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The Iconography of Malcolm X
by Graeme Abernethy
Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2013
328 pp, $35 US

 

Some 50 years ago, a TV ad proclaimed, “X marks the spot,” referring triumphantly to the close-up shot of a clothes stain now erased by detergent. This idiomatic slogan likely doesn’t refer to African-American orator Malcolm X (1925-65), assassinated by shotgun 50 years ago, come February 21, 2015.

However, many other pop culture works do refer to X consciously (if not conscientiously) to suggest their own investment(s) in 1) black authenticity, or 2) progressive (socialist) politics, or 3) (Islamic) anti-imperialism, or 4) a “model” masculinity, or 5) (black) community pride, or 6) a sense of “cool” style, a photogenic, sound-byte pose or poise.

In his The Iconography of Malcolm X, British Columbia-based scholar Graeme Abernethy studies the multiple uses to which the “martyred” Black Empowerment tribune’s life and works can be put.

Make no mistake: This work is academic; in fact, it reads just like the dissertation it likely was once-upon-a-time.

Even so, this hardcover book is accessible—and thorough in its canvassing of the incarnations that X has sustained in African-American, Black Diasporic, and even generic, mainstream (Euro-Caucasian) cultures since his death (which itself made possible his Christ-like diffusion into identities and ideas, fashions and fads).

Abernethy’s study appears alongside other works analyzing the imagery of half-century-anniversary celebrities or culture heroes and the ways in which they actively—if discreetly—sought to direct contemporary journalists and audiences, and future historians and biographers, to interpret their substance and style.

(See, for instance, Thurston Clarke’s 2013 bio of the 35th U.S. President, JFK’s Last Hundred Days; or Bob Dylan in America, a 2010 analysis by historian Sean Wilentz.)

Abernethy notes that two crucial aspects of Malcolm X made him available for wide re-interpretation.

X’s Autobiography (1965), appearing posthumously, suggested that his own life had been a chronology of “changes”: Malcolm Little, a naïve dropout, becomes Detroit Red, a fast-livin’, jive-talkin’ hood; becomes Satan, a superbad jailbird; becomes Malcolm X, the fiery, truth-rappin’ Islamist; becomes Omowale, the Pan-African sojourner; becomes El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz, an orthodox Sunni Muslim.

Different readers could latch onto different aspects of the man, though his Detroit Red and Malcolm X personae have proven most attractive. X’s story also suggested that addicts and thugs could be redeemed, but by becoming revolutionaries, not saints.

Secondly, X was himself quite savvy in trying to shape his public self, a process he understood as engaging “the science of imagery.” He not only knew the best angles of any debate argument; he knew the best camera angles for any pose.

Abernethy studies the evolution of X-ian imagery over the decades. From 1957-65, the media typecast him as an evangelist of “hate.” X answered these stereotypes by stressing his “cool grin”; the Amway-chic of eyeglasses, suitcase, and wristwatch; “the understated stylishness of his [suit-and-tie] Nation of Islam period.” Sartorially, X looked like JFK and even James Bond.

In 1965, the Autobiography became a touchstone for African-American and other radicals and leftists. Dead, X could be cited and deployed without limit. But his memoir was complicated by Alex Haley’s commercializing and hagiographic edits.

From 1965-80, X was mimicked by everyone from Black Panthers to pimps, and so his “meaning” became disembodied from his actual life, times, and context.

Since 1980, with the arrival of neoconservative/neoliberal (bankrupt) economics and supposedly “post-racial” societies, X has been a signal figure in Hip-Hop, though the success and popularity of President Barack Obama has perhaps made him less essential as a figure of (black) struggles for equality.

Abernethy concludes, X’s “continued resonance emerges from his life’s example of the refusal to be ‘fixed in one position for very long.’”

But the real, underrated appeal of X is that he made it “cool” to sport glasses; to be scholarly; and to be charismatic, not nerdy. He was the first “glamorous” black intellectual, and Angela Davis was next.

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