The Birth of a Nation (1915)

 D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation"

What do we think of when we think of a film? Something longer than an hour? Something consisting of pieces of visually moving images that tell a coherent story? Something that can tell that story using direction, editing, music, and other attributes that are expertly constructed to instill meaning and understanding about ourselves and the world around us? Whatever concept of a film you're thinking about is an idea of modern cinema. But, where did modern cinema come from? Many film historians cringe at the answer. For the birth of modern cinema is also the birth of cinema as a source of great evil. With "The Birth of a Nation," film as an artform emerged. While 'film' itself had existed long before, the conscious language of the format had not yet been fully established. In establishing these formats and conventions, D.W. Griffith, the director of the film, had also established film as a means for instilling violent and racist doctrine to an already racist America. Because the film inaccurately depicts the American Civil War and the Reconstruction period afterwards, as well as propagating dangerous racist stereotypes towards the black community, it is one of the most (if not THE most) appalling and shameful pieces of art ever depicted. But, it is for these very reasons why the film is also a complete world-altering revelation about the power and influence of the medium. It was George Orwell who famously said, "All art is propaganda." Well, the revolutionary ignition point of modern cinema also demonstrated this to its most extreme.

The director of the film, D.W. Griffith, was born in 1875. This was just 10 years after the end of the Civil War. Because his father served as a colonel for the Confederates, Griffith had viewed the war, along with the Reconstruction period, negatively. In reading Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel "The Clansman," Griffith believed he could turn it into a film. Before he started making "The Birth of a Nation" in 1914, Griffith had made over 400 one-reel films. Since Griffith could only afford to give Dixon $2,500 for the rights to the novel, he offered an additional 25% stake interest in its financial success. Because the film went on the make millions of dollars, which was unheard of at the time, Dixon became an incredibly wealthy man. His proceeds were the largest sum any author had received for a motion picture story up until 2007 (almost 100 years later). In taking Dixon's novel and stage play adaptation, Griffith had mapped out the entire film in his head. He did not even write a script. On top of this, the film only required one additional take. Griffith based the Civil War battle sequences on classic photographs of the war. However, he based the Reconstruction scenes on racist political cartoons, as he foolishly believed these propaganda renderings to be based in some sort of reality. This willingness to believe such vile media created these racist perceptions that the entire film would be founded upon.

The plot of the film follows a Southern and Northern family who separate during the Civil War, only to be brought back together to defend white freedom from tyrannical and violent freed slaves during Reconstruction. The black community takes over the courts and all voting powers. With this new power, they terrorize the whites, forcing them to establish the Ku Klux Klan, as a means to 'protect' themselves. 

The film, upon its release, was a major success. People were flocking to the cinemas to witness this three hour monolith of a film. The release also garnished controversy, as it should. Griffith was confused why the film received so much backlash (despite the film's monolithic success). Griffith idiotically believed that the events he depicted in the film were historically accurate, believing to be portraying history honestly. This seems to be because of both his Confederate upbringing as well as the racist propaganda he encountered in his life growing up in the South. Because he was so concerned about the public's response, he added a title card at the beginning of the film which read, "We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities. But we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare." Despite this plea, there were boycotts of the film and calls for censoring or banning the film all together. To garnish a firmer support, the book author Dixon was able to get President Woodrow Wilson to screen the film at the White House, the first ever film to be given this honor. Wilson claims to have said of the film, "It's like writing history with lightning. Any my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." To this writer, the first sentence is all too disturbingly true, as film had demonstrated the unique ability to present history with a tangibility never before witnessed. The only problem comes from the second sentence, as this 'history' being firmly cemented on the infinite possibly of the film screen, is an altered and distorted history - a false history that is being propped up by the power of images. Wilson's statement also demonstrated how an enabling of this falsity creates a firmer reality of perception to unwitting viewers. Griffith felt this ringing endorsement by the President conferred an 'honor' upon the film, of which he used to his commercial advantage. Wilson, who was only the second Southern president, benefitted from the film's support. In a letter sent to Wilson by Dixon on September 5th, 1915, he boasted that the film, "is transforming the entire population of the North and South into sympathetic Southern voters. There will never be an issue of your segregation policy." Not only did this reference the segregation laws Wilson helped support, but it also alludes to the fact that he, upon becoming president in 1913, had allowed cabinet members to impose segregation on federal workplaces in Washington DC by reducing the number of black employees through demotion or dismissal. 

