How Racist is “Birth of a Nation” (1915) Really?
DW Griffith’s Masterpiece Set the Bar for American Cinema Up Until Those Who Couldn’t Compete Made Sure It Was the Most Hated-On Movie Ever Made
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110 years after its debut onto the American screen, it seems that everyone apparently knows everything about this film from the title alone, whether they have seen it or not. Dare to mention the name of it, or the name D.W. Griffith, and you will be immediately met with rolled eyes and a smug reaction by people who just know that Birth is an irredeemably racist movie made by an irredeemably racist filmmaker with an irredeemably racist message for an irredeemably racist audience.
You are required to think this way for the same reason you are required to think that America is an irredeemably racist nation with an irredeemably racist history. And to think this without even having seen Birth? Even better; now you can be convinced of anything.
With the decay of cinema that followed and paralleled the death of film, the culture has predictably dampened too. The 21st century is the age of TikTok videos, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and animated emojis, where length and depth are relegated to podcasts. Your content is coming fast, loose, and all at once; inevitably either over-edited or not edited at all. A natural consequence of digitalization and streaming; when Tony Zhou from Every Frame a Painting observed that the modern audience is visually sophisticated yet visually illiterate, he was also predicting the future.
What could a young person today possibly think there is to learn from a silent film? If the profile of someone reading this piece here is considerably younger than that of…
Deo Vindice Resurgam! #FreeDixie