Identity In Malcolm X

In Malcolm X (Lee, 1992), the director has used history to tell a story that cannot be contested, in part because the primary subject of the narrative is deceased, thus creating a sort of documentary fiction. This documentary fiction opens the door to a new mode of narrative in which the spectator becomes a part of the storytelling, inasmuch as they are required by the viewing experience to analyze, contextualize, and draw conclusions from the images and narrative, as presented. The facts, as they are presented, are open for review, providing the spectator with the opportunity to shape the narrative independent of the director 's hand. Since the images have been reimagined through editing and the intervention of time, they are therefore mediated, creating a space that intervenes between the "real" and the "imagined" in order to bring about an historical and logical agreement of events. With this reconciliation, the spectator operates according to the guidance of the director.

The film is able to lay claim to those aspects of authenticity most often accorded to documentary film and autobiography because of its subject. As a narrative device, the film uses three distinct approaches to situating and grounding the historical identity of Malcolm X, and defining historic African American collective identity. The approaches to history, as used in the film,