MEDIA STUDIES I: CHOICES

Throughout your life you will find yourself standing at a crossroad and staring into oblivion. Your options, though there, are not clear. Darkness will cloud your vision and this smog can lead you to make some terrible decisions.

But class that is a part of life. Our mistakes make us stronger, what we learn from them makes us better. Life is a continuous chain of choices.

American History X.

I hope you watched closely. I know it isn’t easy viewing, but nothing makes my point better than the story within, for it contains a multitude of characters making myriad choices.

It shows two sides caught in a needless war. Throughout history blood has been shed in this war about skin, but all that bloodshed is a choice. These people – on both sides – CHOSE the paths they took.

Look at Derek. A man groomed, first by his father and then – once his father was murdered – a father figure, to live in hate. Because of them, his vision was clouded as he waited at his crossroad. He became poisoned by their hate, and he grew to be much worse than them.

Derek, like Wolfgang, believed in white supremacy. Derek, like Wolfgang, thought himself above people ‘like me’. Black men. Black women. Black children. All filth to him. And just like Wolfgang Derek had a penchant for stomping a brother to the curb. Which he paid for with jail time.

Inside, he worked with a black man named Lamont. He learned that black and white were just two sides of the same coin, just like Wolfgang will come to understand at Invasion. When his sentence was done, he righted his wrongs. He left the racist neo-Nazi groups, despite the danger that posed him, because he knew it was the right thing to do. Lamont had helped him despite his past, despite his swastika tattoos. Lamont made a choice to forgive him, and now Derek had made a choice too.

And then his brother got shot. He made his choice too late. The smog cleared from his crossroad as he stepped into the road, but the car was already hurtling towards him at full speed, with nothing he could do. He was left cradling his dead brother.

In the homework his brother was carrying, he quoted Abe Lincoln, saying “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection”. There is another Lincoln quote I prefer to live by.

Wolfgang has vowed to destroy me, to kill me. He asks me to fight back. In return I ask him the question Lincoln once asked: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”. The choice came too late for Derek, but the choice still stands for Wolfgang. What will he see as the crossroad clears for him? His mistakes can be overcome. His learnings can make him a better man.

Black. White. It doesn’t matter. It all fades to grey in the end. Choose togetherness over hate. My hand remains extended, Wolfgang. Take it.