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Health & Fitness

The Portrayal of African Americans in "The Birth of a Nation"

A discussion of the wildly exaggerated portrayal of African Americans in D. W. Griffith's 1915 "The Birth of a Nation."

After finishing D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, I realized that there just some historical artifacts that just simply cannot be ignored, or avoided. If you are at all a student or lover of films, you must watch this movie. It is a brilliant demonstration of all the different technical devices that Griffith came up with, as well as a fascinating story and mirror of the social values of the United States at the time. And in spite of the controversy surrounding it, it is important to take in in order to fully understand the extent to which things have improved—or not so much—in this country, in terms of the depiction of African Americans.

The Birth of a Nation was not the only film to portray African Americans using blackface; Al Jolson spoke the first words in a talkie film while decked out in the dark face paint of the minstrel shows of yore. But no other film since Birth has caused such an ongoing uproar in its overall depiction of African Americans. Although black people are generally in the background in the first part of the film, which is set before and during the Civil War, the second part is almost obsessed with their presence in the South of the Reconstruction era.

In an almost alternate-history approach to the subject material, Griffith depicts them as lascivious villains who take over the South and treat it as their hedonistic playground. With the help of the carpetbaggers, black people assume control over government, using their power to instill laws that allow black-white intermarriage and force whites to salute black soldiers. Their portrayal is so cartoonishly evil that the only thing that is missing from their characterization is the occasional moustache being twirled at the camera. Also in keeping with the prevailing perception of blacks by whites at the time is the inclusion of the pure white girl being threatened by black men. The second part of the film includes not one, but two cases of this, one of which results in the suicide of a young white woman; she'd rather die than be married to a black man.

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Although this portrayal of black people may seem over-the-top now, it would not have struck contemporary white audiences as at all unusual; as far as they were concerned, the circus that is the Reconstruction South in Birth of a Nation is exactly what they'd expect if black people had their way. As such, one can assume that Griffith agreed with this general sentiment—otherwise, why would it be such a major part of the film?

Obviously, there is no accuracy to be spoken of in this portrayal: from a historical point of view, the film is interesting just because it is amazing that Americans could have held such an outlandish opinion of an entire race of people. But have things really changed that much since then? Sure, it's unacceptable to portray black people as the unorthodox and riotous animals shown in Birth, but what about contemporary images of gay people in Hollywood films? The shining examples of today are in Modern Family and Happy Endings, but there is still the ubiquitous paradigm of the gay clown—the homosexual man who is there to spew fashion advice and say stuff like, "You go, girl." Pick any other minority—racial, sexual, religious, etc.—and chances are there is still a long way to go before things are the way they should be.

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Although my points have been made before, I still think that it is a useful exercise to look at a film as old as The Birth of a Nation in order to consider how far we have come as a civilization. You just have to wonder whether a progressive-minded individual from 1915 would look at today's films and be truly satisfied.

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