Birth of a Nation

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Birth of a Nation

• Presentation 1 Cultural Phenomenon

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Birth of a Nation
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Background (setting up cultural context)

• Birth of a Nation (1915), produced and directed
  by D. W. Griffith was originally entitled The
  Clansman and changed to Birth of a Nation a few
  months later.
• The film is based on Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.s
  racist play The Clansman

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• The film is still used today to recruit Klan
  members.
• Griffith argued that he was not a racist,
  claiming his film is simply narrating the truth.
• The NAACP responded vehemently to the film,
  speaking out against the vicious depictions of
  blacks.
• Ironically, President Wilson enthusiastically
  declared Its like writing history with
  lighting. And my only regret is that it is all
  terribly true.

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"NAACP Protests the Screening of the Movie 'Birth
of a Nation.'"New York City, New York 1947
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• Riot broke out in major cities and eight states
  refused to show the film fearing racial tension.
• As a result of this censorship, Griffith became a
  life-long advocate of free speech.
• Griffith wrote the following that prefaces the
  film Birth of a Nation
• We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish
  to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but
  we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the
  dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the
  bright side of virtue . . .

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Race, Gender, Politics

• Made 50 years after the Civil War, Birth of a
  Nation gives a clear message about Reconstruction
  Southern whites are the true victims, the
  liberated and independent-minded blacks are the
  victimizers.
• A romanticized version of the Old South is
  portrayed plantation life is depicted as
  innocent, pure, happy, and orderly. This is
  portrayed by the African Americans in the movie
  dancing and singing in the slave quarters.

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• The film raises white fears
• Miscegenation (sexual relations between whites
  and blacks, particularly between white women and
  black men)
• White male emasculation (white mens masculinity
  questioned and emasculated by black males
  prowess)
• White middle-class chaste femininity being
  sullied by blackness white women would become
  whores under black rule

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Psychological Dimensions of Racism

• African-American Studies Scholar John Hope
  Franklin contends that white mens fear of
  disempowerment, of emasculation, of disorder, and
  of humiliation is projected onto the male black
  body. Furthermore, he argues that the fear of
  sexuality has historically been projected on the
  black body. Black males and females

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• are seen as hyper sexual, promiscuous beings.
  This is demonstrated in the film when the former
  slave Gus tries to rape Flora, the sister to the
  well-respected, honorable Ben Cameron. Later,
  Bens fiancee, Elsie, is kidnapped by Silas
  Lynch, another former slave who has declared
  himself emperor of the First Black American
  Empire. Ben ultimately saves Elsie, leading his
  Klan friends to the rescue of white womanhood,
  white honor, and white glory.

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• Filtering Bens actions through Franklins
  theory, Ben embodies this fear of emasculation,
  being denied the right to be in control and
  protector of white womanhood. White masculinity
  is, according to Franklin, embedded in obtaining
  the illusion of innocent and pure white
  middle-class femininity.

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So how does this movie resonate today in the 21st
century?

• In The Birth of a Nationhood Lessons from
  Thomas Dixon and D.W. Griffith to William
  Bradford Huie and The Klansman, O.J. Simpsons
  First Movie, professor Riche Richardson argues
  that the old sham white supremacy forever wedded
  to and dependent upon faux black inferiority
  exists today (par.1). We can see it play out in
  how O.J. Simpson was depicted in the media.

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• He explains The official story has thrown Mr.
  Simpson into a representative role. He is not an
  individual who underwent and was acquitted from a
  murder trial. He has become the whole race,
  needing correction, incarceration, censoring,
  silencing the race that needs its civil rights
  disassembled the race that is a sign and symbol
  of domestic violence (par.2)

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American National Identity

• Birth of a Nation shows how race and gender is
  intricately woven into American persona. So
  what does it say? That until the Civil Rights
  Movement, America was automatically associated
  with whiteness, that whiteness was really an
  effacement of rich cultures and special ways of
  knowing and being and thinking, that America
  today must still come in terms with this reality,
  that white privilege still needs to be exposed
  and challenged, that we must own our past for a
  liberated future.

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Question

• Although we can all identify the egregious racist
  and hateful images of African Americans, is Birth
  of a Nation still relevant today? That is, does
  it expose white privilege and white racist fear
  that has not disappeared, but have taken on a
  more subtle and less vicious face?

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Works Cited

• Birth of a Nation. Dir. D.W. Griffith. Perf.
  Lillian
• Gish, Mae Marsh, and Henry Walthall. 1915.
  Videocassette. VCI Home Video, 1998.
• Franklin, J.H. From Slavery to Freedom A
• History of African American. 11th ed. New York
• Alfred Knopf, 1999.
• Richardson, R. The Birth of a Nationhood
  Lessons from Thomas Dixon and D.W. Griffith to
  William Bradford Huie and The Klansman, O.J.
  Simpsons First Movie. Mississippi Quarterly
  56.1 (winter 2002-2003)3-31. Academic Search
  Premier. EBSCOhost. Lake Sumter Comm. Coll.
  Lib., Leesburg, FL. 28 Aug. 200lthttp//web.ebswhos
  t .com/ehost/results?vidgt.