Blog 5 - The Birth of a Nation, the first racist american movie

We talked about the image of African-Americans in movies and it made me think about the origins of racism in cinema. I remember one of my history classes in high school when we were studying segregation and my teacher showed us a part of the movie The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915). It was the first big budget production in American cinema, and it was also one of the most controversial one. The Birth of a Nation takes place during the Civil War, with a southern point of view and openly against colored people. This propaganda movie shows the Ku-Klux-Klan as a legitimate solution against the raise of chaos created by black people greedy for power. When it came out (50 years after the end of the Civil War), it gave rise to riots in New-York, but still was used as a mean to propaganda by some extreme political parties.

In The Birth of a Nation, black people are shown as the reason why America falls apart. Griffith sends the message that terror is the unique way to struggle against the threat of Black People on the American floor. He shows them trying to rape white women (that was one of the biggest fears of racist people at that time), acting like animals, creating madness during political debates… The main point was to persuade the audience of the black people’s lack of humanity. For example, black deputies in the movie are depicted as clowns whereas black domestics are highlighted in a positive way.  It was a real recruitment tool for the KKK and it created a rise in the number of lynching against colored people at that time.

Even if associations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People tried, in vain, to censure this movie, I find it incredible that such a movie could have come out at a time when KKK had been forbidden since 1871 and black people had already fought for their rights during the Civil War. People were actually going to see this movie in theaters, and it was very successful. I think it really shows to what extend pop culture can make people accept some ideas from the dominant ideology, without even challenging it. Of course it was a long time ago, but all the examples that we study about racism in pop culture today are descendants of this kind of movie, and could have been avoided if people at that time had had a sense of critic that we try to get in this class.