The girl fetching water was portrayed as innocent with her costume and hair. Even the act of fetching water and watching squirrels is innocent. Gus Is costumed rough and it appeared as though he was foaming at the mouth while he was chasing her. His movement is awkward and almost animal like. I feel that Griffith wants to portray Gus like a wild dog. All of these attributes relate to the typage that Griffith wanted his audience to pick up on. The girl commits suicide rather than be touched or entertain the thought of marrying a black man. The end of the scene presents a few words that read; “For her who had learned the stern lesson of honor we should not grieve that she found sweeter the opal gates of death.”

Film makes have used techniques such as iris, decor, costume, and lighting to elaborate their story telling. The use of these techniques helps to develop characters, moods, and settings.

The discourse communities of science and law fell under Swales’ criteria as they had members with set goals and ways they spoke to each other within their own discourses. The members had their own prejudices and convictions that bled over into their professions/discourses. These communities of law and science have enormous impacts on society. The fact that at that time, they were wielded by people who wanted to oppress other races than their own led to ideas such as segregation, Jim Crow laws, and even increased KKK members. These events dominated social life at that time and reverberations are still very much felt today. It’s one thing to have dangerous and racist convictions among a non-important discourse community like a sewing club, but in law and science…that’s extremely toxic to many people.

Griffith uses Iris and blue filter to portray the dreariness of the situation in the south. The viewer is supposed to sympathize with the woman and her family for the horrors they endured by the Union soldiers.

Lydia is portrayed as sexually predatory, and possibly insane. She rips her clothes off, licks her fingers, and spits at the man who left the house. She realizes she can seduce/corrupt the congressman and he succumbs to Lydia because he is weak. Griffith wants his viewers to believe that all bi-racial people are wicked and whites who don’t believe his views are themselves weak.

Griffith shows the ascension of Silas Lynch by the Congressman due to the meddlings of Lydia. Griffith tries to show that race amalgamation is a blight that will destroy the south. I feel like Griffith did this particular scene through typage and costume. Silas, the Congressman, and Lydia all have aspects of their characters that are foreboding.

Birth of a Nation fueled higher recruitment numbers for the KKK. In 1920, just five years after the release of Birth of a Nation, the Klan was the largest it had ever been. The films glorification of the Klan and its new record numbers is correlative.

Birth of a Movement

L.A. 1915, folks line up to see “Birth of a Nation” one of the “greatest films ever produced”. It’s touted so much that it is shown in the White House.

Although racist and considered propaganda, it is perhaps the most pure and real portrayal of white feelings at that time. This is post Civil War and despite the North winning and slavery being abolished, there was still an enormous social divide between former slaves and whites that did not just fix itself overnight.

Trotter met Dubois at Harvard as the first African Americans admitted to Harvard. They navigated the ivy league school together. Trotter excelled during his tenure at Harvard.

D.W. Griffith was raised in Ky and his father fought in the Civil War for the Confederacy. When Griffith is 10 his father dies and his family is poor. Griffith travels the country as a broke aspiring stage actor until he was around 30.

As film advanced past the nickelodeon, racism and cliches are used relentlessly to portray African Americans. This happened around the same time as Plessy vs. Ferguson.

Trotter marries a woman he met at Harvard and they move to Boston. Trotter realizes that at Harvard, he was not treated as unfairly at all when he became part of the “real world” in Boston. This angers him and fuels him to become an activist and start a newspaper called The Guardian.

In 1913 President Wilson segregated federal black and white workers after he campaigned for the opposite. Trotter visits Pres. Wilson in 1914 and voices the concerns and disappointments of African Americans. Wilson is insulted and tells him to leave. This obviously must have dismayed and angered Trotter.

The L.A. premier was wildly successful. The newly formed NAACP desperately tries to ban the film. Birth of a Nation was propaganda that helped recruitment for the Klan. At the time of this films release, white audiences loved it, even the President (Wilson). With this overt seal of approval, Griffith premiers his film in New York. It became the most popular silent film of the time. The Aim was to have the film play in Boston because if it played there, it could play everywhere.

While the NAACP was attempting to ban or at the least have the most offensive scenes removed, Griffith challenges the potential ban as a violation of the 1st amendment and freedom of speech.

Boston premiers the film amid massive protests in which Trotter is arrested. Trotter was angry that Mayor Curly of Boston allowed the film despite Trotters campaigning to have him elected.

This film played in Atlanta and helped inspire the rebirth of the KKK. BY 1920 it was the largest it had ever been.

A film was made in 1920 called At our Gates that is an opposing view of Birth of a Nation but it was deemed to “violent” to show.

Birth of a Nation helped fuel the origins of the Civil Rights movement. This continued and continues today in the form of segregation, jim crow laws, and systemic racism.

Birth of a Nation is a silent film directed & produced by D.W. Griffith. It was adapted from the novel & play, The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr. The film was released in 1915.

Not only was it the first 12-reel film ever released but it is also one of the most controversial film ever made. The film portrays post Civil War relation with the North and South in a part historical/part fiction way. It does this through the lens of two families, each from opposing sides of nation. The film glorifies the KKK as a heroic and unifying faction in America.

Birth of a Nation was/is extremely polarizing. The NAACP attempted to ban the release of the film to no avail. Meanwhile in Boston, thousands of whites went to see the film.

The film has been recognized as historically significant and has been preserved in the National Film Registry.

