The Birth of a Nation

It's impossible to talk about The Birth of a Nation without addressing the film's overt racism. The messages that director D. W Griffith sows throughout the film are so blatant and offensive that it remains controversial nearly 100 years later. I think this is fantastic because it absolutely vindicates the power of cinema in terms of immediacy and connection... we can look back at any number of historical documents (EG. Aristotle, early Tintin) that tout similarly backwards attitudes to race and are able to look at them somewhat clinically due to the cushion of time that sits between us and the views/context of the past. But when peopole watch The Birth of a Nation, the medium of film brings these abhorrent views to life in a way that modern viewers are unaccustomed to. It's not even the same as watching a piece of modern racist propaganda as these modern equivalents are very much a minority text, and come from a place where the voice is aware that it's at odds with the majority of 'decent' society. The Birth of a Nation has a degree of horror attached to it for the modern viewer because it comes from a time where these racist beliefs were a commonly held viewpoint in 'decent' society. That's the power of cinema... it keeps the past alive and accessible for modern generations, and as much as Griffith's opinions might astonish and offend, his almost singlehanded creation of what we now refer to as film grammar is a big part of this power.


So what's it about?
The Birth of a Nation is a 3 hour epic in two parts that seeks to explore how modern America was shaped (for better or worse) by the civil war. The first part deals with the civil war's initial rumblings and eventual outbreak, whereas the second part looks at the Reconstruction period (where the North guided the rebuilding and reassimilation of the South after the war). Griffith looks at the war via the Southern town of Piedmont and one its more upstanding families, the Camerons. The Northern side of the conflict is represented by the Stonemans, headed by Austin Stoneman (Ralph Lewis), a 'radical' senator and apparent architect of the civil war. The South is depicted as an idyllic place for play, good manners and friendship... it's an idyllism that becomes shattered by war and will never be regained (the film tells us this outright). The three sons of the Cameron family go off to meet the Union soldiers in battle, tragically only one of them (nicknamed 'the Little Colonel' [Henry B. Walthall] due to his heroism) returns home, and he finds love in Elsie Stoneman (Lillian Gish), the daughter of his enemy.

The Reconstruction period sees the elder Stoneman gain more power in the wake of President Lincoln's assassination. Stoneman uses the opportunity to carry through his plans to punish the South for its rebellion, and installs in Piedmont (which is symbolic of all the South) an all-black force of Union soldiers. The 'free' elections in Piedmont become a farce and the House of Representatives is soon overrun by former slaves due to electoral corruption. This prompts the oppressed Southerners to form a 'noble' protectionist force that they call the Ku Klux Klan, and a new guerilla war rises up in Piedmont as the KKK fight the 'evil' freed slaves in the name of truth, justice and the American way.


Why is it so offensive?

"The bringing of the African to America sowed the first seeds of disunion"

From this opening sentence in the title cards, everything about this film's ideas and themes is problematic. The Birth of a Nation treads this strangely hypocritical line that both blames the African slaves and their white saviours but not the white slave owners. In terms of logic, it doesn't make any sense. If the slaves were so easily corrupted by 'radical' white Americans then shouldn't this idea also absolve the African-Americans of any blame? The events portrayed in this film wants to have it both ways, blaming both the slaves and the white Americans that freed them. And yet, even while blaming Stoneman and his ilk, the KKK directs all their violence in this film towards the 'upstart' slaves! Let's break down some of the film's outlandish claims. It:

• Condemns abolition as un-American simply because the idea was founded in far away Europe.
• Condemns the fact that Africans ever came to America, as if they had a choice in the matter!
• Labels equal rights for African-Americans as a 'radical' and dangerous idea.
• Attacks the 'scalawag' Northern whites for influencing and leading the freed slaves astray by filling their heads with 'nonsensical' ideas of freedom. It also posits the idea that the slaves were at their happiest when working hard on the plantations, and shows these hardworking slaves dancing wildly while eating watermelon (I'm not joking).
• Depicts the first black politicians treating the House of Representatives like a pigsty - drinking liquor, taking their shoes off and putting their feet up, and generally being uncivilised.
• Most offensively of all, depicts a handful of 'good' black characters who uproariously laugh a the idea that they're equal to white men, and even help the KKK put down the 'bad' upstart black invaders!
• Suggests that Austin Stoneman (a character representing Northern politicians and based on real life abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens) is a bloodthirsty and debauched tyrant motivated primarily by an unnatural lust for his 'evil' mixed-race servant. This lust is apparently so strong and influential that he actually wants to hang Confederate leaders after the Union has been victorious in the Civil War. Stoneman later gets taught the 'evil' of his ways when his elevated African-American prodigy wants to (shock! horror!) marry Stoneman's white daughter. And if that doesn't spell things out enough, The Birth of a Nation actually says it outright by prefacing it with this intertitle: "the great leader's weakness that is to blight a nation".
• Shows this aforementioned elevated African-American prodigy, Silas Lynch (George Siegmann), to be nothing more than a hollow point made by Stoneman to help ruin the South, and that Stoneman's ideas of equality were only "deluding the ignorant". It's not so much saying that equality is evil but more than it's used to evil ends, and that it was misguided to give 'ignorant blacks' any power. Silas is later depicted as a traitor to both black and white Americans - even as the most intelligent-seeming of African-Americans in the film, he's revealed to be a power-hungry monster set on gaining sexual control of Elsie Stoneman (portrayed by the virginal and doll-like Lillian Gish).
• Has the gall to even suggest that vigilante lynching practices started amongst the African-Americans, being when 'upstart' black soldiers lynched 'loyal' black slaves.
• Seriously and unironically depicts the racist violence of the KKK as a desperate act of law and order in an age of chaos. The KKK hunts down a villainous black character named Gus (Walter Long) so that he might be given a 'fair trial' for his crimes and brough to justice. It also seperately shows how the first strike in the KKK's war of terror came when black soldiers brutally and maliciously murdered innocent white Klansmen.
• Has all the African-American characters played by white actors in blackface.

