The arts thrive on controversy because
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- Disrupting complacency: Great art rarely comes from playing it safe. When artists push against political, social, or moral boundaries, they force audiences out of their comfort zones and ignite vital cultural conversations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation
“The film was controversial even before its release and has remained so since. It has been called “the most controversial film ever made in the United States”,[11]: 198 as well as “the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history”.[12] The film has been denounced for its racist depiction of African Americans.[7] Its black characters (many of whom are played by white actors in blackface) are portrayed as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women, while a mulatto politician serves as one of the main villains. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist hate group, is portrayed as a heroic force that protects white women and maintains white supremacy.[13][14]”
1. “The film was controversial even before its release and has remained so since. It has been called “the most controversial film ever made in the United States”
Reply:
In Academia and politics controversy stops careers. In the arts it starts them.
The commentators and writers of motion pictures and motion picture history stem mainly from academia. To them controversy is to be avoided at all costs.
The cost of this terror (fear is too mild a word) on controversy is immense.
Robert Graves, no stranger to controversy, stated, “After all, what is a scholar but one who may not break bounds under fear of expulsion from the academy of which he is a member.”
Under every scholar is not the bedrock of truth on which we stand alone and undaunted but the sand of conformity.
2. “as well as “the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history”.[12]”
Reply: Jame Agee, in THE NATION, wrote: (Today, The Birth of a Nation is boycotted or shown piecemeal; too many more or less well-meaning people still accuse Griffith of having made it an anti-Negro movie. At best, this is nonsense, and at worst, it is vicious nonsense. Even if it were an anti-Negro movie, a work of such quality should be shown, and shown whole. But the accusation is unjust. Griffith went to almost preposterous lengths to be fair to the Negroes as he understood them, and he understood them as a good type of Southerner does. I don’t entirely agree with him; nor can I be sure that the film wouldn’t cause trouble and misunderstanding, especially as advertised and exacerbated by contemporary abolitionists; but Griffith’s absolute desire to be fair, and understandable, is written all over the picture; so are degrees of understanding, honesty, and compassion far beyond the capacity of his accusers. So, of course, are the salient facts of the so-called Reconstruction years.)
We know, have known for quite some time, that the concept of race is completely without foundation. A writer can say a work is Anti-Black, Anti-Asian, Anti-white, etc.. To say a work, any work is racist is to give credence to an idea now proven false. We are not going to end racism by saying someone or something is racist. We end it by acknowledging the concept itself is false.
Agee’s may well be a minority view. Truth-speakers are always in the minority.
3. Its black characters (many of whom are played by white actors in blackface) are portrayed as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women, while a mulatto politician serves as one of the main villains.
Reply: Blackface in THE BIRTH is used in such a manner that we know it is clearly white actors in those scenes. While the existing laws did allow for Black actors to mix with White actors on stage and screen those Black actors were not allowed to intermix with White actors as they do in Griffith’s film. Having them obviously played by White actors in Blackface was a legal necessity. The black characters represent newly freed Blacks most of whom could neither read nor write. It is not that they are unintelligent. It is that they are uninformed.
Hiram Revels, the first Black Senator, wrote to President Grant.
Letter dated November 6, 1875.
….”Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves and perpetuate it. My people are naturally Republicans and always will be, but as they grow older in freedom so do they in wisdom. A great portion of them have learned that they were being used as mere tools, and, as in the late election, not being able to correct existing evils among themselves, they determined by casting their ballots against those unprincipled adventurers, to overthrow them…. My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. To defeat this policy, at the late election men, irrespective of race, color, or party affiliation, united, and voted together against men known to be incompetent and dishonest. I cannot recognize, nor do the mass of my people who read, recognize the majority of the officials who have been in power for the past two years as Republicans….
“The great mass of the white people have abandoned their hostility to the general government and Republican principles, and to-day accept as a fact that all men are born free and equal, and I believe are ready to guarantee to my people every right and privilege guaranteed to an American citizen. The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been obliterated in this state, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them. As an evidence that party lines in this state have been obliterated, men were supported without regard to their party affiliations, their birth, or their color, by those who heretofore have acted with the Democratic party, by this course giving an evidence of their sincerity that they have abandoned the political issues of the past, and were only desirous of inaugurating an honest state government, and restoring a mutual confidence between the races.; I give my opinion, that had our state adhered to Republican principles, and stood by the platform upon which it was elected, the state to-day would have been upon the highway of prosperity. Peace would have prevailed within her borders, and the Republican party would have embraced within her folds thousands of the best and purest citizens of which Mississippi can boast, and the election just passed would have been a Republican victory of not less than eighty to a hundred thousand majority; but the dishonest course which has been pursued has forced into silence and retirement nearly all of the leading Republicans who organized, and have heretofore led the party to victory. A few who have been bold enough to stand by Republican principles, and condemn dishonesty, corruption, and incompetency have been supported and elected by overwhelming majorities. If the state administration had adhered to Republican principles, advanced patriotic measures, appointed only honest and competent men to office, and sough to restore confidence between the races, bloodshed would have been unknown, peace would have prevailed, Federal interference been unthought of; harmony, friendship, and mutual confidence would have taken the place of the bayonet….”
Booker T. Washington, in UP FROM SLAVERY, writes, “Naturally, most of our people who received some little education became teachers or preachers. While among these two classes there were many capable, earnest, godly men and women, still a large proportion took up teaching or preaching as an easy way to make a living. Many became teachers who could do little more than write their names. I remember there came into our neighborhood one of this class, who was in search of a school to teach, and the question arose while he was there as to the shape of the earth and how he would teach the children concerning this subject. He explained his position in the matter by saying that he was prepared to teach that the earth was either flat or round, according to the preference of a majority of his patrons.” https://archive.org/details/upfromslavery02wash/page/80/mode/2up
Woodrow Wilson’s HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE Volume 5 is used as a reference in THE BIRTH: https://archive.org/details/AHistoryOfTheAmericanPeopleVol5/page/n15/mode/2up .
While critics state that the views of Revels and Washington are not relevant and do not support Griffith’s presentation of the Negro in THE BIRTH, clearly they do.
4. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist hate group, is portrayed as a heroic force that protects white women and maintains white supremacy.[13][14]”
Reply: In his spoken word intro to the much shortened sound version of THE BIRTH Griffith states, “The Klan was needed then.” I think it not a stretch to say he was stating the Klan was and is no longer needed.
There is no difference between the white in THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) being protected by the Klan and the rebels led by Nelson Mandela to protect Negroes in South Africa. In THE GODFATHER Vito Corleone becomes The Godfather when he realizes he and his people can expect no help from the recognized authorities. For the same reason Robin Hood and his outlaw band rose against King John as does the rebel force in STAR WARS.
The Klan in THE BIRTH is not anti-Negro. The later Klan was not only anti-Negro it was also anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Roman Catholic and much more. It has no relation the Klan of the Reconstruction period. Blaming Griffith and his picture for the Klan’s revival is the same as blaming Stanley Kubrick and his picture, CLOCKWORK ORANGE, for acts of violence against homeless men by people who had seen his picture.
The revived Klan had no love for D. W. Griffith nor, aside from THE BIRTH, no use for his pictures.
Words like “racist” and “white supremacist” are words which trigger a lynch mob response.
It is not wrong to say that the most important producer/director/writer in motion picture history, David Wark Griffith, has been lynched.
In FILM CULTURE 65 Seymour Stern authoritatively shows that the antipathy to THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) and to David Wark Griffith has no foundation: https://www.scribd.com/document/882606617/Film-Culture-36-Spring-1965-D-W-Griffith
This is wrong.–Reg Hartt (2026—10–14).
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