Disclaimer at beginning stating the film makers don’t mean to offend.

The film is whitewashed with no African American portrayal

Griffith writes from his own perspective only. He was most likely affluent and perhaps wealthy. He assumes all people have similar lives to him. He dehumanizes all others with this thinking.

Griffith portrays life in the south pre-civil war as a happy place for all. African Americans were seen as content and whites as gentle masters.

The film employs film tricks and actor methods to portray women, and mixed people as manipulative, insane, and lustful.

Race Amalgamation

1896, what a time to be alive. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and ingenuity was at an all-time high. Science was a powerful driving force for this time, but while the science was progressing, some men behind it were not. Fredrick Ludwig Hoffman immigrated from Germany in 1884 and published a book in 1896 titled “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro”. This was a time when the scientific discourse community was using data to support their own rhetorical message of  desired segregation. History is a powerful reminder that human thinking is flawed, even in our authoritative communities. If science can be manipulated to spread misinformation, fear, and even hate, how else can it propagated?

Hoffman’s book contained various information and comparative studies of black, white, and mixed people. He compared everything from the morality of offspring and the manner in which they were conceived, to the volume of air each race could get in their lungs. The data that Hoffman acquired was through biased means however. Hoffman would choose visibly larger skulls of whites when comparing cranial sizes whites and blacks. He would also strive to make every other physical and mental comparison favorable to whites. A real scientist would know that methods must be consistent for results to be valid. How could a man of science not know what he was doing was unethical? Hoffman himself even states that his German origin makes him free of “personal bias”. He adds that a “a vast sum of evil consequences” could arise from a biased view being applied to scientific racial trait comparison. I find it ironic that this is exactly what Hoffman and his discourse community helped create. The entire purpose of his book appears to preach that whites were superior to blacks and that mixed races were inferior to both. This leads me to believe that at that time, he and others like him were afraid of whites and blacks co-mingling. The idea of whites and blacks having children together was looked at negatively. The established status quo at that time had whites placed firmly at the top of the food chain and interbreeding threatened that. Science was the attempted weapon that white supremacists would use to show the nation that their racism couldn’t be their fault as it was based on scientific fact and not just their own bigotry.

Hoffman attempts to prove that interbreeding and intermarriage is immoral due to the harm inflicted upon the offspring. This harm would come in the form of diseases and physical limitation. His book also shows data in column form showing the amount of interracial marriage. The data is laid out in such a way with the bodies of text explaining the data that it really feels like a “call to arms” to the potential reader. He again is using fear to demonstrate that these “immoral” things are occurring and that the reader best beware or they will happen in their towns.

Thankfully it is not 1896 and we get to enjoy the benefits of the great scientific discoveries made around that time. But best of all, we get to see junk science based off of manipulated data at the hands of  analysts like Frederick Hoffman be disproven.

Race Amalgamation

1896, what a time to be alive. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and ingenuity was at an all-time high. Science was a powerful driving force for this time, but while the science was progressing, some men behind it were not. Fredrick Ludwig Hoffman immigrated from Germany in 1884 and published a book in 1896 titled “Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro”. This book contained various information and comparative studies of black, white, and mixed people. He compared everything from the morality of offspring and the manner in which they were conceived, to the volume of air each race could get in their lungs. The entire purpose of his book appears to preach that whites were superior to blacks and that mixed races were inferior to both. This leads me to believe that at that time, he and others like him were afraid of whites and blacks co-mingling. The idea of whites and blacks having children together was looked at in disgust due in part to the revulsion of the idea that two people from different races could perhaps be in love or at the very least not dislike one another purely based off skin color. The established status quo at that time had whites placed firmly at the top of the food chain and interbreeding threatened that. Science was the attempted weapon that white supremacists would use to show the nation that their racism couldn’t be their fault as it was based on scientific fact and not just their own bigotry.

Hoffman attempts to prove that interbreeding and intermarriage is immoral due to the harm inflicted upon the offspring. This harm would come in the form of diseases and physical limitation. His book also shows data in column form showing the amount of interracial marriage. The data is laid out in such a way with the bodies of text explaining the data that it really feels like a “call to arms” to the potential reader. He again is using fear to demonstrate that these “immoral” things are occurring and that the reader best beware or they will happen in their towns.

Thankfully it is not 1896 and we get to enjoy the benefits of the great scientific discoveries made around that time. But best of all, we get to see junk science based off of manipulated data at the hands of  analysts like Frederick Hoffman be utterly dis proven.

William Dubois lived 95 years and he was a highly educated intellectual who authored important works in sociology, prose fiction, and essays. He was also a political figure and one of the founding members of the NAACP. One of his first books was about the african slave trade and tackling the belief at the time that whites were superior to blacks.

The right to vote and higher education were important to Dubois for the advancement of African Americans. Dubois pointed out that to be American was to be white and if you were black you were an “African American”.

Black boys growing up at that time were surrounded by confusion according to Dubois. Being oppressed by whites and being told they were inferior were common and yet these oppressed were expected to not revile their oppressors. How can there be any hope in that? I am paraphrasing Dubois here, but I feel this could be one of the points he is trying to convey.

Dubois illustrates the hopelessness at the time for blacks. The work available was not fulfilling and they were viewed as property tenders, never owners. But despite being told they were “less than” they were strong and had an unwavering strength of will.