Contributors >> Culhane, John ('03)

Biographical statement (April 2009)

After graduating with his degree in English from Lehigh in 2003, Jaycee Culhane had some community service due from a pending legal issue in Connecticut. He spent the summer of 2003 as a volunteer carpenter, building sets for People's Light & Theatre (www.peopleslight.org) outside of Philadelphia. At People's Light Jaycee worked directly under the shop foreman Nate, who happened to be Jaycee's former roommate at Lehigh. In the fall of that year, Nate left People's Light to start his own contracting company based out of Quakertown, PA, and Jaycee became VisionBilt Contracting's first employee. There he worked as a carpenter and painter for four years. In that time, Jaycee was married to his college sweetheart Jen, right there at Packer Chapel on the beautiful Lehigh campus. Jaycee is currently working as an independent contractor while he embarks on a career in writing and comedy. He and his wife Jen are in the process of moving to the Poconos.

Reflection

As soon as I saw Professor Gallagher's "Reel American History" offered in the spring semester of 2003 as a senior seminar, I immediately secured my spot in the class. After taking Professor Gallagher's "Oliver Stone's America" a few years prior, I had already been exposed to the study of history through the medium of film and the significant impact film can have on the collective historical understanding of a mass audience. But while the historical context that forms the base of much of Stone's work can be described as an amalgam comprised of a many varied sources, not the least of which included Stone's own (paranoid?) vision of history, in RAH we are charged with delving deep into just one film, and one that zeroes in on a more specific historical target, be it an individual, event, or era (as Stone did with Nixon, for example.)

So the stage was set for what proved to be an extremely enlightening examination of a historical figure through the eyes and words of a filmmaker and activist, the history books, the man himself, as well as their critics and proponents. I chose for my project the film Malcolm X, by Spike Lee; it was a quick and easy choice (although the "Scene Log" for this three- plus hour opus most certainly was not.) I was already familiar with both the film and autobiography (as told to Alex Haley) it was based on. Malcolm X had always fascinated me for a myriad of reasons: first and foremost, Malcolm X Shabazz was an incredibly complex individual from both an in-depth study of his life and times, as well as the passing glance paid to him by most grade-school history classes. The other thing about Spike Lee's Malcolm X that made it such an appealing choice to study in RAH is that there was considerable controversy and media attention paid to the film, its director, and its subject matter. Spike Lee, an often misunderstood director made a three hour and twenty-one minute film (a feat rarely understood by Hollywood studio execs) about one of history's most misunderstood men. Combining all these elements with a superstar, A-list cast, as well as critical and commercial success, and, yeah, Malcolm X would do just fine for this project. And while working on Malcolm X was quite a challenge (the brutal 201 minutes of scene logging I alluded to was just one example of the ambitious nature of this particular film), it was an unequivocal labor of love. I learned so much more about Malcolm and grew to have an even greater appreciation for him and the evolution of his thinking. Maybe just as important, I discovered just how right the film and Spike Lee did by Malcolm and how much of an impact it had in bringing many, many more people closer to whom he really was.

I, of course, look back fondly on the project and often think and speak about it. But in light of Barack Obama's election to President of the United States and arguably his election to Most Powerful Man in the World, I find myself thinking about the project even more. After more than four decades have passed since the assassination of Malcolm X, a man of African-American descent was elected in a relative landslide by a nation who enslaved Africans for nearly four centuries. What would Malcolm say about this today? Would Barack Obama be too much a part of the establishment for Malcolm's tastes? Or would Malcolm have continued on his trajectory of less radicalism? It is, of course, nice to have the benefit of getting Spike Lee's take on things as he was forefront during the campaign and one of Obama's most outspoken celebrity endorsers (which is saying a lot). But regardless of either man's feelings, or anybody else's for that matter, on the significance of Obama's rise to the highest political office in the world, there is little doubt that it is historic. And what is also not in question is that Malcolm X and Spike Lee both played their parts in it.