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New Trailer: ‘The Birth of a Nation’ - Oct 7

In case you guys aren’t aware, the title of this film is extremely significant.

Birth of a Nation is a tremendously influential film by D.W. Griffith that for many years was considered one of the greatest films ever made. But this film, which was originally titled “The Clansmen,” is also generally considered the most racist film ever made. It depicts a heinous view of Southern antebellum white culture as being ruined by the civil war, victimizes gentrified white landowners, and includes a dramatic sequence in which white-sheeted white members of the KKK heroically rescue white women from the advances of a group of predatory black men. Despite all this, it took decades, DECADES, for this film to fall off perennial critics lists of the greatest films ever made. Because Griffith’s movie was incredibly technologically advanced for its day, it is still taught in colleges around the country.

In 1915 when it was released, the film led to significant protests from black activists including the NAACP. It also led to a dramatic increase of black men being lynched in the South, as well as to the revival in popularity of the KKK, which had pretty much entirely died out as a movement before Griffith’s film. (Thanks, bro.) As a kid growing up in the rural, racist South, I have a vivid memory of a family member who was born just 4 years after the release of Birth of a Nation insisting to me that the KKK’s primary role was “just to protect women and children.” Years later I realized that my relative had been parroting the ideology of Birth of a Nation to me: the cultural narrative put forth by this incredibly racist film had been instilled in this family member from an early age and then passed down directly to me in the ‘90s.

Nate Parker’s new film is not only tremendously important as a piece of history — it depicts the life of Nat Turner, leader of the South’s most well-known slave rebellion — it’s crucial as a re-appropriation, not only of the title, but of the concept of how nations are born. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation argues that nations are birthed at the expense of oppressors. Parker’s The Birth of a Nation argues that nations are birthed out of the bravery of the oppressed. Both films contain acts of violence that are portrayed as heroic, necessary restorative acts of justice. 

In Birth of a Nation, that restorative justice comes in the form of the KKK. Parker’s The Birth of a Nation, by associating itself with Griffith’s film, directly confronts not only Griffith’s thesis about who has power and privilege in the U.S., but his view of what heroism is. To quote @thequintessentialqueer​‘s absolutely quintessential post on Hamilton and race, Parker’s film asks the fundamental question: “Whose rebellion is valued? Who is allowed to be heroic through defiance?” 

The Birth of a Nation values Nat Turner’s Rebellion; it allows black slaves to be heroic through direct violent protest. That is a huge, fundamental shift in the way we are taught to think about our own legacy of violence. It’s a huge shift in the kinds of stories black filmmakers are able to tell in mass-market films.

And it’s a huge fuck-you to D.W. Griffith.

Reblogging to signal boost and because this is really cool.

(via red--opti)