What is Film Grammar?
We take it for granted now, but the way a story is visually put together on screen is the result of more than a century of coded techniques. When the first camera was invented it was just a simple case of aiming it at something and filming... there were no closeups, no changes of scenery, no cutting, etc. All these things that happen in the editing and creation of a narrative are things that we've invented, things that have become so ingrained in our filmwatching that we barely even notice them any more. The concept of cutting back and forth between two of the same scene, or even two completely seperate scenes (crosscutting), are inventions of cinema that help create a sense of movement, momentum or perspective when telling a story or staging a scene. A lot of the earliest examples of this stuff being done effectively comes from D. W. Griffith, and from The Birth of a Nation in particular.

• Wide shots are used to show the full scale of a battle and, more strikingly, there are scenes that show the main characters in the foreground while battle rages on in the background. It shows a level of depth that could only be achieved in film (as opposed to film's forebear; the theatre). This sort of thing would come to be referred to as image composition.
• Numerous cross-cuts and close ups are used to engage the audience into the action and narrative.
• Moving (IE. tracking) shots of the Klansmen riding on horseback, one of the earliest instances of non-static camera movement in film.
• The film ends with the Klansmen parading on horseback through Piedmont in a warmly energetic scene where the camera actually gets in and moves amongst them while they move as well. We take this kind of scene for granted now, but these images and the way they're shot have come to symbolise the heroes' homecoming; a now trope now familiar to many genres.

Impact, and the Modern Perspective
Griffith's choice to make The Birth of a Nation is very much in keeping with American attitudes in 1915. The growth of the KKK was near exponential in this period of American history, reaching it's height in 1930 with a 100 000-man strong parade of Klansmen in Washington DC and a membership that numbered in the millions. The popularity and success of The Birth of a Nation in the 1910s and 1920s is reflective of this, and Griffith's glorification of the KKK's birth in the Reconstructin period was quite a smart piece of marketing - akin to the myriad of late 20th century films that deal with the evils of the Holocaust or more recent films that look at terrorism. It's a case of subject matter reflecting the political concerns of the era.

I wouldn't for one minute suggest that all of these historical phenomena are morally equitable, but The Birth of a Nation was a response to public opinion in America with regards to how history was currently perceived at that certain time. In 1915 the KKK was developing into a fully-fledged political movement... what better way to capitalise on that then to make their formation literally synonymous with America's birth as a nation. People in America were angry about something, and this film placated that anger by vindicating it.

Griffith plays along with this in his typically heavy-handed way. The images of the once-idyllic Piedmont transformed by hordes of occupying black soldiers intent on lording it over the whites is a powerful piece of propaganda. On the flipside of this 'villainy', Griffith depicts the Little Colonel's beautific courtship of Elsie Stoneman in sharp contrast to this violent upheaval. On the one side of the equation we have a land ruined by chaos thanks to the 'evils' of equality, and on the other side we see the leader of the KKK exemplifying the tranquil purity of love. Even the name 'Little Colonel' has cutesy connotations, designed to make you cheer for the supposed 'hero' - a man who, if he were real, would've been a paramilitary redneck.

It's relieving to know that the racism of The Birth of a Nation didn't go unnoticed even back in 1915, The film was met with success by the silent majority of filmgoers (most of whom still held prejudices regarding African-American), but it was also denounced by critics and more liberal-minded Americans for its loose reinterpretation of history and generally inflammatory nature. Griffith responded to this negative reaction with another epic look at history, Intolerance, by way of apology and defence. In hindsight, it's hard to tell what Griffith's real view was regarding these matters if he could expound such wildly oppositional idealogies (he even went on to explore interracial love in Broken Blossoms). Suffice to say, despite the blinkered view of the Civil War and abolition, The Birth of a Nation is an early masterpiece in terms of technique and narrative.


DIRECTOR: D. W. Griffith
WRITER/SOURCE: D. W. Griffith and Frank E. Woods. Based on the play and novel The Clansmen by Thomas Dixon Jr.
KEY ACTORS: Lillian Gish, Henry B. Walthall, Ralph Lewis, George Siegmann, Mae Marsh, Miriam Cooper, Walter Long, Jennie Lee

RELATED TEXTS:
- The Clansmen by Thomas Dixon Jr, the second book in a Reconstruction-era trilogy that also included The Leopard's Spots and The Traitor. This was later adapted by Dixon Jr. as a play.
- Dixon Jr. also later wrote a sequel, The Fall of a Nation, which he himself adapted and directed in 1916 in an attempt to cash-in on Griffith's success. The film was a failure and has been lost for many years.
- D. W. Griffith would explore racism more overtly in Intolerance and Broken Blossoms.
- Other filmmakers from the same era responded to The Birth of a Nation with their own treatises on the racial situation in American, The Birth of a Race and Within Our Gates.
- President Woodrow Wilson's historical book, History of the American People, contains a similarly one-eyed view of the KKK's birth, and is even quoted during the course of The Birth of a Nation.