Birth of a Nation
D. W. Griffith's epic tale told in Birth of a Nation was a shocking one. The movie set box office records, taking in over eighteen million dollars. When it was released, it was one of the longest films ever made, over three hours in length. Some film scholars say that it is the most important film ever released. But despite all of these records and achievements, the story and the way that blacks of the South were depicted haunted blacks for decades to come. Showing the black man as a sexual predator to white females was inviting the South commence with wide-scale lynchings of innocent black men. If a black man looked the wrong way at a white woman, then he could be lynched without a thought of justice. This film advanced the suspicion and contributed to the practice of "Jim Crow" in the South. Most shockingly, I discovered that the film is still used by the Ku Klux Klan today for recruitment purposes. The portrayal of the KKK in Birth of a Nation was one of heroes, instead of marauding racists. This appealed to white Americans' views of the mythic South, and helped to boost membership in the KKK.
Griffith later released a version of the movie without the KKK, but the damage had already been done. Of course, the NAACP attacked the film, and it was met with picketing upon its release. The raising of the KKK as heroes while portraying black men as sexual predators was sickening, and it is amazing to me that the movie is praised as it is. The title of the film is an interesting one. It is unknown whether the title refers to the birth of the reunited states, or the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. I tend to think that the film has a double meaning. In showing the KKK as good guys, it is obvious that Griffith was trying to show their birth as a positive event for the United States. Also, he was showing that the U.S. was once again reunited after the war, leading to the strengthening of the nation. It forebodes the future, when the South and the blacks living there are kept in check by the KKK, making the U.S. that much greater. Though it would be better to ignore this notion of the birth of the KKK, it cannot be due to the film's content, although the film does show a truly "united" states. The film
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 761
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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