← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · JoseyWales
Thread ID: 20612 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2005-10-11
2005-10-11 20:07 | User Profile
Friday night on AMC, there will an 30min episode on "Birth of a Nation" and it seems they will interview lots of negros, as well as David Duke and others. The title of the show will be "Movies That Shook the World".
2005-10-12 12:32 | User Profile
check your local listings here [url]http://tv.yahoo.com/[/url]
should be "interesting" to watch the parade of negros bemoaning how racist this country still is.
2005-10-14 04:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=JoseyWales]check your local listings here [url]http://tv.yahoo.com/[/url]
should be "interesting" to watch the parade of negros bemoaning how racist this country still is.[/QUOTE]
[img]http://www.africanamericans.com/images2/BirthofaNationProtest.jpg[/img]
2005-10-14 04:07 | User Profile
READER OF THE DAY: Marc writes: "I strongly disagree with your claim that the DGA's [Directors' Guild of America--HC] decision to remove D.W. Griffith's name from their highest award represents "the nadir of political correctness in Hollywood." I do not begrudge Griffith's right to make the movies he wanted to make. And audiences have the right to go home and watch Birth of a Nation on an endlessly looped videotape for all I care. To me, the issue is why did the award, which apparently was established in 1953, have to be named after Griffith in the first place?
(DAVID NOTE: Because there was no sensitivity to the issue then. The award was named simply based on his contributions as a director.)
In your article you sarcastically claim the removal of Griffith's name from the award as being logically akin to banning films such as Easy Rider and Bridge Over The River Kwai. Now, I may have missed something, but where amid all the brou-ha-ha is anyone advocating banning Birth of A Nation? Frankly, I don't know why you're so riled up.
(DAVID NOTE: Don't assume too much sarcasm. Isn't there real hypocrisy in holding up Easy Rider as a classic while we scream about the war on drugs? Personally, I think the war on drugs is the absurd phenom in this case, but Anna & The King couldn't shoot in Thailand because they felt that the musical The King & I was disrespectful to their real-life king. The power of political correctness is not something to sneeze at in today's Hollywood.)
I know Griffith had a huge and hugely influential body of cinematic work. He deserves, and receives, major respect for that. But the content of Birth of A Nation has an equally significant legacy. It made me, the only black person in my undergraduate literature class, cringe being shown clips from it in the late 1980s. It unsettles me now just thinking of its images of "blacks" kicking back, eating (watermelon) in Congress, rabidly going after white women. And there's its noble portrayal of sheeted horsemen. I can scarcely imagine the feeling of being a struggling filmmaker in 1953 when the DGA established the award in Griffith's name.
I'm sorry, but I lose eloquence when discussing these types of issues--and I've got to get back to work!--so I'll end soon.
Griffith was a brilliant filmmaker. Leni Riefenstahl is a brilliant filmmaker. But to name the DGA's highest award after either of them is simply wrong to me. Each of their careers are inextricably connected to controversy. Honor their work. Study their work. But the DGA doesn't have to sully the recognition of filmmakers by linking their honors to D.W. Griffith. And maybe that's where we'll always disagree."
(DAVID NOTE: I would agree if the DGA was naming an award today. There is, to me, a distinct difference between retro-retribution and actions in today's society. That also speaks to my stance on Elia Kazan.)
And from another perspective, Ben writes: " Well, personally, I don't like that they stripped DW Griffith's name from an award, not one bit. But then I have ceased to be amazed by the personal stances of Hollywood after Saving Private Ryan, perhaps one of the most right wing and pro-war films ever to be produced. (Not to mention scripted like a Predator movie, in which a hero falls in a dramatic, painful battle...one at a time, directed in scenes straight from the Action Film Handbook. Pfff. Doesn't anyone remember Full Metal Jacket, and the almost silent, distanced death that existed in the film? Perhaps, then perhaps not, but I'm getting tired of not hearing people be outraged by the obvious political leanings in the film. And when, oh god when, will someone bring up the anti-German sentiments that run through Speilberg's films? Especially in Saving Private Ryan, in which the only German we meet is a distrustful, evil man who shoots the beloved (character) after his life was spared earlier.
I'm tired of his black and white presentations, especially when Indiana Jones is not there to make the audience realize that it is popcorn.
And yet another p.o.v. from Joey G. : "First, David, lay off Roosevelt already. What, exactly, was FDR supposed to have done in 1940 and 1941 to rescue European Jews? Please tell me. Send in the Marines? Hitler would have loved that in 1940. Isn't it becoming more and more clear that Roosevelt dragged this navel gazing country, through subterfuge, into a war it wanted no part of but had to fight? What else was he supposed to do? Hey, you brought it up.
