#the birth of a nation

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

Providing some context to this film due to the nature of its contents. This film appears on the list “1001 Films You Must See Before You Die,” which this blog is currently using for polls. It is a compilation of films deemed important to watch for those interested in cinema as determined by dozens of film critics. The Birth of a Nation appears on that list, and thus this poll blog, because of its technical feats- as it says on its Wikipedia: “it was the first American-made film to have a musical score for an orchestra[, and] it pioneered closeups and fadeouts”- but also because of its historical significance. This film is infamously extremely racist, with a plot line that demonizes African Americans (all portrayed by white people in blackface) while glorifying the KKK to such a degree that studies even link the film to a rise in support for the racist hate group. This was also the first movie to be screened in the White House, to President Woodrow Wilson, so its historical significance cannot be downplayed.

I am thus choosing not to omit this film from this blog’s polling pool despite its nefarious nature because I am interested in how familiar people are with it and its role in history. I encourage anyone voting “haven’t heard of this movie” to at least read the Wikipedia article (my source for all of the above information) about it as it’s important to be aware of prominent films like this and how they did and continue to impact the culture we reside in.

[blackstar1887]

Nat Turner: A Rebel's Quest for Freedom and Inspiring Resistance

[citizenscreen]

On January 1, 1915, audiences filed into the Loring Opera House in Riverside, California, for a sneak preview of D.W. Griffith’s first full-length feature film, THE CLANSMAN, later renamed THE BIRTH OF A NATION. #OnThisDay

[dweemeister]

Harry Belafonte in BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Actor, singer, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte died today at his home in New York City at the age of 96. Belafonte, whose acting career made him a contemporary (and the last surviving stalwart) of a generation that included Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Dorothy Dandridge, Ossie Davis, and Diahann Carroll, often took long hiatuses from moviemaking to pursue his musical and political interests. Despite a breakout 1950s in his acting career, Belafonte acted in zero films in the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. He would no longer be interested in working on films that contained no elements of social justice.

In his final narrative film appearance (and first since 2006), Belafonte appeared in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018) as an elderly activist recounting to young black activists the 1916 lynching of Jesse Washington (while paralleling Adam Driver’s character working undercover within a local branch of the Ku Klux Klan in order to root it out). One of the catalysts to Washington’s lynching was D.W. Griffith’s seminal The Birth of a Nation (1915) - a cinematically important but virulently racist work that gave rise to the modern KKK - which appears in the second half of this clip. 

[lairreparablefugadeltiempo]

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1914)

[oldshowbiz]

1962.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the ku klux klan hosted screenings of D.W. Griifth's The Birth of a Nation to raise money.

[byneddiedingo]

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

Cast: Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Henry B. Walthall, Miriam Cooper, Mary Alden, Ralph Lewis, George Siegmann, Walter Long, Robert Harron, Wallace Reid, Joseph Henabery, Elmer Clifton, Josephine Crowell, Spottiswoode Aitken, George Beranger, Maxfield Stanley, Jennie Lee, Donald Crisp, Howard Gaye, Raoul Walsh. Screenplay: Thomas Dixon Jr., D.W. Griffith, Frank E. Woods, based on a novel and play by Dixon. Cinematography: G.W. Bitzer. Film editing: D.W. Griffith, Joseph Henabery, James Smith, Rose Smith, Raoul Walsh. 

Is it an overstatement to say that the stench of The Birth of a Nation is more than a subset of the blight cast on American society and politics by slavery? Because Griffith's film informed an entire industry, not only with its undeniable influence on the language and grammar of film, but also in the tendency to valorize bigness above intimacy, action over thought, sensation over understanding that has characterized the mainstream of American movies. It was the first blockbuster. It was both intelligently crafted and abominably stupid. It just might be the most pernicious work of art ever made, a magnificent nauseating lie. Its portrait of Reconstruction warped the teaching of history for generations, and although the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan that it inspired has waned, we still find ourselves swatting down the heirs of the Klan like the Proud Boys, the Promise Keepers, and others who would defend what one of Griffith's title cards calls the "Aryan birthright." Even the reaction against The Birth of a Nation has its dark side: The recognition of the power of movies that followed its release eventually produced calls for censorship that would hamstring the medium. On the right, a suspicion that movies had the power to promote a leftist agenda led to the blacklist era, in which communists, not racists, were the target. And what is the crusade by some against "wokeness" in the media but another call for the kind of ideological purity that would stifle art? So to call The Birth of a Nation an essential film is an understatement. Looking at it as a demonstration of the ability of cinema to profoundly affect society could reveal it to be the most important movie ever made.     

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

I'm so tired of addressing the same arguments from people who believe in the Hypodermic Needle Theory. Well, here we go again...

Gonna try to keep this post short.

• "Uncritically consuming content"

Media audiences aren't passive absorbers of messages, even when they watch a movie casually and don't go write a meta post about it on Tumblr or Reddit.

• "Your brain state"

• Subliminal messaging

You're the one who hasn't heard of subliminal messaging, buddy:

"They can't make you go buy something you don't want or vote for a political candidate you don't like," Zimmerman said. "The messages just aren't that powerful."

• Propaganda

• The Birth of a Nation — This is on par with Jaws being used as a "gotcha," but much more annoying.

“People were primed for the message. Hard to argue this was a distortion of history when the history books at that time said the same.” — Paul McEwan, film studies professor at Muhlenberg College

The film was made during a time when Jim Crow laws — based on white supremacy ideology, which had existed long before the film's creation — still enforced segregation in the United States.

The film reached people who were already racists, and would've continued holding those anti-black beliefs, with or without The Birth of a Nation.

I'd go as far to say that the civil rights movement alone would've probably pissed racists off into reviving the KKK — if the film hadn't inspired William Joseph Simmons.

Ergo, The Birth of a Nation itself did not turn people into racists. They were already that way due to the time period they were living in:

And their education:

[lefildariane]

The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915).

[hellsdaydreamwastaken]

I hate when people say that we have to appreciate The Birth of a Nation, one of the most horrendously racist movies ever made, because "it was influential". Blackface minstrel shows remain MASSIVELY influential on comedy and culture, but doesn't mean we to have like those. Same shit with BOAN.

[kisafilms]

The Birth of a Nation

From a young age Nat Turner (Nate Parker) was always told that he was going to be somebody important in life. By the “blessing of God” he had the ability to read words, which allowed for his slave masters to bring him into their home to learn about the word of God. Fast forward to […] The Birth of a Nation

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[rwpohl]

[citizenscreen]

On February 8, 1915, D.W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION, premiered at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. #OnThisDay

[pop-sesivo]

Esta es una conversación entre el director D.W. Griffith y el actor Walter Huston en 1930, en la que Griffith habla de The Birth of a Nation. "El Klan era necesario entonces", dice el director. Curioso escuchar su voz y su defensa del Ku Klux Klan.

This is a conversation between director D.W. Griffith and actor Walter Huston in 1930, in which Griffith discusses The Birth of a Nation. "The Klan was necessary then," says the director. Curious to hear his voice and his defense of the Ku Klux Klan.

[unlimitedbutchworks]

like do you remember a few years back how popular lesbian blogs would come out as bi after a while and then immediately be subject to a wave of hate asks about how they’re personally ruining and soiling the lesbian identity and drive them to delete/remake? actually I’m speaking in past tense but people literally still do this