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On March 3, 1915 the movie The Birth of a Nation was released at the Liberty
Theatre in New York City. This film was financed, filmed, and released by the Epoch
Producing Corporation of D.W. Griffith and Harry T. Aitken. It was one of the
first films to ever use deep-focus shots, night photography, and to be
explicitly controversial with the derogatory view of blacks.
Throughout the movie, the film justified the need of the KKK in order to keep
social harmony among society after the Civil War. In the beginning, the Cameron
family was depicted as loving family and the slaves were depicted as sensible
and content beings during the slave period. The chaos and madness started after
the civil war during the Reconstruction period. Blacks were then portrayed as
animalistic savages that were oppressing the rights of the white people in the
community and threatened their livelihood. So, African Americans could only be
placed into two categories in this movie. They were either the faithful servant
or the renegade whose objective was to intimidate and terrorize white people.
The black slaves are shown as noble beings that defended their masters against
other black people. However, the black people in congress are shown as arrogant
and ignorant with no manners.
This sort of subtly suggest that blacks proper role is to tend to the land and
that they lack the sense and morals to be given them the same equality as a
white person. If blacks were on the same level as whites, they would simply
make a fool of themselves and at the same time cause harm to white citizens
Another big theme in this film as is that there should be no social or sexual
integration between the white and black communities. This is cleverly shown
through the mulatto characters Lydia Brown and Silas Lynch. These characters
were stereotypically shown as being manipulative and corruptive when given
power. Lydia was the servant for the Stoneman family who was overtly sexual in
her scenes and was sneaky when Austin Stoneman comes out. Lynch obtains
political power and becomes the symbol of black leadership. Lynch in the end of
the film is corrupt and tries to force Austin Stoneman’s daughter to marry him.
During that scene he was drunk and sexually aggressive. One theme that is
derived from this is that mixing of races causes a degeneration of the white
race and that any mulatto will eventually regress to their black savage
instinct. The second theme that comes from these episodes is that blacks are
not capable of holding power in society without being corrupt. This places the
ideology of superiority and inferiority on the basis of race.
Griffith uses the threats of rapes and depictions of sexuality of a black men
towards white women sort of as an added incentive of why the KKK was created
and needed to prevent miscegenation. They would be the protectors of white
womanhood virtue and to prevent the degeneration of the white race. Flora
Cameron ends up committing suicide in fear that Gus may try to rape her. She
prefers death than the thought of having Gus touch her. The construction of
white womanhood plays a big role as for something worth preserving and
fighting.
Lastly, the KKK was viewed as the heroes and saviors of the nation in the end.
They manage to arrive just in time to stop Lynch from marrying Stoneman’s
daughter, to save the family in the house from the renegades and to restore
social order into the community.
In conclusion, the movie showed how society would immediately collapse into
anarchy if blacks were given power. Also, that all blacks (and mulattoes) are
dangerous, violent people with political agendas and that their proper place in
society is under whites.