The effects of the film, including the previously mentioned political influence, are seismic. In response to the overt racism through the distorted dehumanization of black citizens and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, African Americans across the nation organized campaigns to ban the film. This movement proved unsuccessful, as the film ended up grossing over $5 million, becoming the highest grossing film until 1939's "Gone with the Wind" (another glorification of the Southern confederacy). However, it is not the enormous viewership that is the sole evidence of it's impact. Rather, it is the full scope of social and political upheaval that followed. For one thing, the Ku Klux Klan was re-established, with now new record numbers. There was also a revamping of Confederate sympathies, along with new laws and measures to disenfranchise black Americans, including Jim Crow laws. Violence against the black community increased, as well. A Harvard University research paper found that, "[on] average, lynchings in a county rose fivefold in the month after [the film]." The film also became a cultural phenomenon, specifically the country's newfound obsession with the KKK. KKK apparel skyrocketed, theater ushers dressed as Klan members for openings, Klan-themed balls emerged in New York, and thousands dressed as Klan members for Halloween that year. The picture itself aroused visceral emotions in audiences. Critic Dolly Dalrymple wrote that, "when I saw it, it was far from silent. Incessant murmurs of approval, roars of laughter, gasps of anxiety, and outbursts of applause greeted every new picture on the screen." In fact, one man viewing the film was so moved, he began firing his gun into the projection screen in an effort to save a white woman from being raped by a black man. Audiences had never responded so passionately to a piece of moving images before. After all, the film's effect was even more infectious outside of the theater than inside. Because of this, film historian John Hope Franklin wrote in 1979 that, "the influence of "[The] Birth of a Nation" on the current view of Reconstruction has been greater than any other single force." So, how is it that a piece of fictional moving images can not only inspire a national temperament, but also re-invent the very notion of history itself? The answers are incredibly malleable. However, what isn't malleable is the way in which cinema can alter human consciousness, alter collective perception, and alter the very fabric of belief and truth.

If this film is so audaciously racist and dangerous, why didn't it get lost in the throws of time? Unfortunately, this white supremacy propaganda also happens to be an immense achievement in groundbreaking filmmaking techniques. Not only this, no film had ever been so big in scale. The 12 reels it required surpassed all other films that came before, which usually only averaged 4 to 6 reels. On top of being epic in size and scope, Griffith created the language of cinema as we know it today. The innovations this film employs are innumerable. Colorization of film to fit a mood, close-ups, fades, film masks used to create non-rectangular images, panoramic long shots, tracking shots, complex staging, multiple angles, a score that blended original work with existing work, unique compositions for individual characters, intertwining fiction and non-fiction, and a complex plot structure consisting of exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, all were innovations the film medium had never experienced before. Many of these things filmgoers take advantage of today. Richard Corliss of "Time" wrote that Griffith, "directed a cinematic textbook, a fully formed visual language, for the generations that followed. More than anyone else - more than all others combined - he invented the film art." Likewise, in "1001 Movies to See Before You Die," Jonathan Kent writes that, "with countless artistic innovations, Griffith essentially created contemporary film language...virtually every film is beholden to ["The Birth of a Nation"] in one way, shape, or form." 

