Birth Of A Nation Essay
Although 86 years separates them, Training Day shows that racial stereotypes of black people in the Birth of a Nation still linger in modern film today.
Released in 1915 and directed by D.W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation is a film that centers on two families during the Civil War and the following Reconstruction Period. Austin Stoneman is an abolitionist in Washington, D.C. with three children. His two boys, Phil and Tod, visit Ben Cameron at his family home in Piedmont, South Carolina. There, Phil falls in love with Ben’s sister, Margaret. Ben also falls in love with Phil’s sister, Elsie, when he sees her picture in a locket. They soon must part ways as the war between the North and the South looms on the horizon.
After the war, the Stoneman’s …show more content…
Critics hailed it as a landmark film, noting its technical ingenuity. It made an unprecedented $20,000,000 at the box office and was the first film to played at the White House. It earned an endorsement from Woodrow Wilson who said, “It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” White audiences saw the movie in droves, but because of its inaccurate depiction of the Civil War and the Reconstruction, it led to the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruitment tool for the terrorist organization until at least the 1970s.
Negative responses also followed the movie wherever it went. Upon its release, the NAACP fought hard for censorship of the film, citing the racist depictions of black people and an inaccurate retelling of the history of the Civil War. They succeeded in getting some scenes changed in the film, and a few text cards placed within, but never got it stopped from wide release.
For decades, many screenings of the film were met with protests. One such protest in China Grove, North Carolina in 1979, led to the Greensboro Massacre, where five people were killed and several others were injured. All of it was caught on camera by local news teams, but all KKK members involved in the incident that had been prosecuted were acquitted by an all-white
Released in 1915 and directed by D.W. Griffith, The Birth of a Nation is a film that centers on two families during the Civil War and the following Reconstruction Period. Austin Stoneman is an abolitionist in Washington, D.C. with three children. His two boys, Phil and Tod, visit Ben Cameron at his family home in Piedmont, South Carolina. There, Phil falls in love with Ben’s sister, Margaret. Ben also falls in love with Phil’s sister, Elsie, when he sees her picture in a locket. They soon must part ways as the war between the North and the South looms on the horizon.
After the war, the Stoneman’s …show more content…
Critics hailed it as a landmark film, noting its technical ingenuity. It made an unprecedented $20,000,000 at the box office and was the first film to played at the White House. It earned an endorsement from Woodrow Wilson who said, “It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” White audiences saw the movie in droves, but because of its inaccurate depiction of the Civil War and the Reconstruction, it led to the reformation of the Ku Klux Klan. The Birth of a Nation was used as a recruitment tool for the terrorist organization until at least the 1970s.
Negative responses also followed the movie wherever it went. Upon its release, the NAACP fought hard for censorship of the film, citing the racist depictions of black people and an inaccurate retelling of the history of the Civil War. They succeeded in getting some scenes changed in the film, and a few text cards placed within, but never got it stopped from wide release.
For decades, many screenings of the film were met with protests. One such protest in China Grove, North Carolina in 1979, led to the Greensboro Massacre, where five people were killed and several others were injured. All of it was caught on camera by local news teams, but all KKK members involved in the incident that had been prosecuted were acquitted by an all-white