I've seen Birth of a Nation twice. First in an Intro to Cinema class 15 years ago. The instructor showed this film every semester and Triumph of the Will and a racist cartoon from the 40s called Coal Black and the Seben Dwarves. He stated that these were important films, important to the history of cinematography and filmmaking and he didn't want to hear anything about the messages. Which frankly sucked. I don't care how important any of them are to filmmaking you cannot show films like that without some kind of dialog. Needless to say every semester there would be a protest and every semester he'd keep on showing them without any dialog, discussion or historical context outside of the world of cinema. Personally, I think the professor was a racist.
I saw Birth of A Nation again in a graduate level class on Race and Gender in American History this past year. This time we looked at the film in the context of what Americans were thinking and saying about race, gender and Reconstruction in 1915. We watched the film in a small seminar room--ten of us around a table. All of us had seen it before so we talked while it played. We ranted and laughed and got angry and questioned and it was a very amazing learning experience.
I think that this film in an incredibly useful tool in studying early 20th century racism. I don't know that I would recommend the film to kids. Besides the incredible racism and glorification of the Klan there's the traditional racist plot around the black rapists lusting after white women and the oversexed "mulato" woman stereotype. Maybe, depending on the kids and their level of historical perspecitve and analytical thought. I don't know. But all adults should see this film and discuss it. Like all films that deal with history, it tells us much more about the time that it was made than the period it deals with.
I saw Birth of A Nation again in a graduate level class on Race and Gender in American History this past year. This time we looked at the film in the context of what Americans were thinking and saying about race, gender and Reconstruction in 1915. We watched the film in a small seminar room--ten of us around a table. All of us had seen it before so we talked while it played. We ranted and laughed and got angry and questioned and it was a very amazing learning experience.
I think that this film in an incredibly useful tool in studying early 20th century racism. I don't know that I would recommend the film to kids. Besides the incredible racism and glorification of the Klan there's the traditional racist plot around the black rapists lusting after white women and the oversexed "mulato" woman stereotype. Maybe, depending on the kids and their level of historical perspecitve and analytical thought. I don't know. But all adults should see this film and discuss it. Like all films that deal with history, it tells us much more about the time that it was made than the period it deals with.
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