To Screen or Not to Screen: Birth of a Nation gets the boot

Momus?

http://www.stairwell.com/doc/images/lebowski.jpg

xpost wtfukkk is that jon?!?

You're not sorry at all, you meanie. *cries*

jos. cornell: those are some of my favorite films in the world (esp. "mulberry st." and "centuries of june"). though some of them had soundtracks, of old calypso records IIRC.

stan brakhage's widow has voiced concern about bands like sonic youth performing to her husband's films. she's not making any NAACP-like effort to stop it from happening (though i guess technically it is kinda illegal), but she insists that her husband wanted his films to be shown silent.*

* with the exceptions of his few films w/soundtracks, and those explicitly made for particular musicians to accompany.

That's true. They mentioned that in the show. I think Zorn took some inspiration from those original soundtracks, but basically took them in a completely different direction.

i presume you have seen it then? most people haven't. if you hadn't seen it you may not be quite so baffled by peoples desire to do so.

i'm even confusing myself.

At First, when there's nothing but a slow glowing dream
That your fear seems to hide deep inside your mind
All alone I have cried silent tears full of pride
In a world made of steel, made of stone

can't wait for Whiney's review of Greed

Are they gonna show "Within Our Gates" or any Micheaux? That would be another "pre-emptive strategy"

Or run the DJ Spooky "formless bloops" soundtrack.

(Speaking of which: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kinolorber/pioneers-of-african-american-cinema )

i am pretty sure they've run an Oscar Micheaux series in the past. xp

(his stuff plays as a lot more avant-garde than DWG's, tho)

"one scene has mae marsh leap from a cliff to her death to be spared the "fate worse than death"--being raped by a black man."

This is kind of a strange scene to pick out as an example of the film's racism.

― buttslam is a pretty good move (circa1916), Saturday, April 18, 2009 6:50 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was me who picked out that example, about ten years ago. but i think it's completely apposite, because it's all about how left to their own devices—and encouraged by northern "carpetbaggers" and "race-mixers"—blacks (or a sizable subset of them) will naturally chose to prey upon their former masters. the vision of black male sexuality depicted in that scene is precisely the stereotype that fueled, or permitted, decades of lynchings of black men for taking white women's "honor." if there's a particular pernicious stereotype that the film gives form—and there are many—that might be among the worst of them.

there are so many marvelous things in Birth of a Nation, as i remember every time I see. the Ford's Theatre sequence is an astonishing action sequence, edited and staged with breathtaking precision. there are also many poetic moments typcial of Griffith (though none really represent an advance on what he was doing in his Biograph films). but the racism of the film—and its distortions of American history—is really, if anything, worse than it's usually made out, even today.

anyway, i probably said most of this way upthread.

film history has moved far beyond the whole "griffith invented cinema!" (or the close-up, or the feature, or the epic, or whatever) thing. if anything griffith is kind of a stylistic outlier in american cinema of the 1910s, advanced in many ways but also capable of certain strategies of editing/staging/framing/narration that already seem kind of retrograde. i don't mean "retrograde" in a bad way, just that griffith was kind of stubborn in a way that made it hard for him to adjust to the rapid changes in film style that took place in the 1910s–20s the way folks like allan dwan and raoul walsh were able to do.

I saw BoaN in a big concert hall with live orchestra and a big audience in their finest clothes. It was a weird experience in the second half. When the KKK rode through the town to save the day (well, SPOILER...) the score played Ride of the Valkyries.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, February 10, 2015 12:43 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that cue was in the original (1910s) score, which was largely a "compilation" score, i.e. made up out of parts of other, often famous, musical compositions.

the advocacy of white supremacy of a century ago has been decisively bested by a common philosophy of equal rights for all — indeed, overt *public* attitudes about race have shifted 180 degrees since 1915

maybe not 180 degrees—attitudes were more diverse then and now.

there were anti-racists in 1915, and indeed the NAACP led a boycott of the film back then (when they were a new organization; the boycott actually got the NAACP their biggest public exposure in some contexts). the revisionist history the film depicts /was/ pretty mainstream at the time, and griffith seemed genuinely blindsided by accusations that the film distorted history, but the racial caricatures did get quite a bit of pushback.

nice piece (tho i don't find the entire western genre "virtually unwatchable"); things i didn't know about the premiere protests, and DWG endorsing it being pulled from public view after some years.

Monroe Trotter, a Harvard graduate and newspaper editor—along with the NAACP—helped expose the racist depictions and erroneous history in The Birth of a Nation to an otherwise oblivious nation. Not too many listened but the persistent and sustained effort had Griffith one day admitting that the film should be reserved for instructional purposes, for studying the art of film, and not be shown in public—a major step for the director who never publicly faced his racism but little comfort to the kid who enrolls in film school....

Griffith and his producers knew trouble was coming, as the NAACP had tried to get the film censored in L.A., and, for the film’s East Coast debut, the organization lobbied members of the New York City’s board of censors to ban it or at least insist on cuts. Meanwhile, to generate publicity for the NYC premiere, horses and their riders were hired to gallop around Broadway outfitted with Klan hoods and robes, apparently without incident. Thomas Dixon, the North Carolina native and unapologetically bigoted author of the original source material (a successful novel and successful play), helped forestall negative reaction to the film by writing to his old school chum Woodrow Wilson and arranged for the first ever White House screening.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/kicking-and-screaming-the-birth-of-a-nation-at-100

always something to new to loathe about Woodrow Wilson, it seems

i never knew the NAACP actually tried to make a film that directly responded to this one, it's a shame that never got made.

that was not a bad summary, but this--

No one seemed to mind the insidious setup of the first reels that present the antebellum South in soft-focus idyllic tones, a myth that didn’t get its widespread public busting until Steve McQueen’s deft, unflinching adaptation of the memoir by Solomon Northup.

is weird. there have been several generations of high-profile books, films, and TV shows busting the myth of American slavery, "roots" to mention just one.

icymi

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/21/prominent-actors-criticize-bowling-green-removing-name-lillian-gish-campus-theater