Birth of a Nation: Representation of Racism in America

 

    It was hard to try and find imagery for this post due to how disturbing the content of the film was. Birth of a Nation came out in 1915 and was made by D.W. Griffith and Thomas Dixon Jr., and it was their interpretation through a confederate lens of thee Civil War to Lincoln's death during the Antebellum period. The images I have chosen pictured above are an advertisement for the film and a picture of a scene with Flora Cameron, played by Mae Marsh. The advertisement, which we also looked at in class, uses language such as "The Great American Play At Last!!" that paints the content in a positive light and some other advertisements include the silhouette of a KKK clansman on a horse wielding the flag. This presentation clearly shows the intensions and white supremacist point of view that Griffith and Dixon Jr. wanted to push Americans to believe during the Jim Crow era. The image of Flora Cameron that I included shows here clearly terrified and disheveled due to an attack that is happening.

    Something interesting that we talked about today in class was the controversy surrounding this film because, at the time, many politicians and other people apposed its creation. There were efforts to get the movie banned as well, but it was not accomplished because of the groundbreaking technology and effects that were used throughout the film. Yet another disturbing fact is that Woodrow Wilson, the president at the time, allowed for this Birth of a Nation to be played in the White House, and this along with the excerpts from Wilson's writing that were used in the film, go to show just how rampant and nonsensical racism was during this time. It is truly hard to fathom how extreme these beliefs were taken due to the fear of freedom of African Americans; this was highlighted even further in the scene where the majority in the government was black and the minority was white even though historically the situation was the complete opposite.