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.
The film is an incredible piece of propaganda for both the KKK and the Jim Crow system. People who knew nothing about the KKK or thought of them as white villains before Birth of a Nation probably changed their minds and donned hoods of their own upon seeing the film. The mainstream picture was probably the best advertisement that the KKK could have had. The vilifying of blacks also led to the Jim Crow system. When it was portrayed in this movie as acceptable, people in the South felt much better about doing horrible deeds to black citizens, denying blacks their civil rights. 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 fil
Some common words found in the essay are:
Birth Nation, KKK Griffith, Klux Klan, Civil War, Jim Crow, Crow South, , birth nation, People KKK, jim crow, crow system, ku klux, klux klan, black sexual, ku klux klan, Ku Klux, jim crow system,
Approximate Word count = 761
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
