about racial segregation. I have seen that in Filmin they give it a score of 8.4, one of the highest. I agree. It is a great movie.

LA SERIE / black mirror, by charlie brooker

As an absolute series about EVERYTHING that has to do with technology in a dystopian future, one cannot stop watching the five seasons of Black Mirror . The set is a masterpiece, an imaginative waste where its creators have squeezed the meninges to touch, in this most brilliant anthology, all the moral debates that may have to do with the use of technology. It is classified as science fiction, but it is a universe so close to ours that in many chapters it could be realism.

Anyone who has made his first steps with science fiction the first thing that falls is in the kitsch of a dystopian world more or less apocalyptic to the Blade runner or to the K-Dick with a lot of gear and high-tech buzz and then he gets mad. Just as the danger to the historical novelist is steeping himself in history, the danger to the science fiction novelist is falling into this kind of cheap scientist futurism.

The lesson BM gives us is to forget about it. We are in an immediate future that is barely distinguishable from the present. And in that context where it is no longer necessary to get lost in aesthetic minutiae for B series decorators, one can concentrate on all the dilemmas that technology brings.

A chapter that I especially remember is Arkangel , in the fourth season, in which a controlling mother inserts a chip in her daughter's brain that allows her to know where she is, see what she sees, pixelate those plots of reality that generate stress, etc. And all from a Tablet to which it is attached. And it is but one of the dozens of brilliant ideas that are developed in BM .

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