Birth of a Nation It was the first BIG Hollywood movie. It is estimated that five years after its premiere in 1915, it had already been seen by more than fifty million Americans. Almost half the population of that time. It is also estimated that he raised around eighteen million dollars.which today is equivalent to approximately one billion eight hundred million dollars.. With those numbers, it would rank seventh on the list of highest-grossing films of all time, just behind Spider-Man: There’s no way home.
Its director, D. W. Griffith, is considered one of the most important pioneers in film history. Before him, cinema was simply a new technology for telling classic stories. Rough games were recorded on photographic paper. Griffith is responsible for transforming a fairground curiosity into the mass art that is cinema today. He was the first to develop a cinematic standard. that is, a set of tools for creating drama from images. He took the camera and placed it at the center of the action, using close-ups, cross cuts, side shots, all blended into exciting dramatic scenes.
D. W. Griffith was a great artist and visionary, but he was also the son of a Confederate army colonel. And his grandmother knitted uniforms for the Ku Klux Klan. In The Birth of a Nation, he wanted audiences to see the Civil War and subsequent Reconstruction from his point of view. It turns out his view was deeply racist.
He considered the Confederates the true victims of the war. That they were attacked by the North and therefore freeing the slaves was the worst thing that could happen. Griffith was primarily responsible for giving cinema power and then using that power for evil. By illustrating a disgusting fiction and calling it a story in which black people are beasts and that is why the Ku Klux Klan was created to save virtuous white people.
The plot of the film “The Birth of a Nation”
There’s no doubt Birth of a Nation This is an extremely epic and ambitious work. Its purpose is to tell the story of two white families, one from the northern and one from the southern United States. From the period before the Civil War to Reconstruction after the end of the war.describing in detail everything that happens between
It begins by showing you the first slaves to arrive on the continent, and tells you that this was what “planted the first seed of discord.” From there we are transported to a supposed paradise where black slaves work the fields and a love story develops between their “sophisticated” white masters.
Thus, we see that despite the director’s values and the cheerful music that accompanies these horrific scenes, the cinematography is explicit enough for us to draw our own conclusions about the true horrors that Birth of a Nation contains. This was not Griffith’s intention, but the juxtaposition of white flirts walking through fields where atrocities are committed in broad daylight speaks for itself.
Abraham Lincoln is the main antagonist of the first part. Because he uses the power of the national government to “oppress” poor Southerners who only want to keep their property (their slaves), this is what makes their glamorous lifestyle possible. Although Lincoln later turns out to be a good man, as he pardoned a convicted rebel and planned to show mercy to the defeated enemy (the Southerners), while others in his party wanted to harshly punish the entire region. That is why his murder is tragic for the heroes.
We know that the South is defeated, and the film shows this as the worst disaster, because now the blacks are free and thirsty for revenge. IN Birth of a Nation Black people are not only evil masterminds perverting the political system, but lustful creatures whose freedom endangers every white woman.
When free blacks threaten to completely destroy all the values of white society, saviors appear – members of the Klan. They are the only ones who can stop the corruption of society (i.e. black men marrying white women) through their heroic lynchings.
What Caused the Birth of a Nation?
IN Birth of a Nation There is a scene in which a man sees several white children covering themselves with a white sheet to hide from a group of black children who were about to discover them. Upon seeing this, the black children seem to believe that what they see is a ghost and run away in terror. A text card will appear: “Inspiration.” The film then tells us that “the Ku Klux Klan was the organization that saved the South from the anarchy of black rule.”
Birth of a Nation sparked the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. A group that had virtually disappeared by 1915, its membership did not exceed three thousand members. The film’s unprecedented success was a major reason why the Klan reached a million members just three years after the film’s release. Returning to terrorize the black population of the southern United States as if it were a prophesied demon that would never be defeated.
The film not only sparked their revival, but also directly invented their supposed traditional practices. The original clan never wore uniforms that made them look like ghosts on horses or burned crosses. But Ku Klux Klan Number Two, founded by William Simmons and inspired by the film, adopted the aesthetic created by D. W. Griffith..
Harvard University researcher Desmond Eng demonstrated its toxic effects. Birth of a Nation in American society. On average, counties where the film was shown during its five-year national tour were found to be five times more likely to experience a lynching or race riot. and are three times more likely to have a Ku Klux Klan unit.
There was a massive call for censorship Birth of a Nation in several US states. Because even for its time, the film was deeply racist. These efforts were not futile, but Griffith was able to use the controversy to make his film even more appealing to audiences. He ran ads defending his artistic freedom and warned everyone to watch the film before it was banned..
Time magazine film critic James Agee said of D. W. Griffith’s death in 1948:
“Charlie Chaplin said, ‘The whole industry owes its existence to him.’ However, in the last years of his life, he could not find work in the city he had invented. He clung to the shadows, a bald man with an eagle silhouette, sardonic and lonely. At parties, he sat and drank silently, his sharp eyes scanning the room for familiar faces, most of whom were now long gone. David Wark Griffith was the Master, and there could never be anyone like him.”
Birth of a Nation It is available on YouTube.
Source: Hiper Textual