So, how is it that audiences were so swept up in the film? How did this newfound visual language not only tell a rhythmically visual story, but inspired intentional emotionality to the point of racist, violent reactions? After all, the same story can be read in Dixon's original novel, as well as its play version. These iterations of the story, however, did not cause the same cultural shift as the film. For the very first time, film influenced a collective consciousness. The reason for this reaction can stem from Griffith's ingenious techniques for filmmaking, allowing the viewer to absorb the story in a more subconscious way. An audiences can feel as though they are apart of what's happening, rather than looking at a piece of art, removed from it. Some might have believed that the radical use of film concepts would jolt the viewer. For example, cross cutting between parallel lines of action. As Roger Ebert wrote, "a naïve audience might have been baffled by a film that showed first one group of characters, then another, then the first again." However, Griffith mastered making the narrative stream of images easy to comprehend. As Ebert continued, "the action scenes are filmed with a fluid ease that seems astonishing compared to other films of the time. Griffith used elevated shots to provide a high-angle view of the battlefields, and cuts between parallel action to make the battles comprehensible; they are not simply a big tableau of action." Griffith trusted his audience to adapt to his language of images. Ebert continued, "[Griffith] was the first director to understand instinctively how a movie could mimic the human ability to scan an event quickly, noting details in the midst of the larger picture. Many silent films moved slowly, as if afraid to get ahead of their audience; Griffith springs forward eagerly and the impact on his audience was unprecedented; they were learning for the first time what a movie was capable of." Other directors followed suit as well. At the time of the film's release , Sergei Eisenstein was simply an editor, not yet a filmmaker himself. As an editor and film theorist, Eisenstein would take film reels and cut them into pieces, rearranging them so as to experiment with what film could accomplish. As Eisenstein learned from re-editing films like Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation," the way in which an audience views a series of images can affect their perceptions in numerous, varied ways. With "The Birth of a Nation," the seamless way the images string together to create a cohesion of visual attention seems to make the viewer consciously forget they are watching a fabricated image. Usually when you look at art, you are aware of the art itself and are aware of how the art is affecting you. However, as the images of art create a cohesive visual narrative, your senses 'fall' into the film, as they are too distracted by the continued attention required to keep up with what's happening. Because of this continued attention by the senses, you are left vulnerable to the themes or messages the film is presenting to you. While your senses are trying to keep up with the perpetually forward moving story, full of visual language to interpret, your conscious thought is too preoccupied to create a filter of judgement about what it is seeing, leaving your subconscious to take things at face value. It is in this way that films can influence a viewer through their subconscious thought.  Eisenstein would go on to publish his essays on the "Montage of Attractions," which explored these theories. He would even implement his theories into films of his own, with his Communist propaganda films of the 1920s. He even turned this theory on its head by crafting the varied use of 'montage,' often times forcing the viewer to become aware of the images, rather than forget about them, so as to create abstract intellectual connections with the viewer's conscious viewing experience. These effects further established film and film language, all extending from Griffith's techniques. 

So, why is is that we can't have nice things? Why must the first true piece of film art be a white supremacist propaganda film? Perhaps it's the way of evil in us. After all, the literal birth of our nation stemmed from slavery, racism, and bigotry. It seems only natural for that very hatred to fuel the birth of an artform. That being said, the connective tissue between cinema's 'first' piece of art and the evil it espoused can remind us of what cinema is. The construction of visual language as well as these newly form film concepts made "The Birth of a Nation," according to American critic Richard Brody, "the founding work of cinematic realism. However, this realism was used to pass lies off as reality." Because of the innovative, yet seamless way the language of film was invented with "The Birth of a Nation," audiences felt that what they were seeing was real. Obviously, they knew it wasn't real in the sense that they knew they were witnessing a fabricated production of something. However, as Sergei Eisenstein learned, the subconscious mind takes more away from the 'realism' of what it's seeing than the conscious mind, which is only judging and assessing a sensory experience. This film is the ignition point for 20th century visual media and showed us how the medium could be used to sinister affects, infecting a society with harmful rhetoric. After all, the filmmaker himself was influenced by deceiving propaganda of his own, through the racist media he consumed growing up, in the form of racist political cartoons and histrionic stories of a romanticized Southern Confederacy. Because of the film, racism in America skyrocketed. This is perhaps not through the changing of attitudes, but through the changing of meaningful real world action. Many Americans were assuredly racist during this time in American history, but this piece of art inspired actual increases in violence and aggression. A single piece of art was able to inflict real world harm, and inspire negative passion in people. So, when remembering the dualism between this film as a work of art and the uncomfortable and dangerous message it propagated, it is necessary to also be aware of the films and media you are watching in contemporary times. How is the art and media you're consuming affecting you? How is it affecting your collective society? Does racism, bigotry, and hatred still run rampant? The answer is an obvious 'yes,' and you may not have to look very far to discover what is adding fire to this flame. The source of derision and evil can be found on the very screens you're watching.