Have you watched any of the biographical Genius series' on Disney +? We thought Einstein was excellent, Picasso pretty good, and Aretha...meh. The first episode of the fourth series Genius MLK/X will be released today, at least in the United States, and I hope it will soon be available on this side of the border. This is the first day of Black History month, so what better date to air this first segment.
As the title suggests, it looks at the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, two central figures in the Civil Rights movement, both of whom were assassinated in their 30s. King was a Christian pastor who believed in non-violence while Malcolm Little began life in a Christian household but became part of the Nation of Islam and adopted X as a protest against the "slave name" given to his forbears by white oppressors.
There will be eight episodes in the series and we'll see if the film-makers get past the tendency to portray the two as adversaries, which wasn't necessarily the case.
Both men were activists for whom religion was an underlying force for their convictions. Martin overcame the strictures and expectations of Black leaders and Malcolm eventually found strength in a more traditional Islam that was inclusive rather than adversarial.
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