I might watch Birth of a Nation.

[Silcc69]

Never heard about this movie till it was mentioned on Everybody Hates Chris (the irony there) Then I did a little bit of research and I have to watch this movie. Anybody on here seen it though?

[nevada64]

I saw it 25 + years ago. It is racist, but it also is part of film history.
Check it out just for history sake.
I'm sure you can read about it on Wikipedia, etc.
D.W. Griffith. Check him out.
His family was from the south and he had a father or Grandfather who fought for the Confederacy.
He was of that generation who saw people who weren't white males as inferior.
Like most white males back then.
Cheers.

[runrundingoboy]

A buddy of mine has a copy of this film. He despises the racism in it, but it is undeniably a cornerstone of early filmmaking history. (He collects silent & B&W films) He says you have to watch it from that standpoint, and kind of let the raging ignorance pass.

If nothing else, the racist themes should be studied so that we can learn from previous generations' mistakes. You know, study history so as not to repeat it, etc.

[Christastic]

It is racist as hell, and also (as film) boring as hell. It also essentially gave birth to the modern Klan. So there's that.

[Willie Escalade]

I've seen it, and I agree with everyone here. It is racist, but it is a part of America's history...like Jim Crow signs and such...

[SarahG]

It was cinematically speaking the best movie of its time. So much so that it put a lot of American film firms out of business practically over night. Back then there wasn't a centralized film-headquarters like Hollywood as we know it. Instead things tended to be pretty spread out. There was a film town in southern NY, Philly was a film town, there were a few on the west coast, and that's not counting all the European firms.

It really paved the way for a lot of really good "epic" silent films. Another masterpiece is "The Vanishing American" (1925). As a film I think it's superior to Birth of a Nation in every way, but it's just as racist. Plain and simple its a propaganda film that argues every civilization peaks, then becomes lazy & inferior, and then gets conquered by the next "superior race." The movie starts by showing the American indians conquering the Anasazi after they had become lazy, and then fast forwards to show the white American forces conquering the "lazy and inferior" American indians. At the time it was considered a progressive film because it tried (...it failed horribly, but it tried) to be sympathetic to the American natives and left viewers wondering what should be done with them. For all its faults it did show the problems with 20th century reservation life, and even showed how the feds exploited some tribes during World War One (The villain of the movie was actually a white federal agent).

[willid46]

Yes, saw it in a film class when I was in college. Its racist and it sparked the resurgence of the KKK in the 1920s and 1930s.

[Caff_Racer]

Whilst Birth of a Nation is undoubtedly racist, it does remain one of the great monuments of film history, and should now be seen in that light. With Birth of a Nation and Intolerance (Griffith's following film, which was a reply to contemporary criticism about the film's content - but which almost nobody talks about because the content was less controversial, and it was a flop), he set the bases for camera use and positioning, and modern film grammar.

In the same way, Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin - whilst overtly Bolshevik, so unpalatable to many people, particularly in the US - set the ground rules for film editing and montage techniques, and apart from its political and social content, is a breathtaking film.

Of course, if you want to watch an excellent (technically speaking) propaganda film, look no further than Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens. Although the subject matter is repulsive - it was shot during the Nazi party's famous Nürnberg rally in 1934 - it is very impressive in its use of camera positioning and montage.

[natina]

White Man's Burden

The story takes place in alternative America where the blacks are members of social elite, and whites are inhabitants of inner city ghettos. Louis Pinnock is a white worker in a chocolate factory, loving husband and father of two children. While delivering a package for black CEO Thaddeus Thomas, he is mistaken for a voyeur and, as a result, loses his job, gets beaten by black cops and his family gets evicted from their home. Desperate Pinnock takes a gun and kidnaps Thomas, demanding justice.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114928/maindetails

great review

So many of you seem to be missing the point here., 16 November 2002

Author: dvmonca

In reading through these comments, I've seen tons of people complain about how this movie is thoughtless, the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes, blah blah blah. People, that was exactly the point...to challenge White and Black Americans' perspectives on those very stereotypes! Before you pick a film apart, you have to ask yourself what audience it was directed at. Would you criticize a Disney film for being too childish if it was supposed to be directed at children? Of course not. Therefore, ask yourself what audience White Man's Burden was targeted at. Because of where I grew up, that answer was obvious to me before I even saw the movie.

I'm a White man who grew up in Monterey, California. Central Monterey is middle-to-upper class and is dominantly White and Asian. The southside communities of Pacific Grove, Carmel, and Pebble Beach are very upper class and dominantly White. In the north we have Seaside, which is the lower-income, high-crime area and is dominantly Black and Hispanic. This seems to be pretty typical of the race/class division that plagues America. Note that Monterey is not exactly a major metropolitan area where these neighborhoods are far away from each other. The entire area has a population of maybe 120,000 and stretches only about 12 miles (19 km) from north to south.

By growing up between the downtown area and Seaside, it's been easy for me to see the racial problems in this country from many angles. I can tell you from experience that the most hot-headed, controversial, and hateful examples of racial bigotry and stereotyping in the USA are in the way so many Whites and Blacks view each other.

I have met countless Blacks who think that being born White automatically makes you greedy, naturally oppressive of the poor, and have a genetically-inbred desire to dump on every other race in the world. These Blacks typically think that everyone with white skin owes them something because of the crimes of our ancestors (slavery, lynching, etc.), whether it be walking around giving an apology to every Black we see, expecting a free ride from the government just because they're born with black skin, or just having us generally take whatever they want to dish out and accepting that we "deserve it" because we were born into an "evil race".

On the other side of this coin are the Whites who think that being born Black makes you stupid, lazy, and a natural-born criminal. These Whites can cite the fact that there is a high amount of violent crime committed by Blacks despite making up only 12% of the US population (not thinking about the fact that this is a result of poverty, not skin color), or the high amount of hard drug use in Black society (again, depression due to poverty, not skin color).

White Man's Burden was very obviously aimed at these two particular groups of people. What they both have in common is the belief that certain behavior is naturally part of being born with a particular skin color. By depicting an alternate history with the roles of Blacks and Whites reversed in America, the film shows that lack of knowledge and a tendency towards crime is inspired by growing up in poverty, not by being born with black skin. It also portrayed selfishness, greed, and elitism to be qualities of those who grew up in luxury and wealth rather than being tied to white skin. The point of the film was not to go into painstaking detail about how the roles came to be reversed, where the other races are, or to explore the alternate-reality society on every single level, which would require a mini-series rather than a 90-minute film. The point was to shake up the narrow-minded perspectives of two particularly bigoted groups of Americans, to kick them in the butt and make them consider that skin color isn't a factor in who you are. Whatever else you want to say about the movie's performances or characterizations, it did its' job perfectly.

[scroller]

Not sure what that last post was about.

Anyway, I've seen "Birth of a Nation", not much new to say. It's rather breathtaking that the first feature-length film ever is a heroic telling of the creation of the "secret nation" of the KKK. If you're really into films you sort of have to watch it.