(DAVID NOTE: It would have been a good start if he simply acknowledged the atrocities he knew were taking place. How much is that to ask of a president?)
Second, I think it's rather clumsy of you to try to compare the "objectification" of Marilyn Monroe in a Billy Wilder farce to the naked hatred of Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Have you ever actually watched this picture David? (DAVID NOTE: Yes. Repeatedly. I'm not a big fan, but I did go to film school.) I'll concede that it's amazing filmmaking, especially the climax, which I'm sure can still get some folks all riled up today. Griffith went to a lot of trouble to create those images and I think it's completely fair that his current reputation reflects them. Maybe the DGA felt that in 1999, when we still have pathetic little f**kers calling themselves "white supremacists" skulking around in the dark and shooting black men in the back, maybe we haven't come as far as we should have in 84 years. Maybe our society has a little more growing up to do before it can dispassionately excuse Griffith for his hate mongering.
Of course we should continue to watch his films, all of them. And Leni Riefenstahl's films for that matter (another big issue. And nobody can accuse Jodie Foster of not sticking her neck out, but jeeze...). "
And R.S. adds: "While I'm not certain that the Academy should rename their honorary award due to Griffith's racist past, I am certain that Griffith was a racist and even a superficial look into his life would stress that point. He was very good friends with the playwright, whose name escapes me at the moment but who wrote the source material for Birth of a Nation which was originally titled, "The Klansman." Can there be any question? A film which heralds the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and depicts African American politicians as barefoot and drunk in the Senate chamber does not just portray racist views it espouses them. I would never deny that Leni Riefenstahl is a brilliant filmmaker and yet I would not name Germany's highest film award honor after her, either."
E ME: Just FYI...the mystery ROTD yesterday was Greg Dean Schmitz, creator and writer of Upcomingmovies.com. And so the battles go on. What side do you take?
[url]http://www.thehotbutton.com/today/hot.button/1999_thb/991217_fri.html[/url]
2005-10-14 04:09 | User Profile
[img]http://www.massmoments.org/mo_home/04_26_052.jpg[/img]
...in 1915 Boston's African-American community protested the showing of the racist film The Birth of a Nation. When 800 black women gathered at a Baptist church, one speaker suggested that "if there are men here who are afraid to die there are women who are not afraid. This [movie] would not be tolerated if it affected any other race or people." In spite of rallies and demonstrations, the film opened on April 17, 1915, at the Tremont Theater. While African Americans protested, thousands of white Bostonians flocked to the film. Quite possibly the most controversial movie ever produced, The Birth of a Nation also has the distinction of being the first film shown in the White House.
When The Birth of a Nation was released in the winter of 1915, it fascinated and repelled audiences. A silent movie that used innovative techniques, such as close-ups, flashbacks, and fades, it appealed to popular myths about the supposed injustice inflicted on the South during Reconstruction. And it portrayed African Americans as either childlike individuals with limited mental abilities or depraved creatures who lusted after young white women.
African Americans and sympathetic white people found the film deeply offensive. All across the country, blacks filed petitions, appealed to legislatures, met with mayors and governors, picketed theaters, and organized protest marches in an effort to ban the film.
The Birth of a Nation was based on the Reverend Thomas Dixon's 1905 book, The Clansmen, which pays tribute to the Ku Klux Klan. D.W. Griffith, director of the film, was also an admirer of the Klan. The members of the Klan "ran to the rescue of the downtrodden South after the Civil War," he wrote in his autobiography. It was a view his film championed. The idea, explained leading actress Lillian Gish, was to "tell the truth about the War between the States. It hasn't been told accurately in history books."
The film premiered in Los Angeles on February 8, 1915. In early April, Boston newspapers announced that it would be showing in the city. The local NAACP was the first chapter in the nation. Together with William Monroe Trotter, it spearheaded a vigorous campaign to ban the film.
William Monroe Trotter (1872ââ¬â1934) was an uncompromising advocate of equal rights for black Americans. An 1895 graduate of Harvard, he was the first African American elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In 1901, he founded The Guardian, a weekly newspaper devoted to race relations, and used it as a forum to attack the growing number of lynchings, the Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation on both sides of the Mason Dixon Line, and all forms of racial discrimination.
In 1905, Trotter and Massachusetts native W.E.B. Du Bois co-founded the Niagara Movement, but when that became the NAACP, Trotter withdrew. He objected to the presence of whites in the NAACP leadership and its dependence on white financing. He created an alternative organization ââ¬â the National Equal Rights League.
To ban The Birth of a Nation, blacks had to go beyond showing that the film slandered African Americans and utterly distorted history. Like their counterparts in other northern cities, the leaders of Boston's NAACP and Trotter argued that the film was a threat to public safety, that it heightened racial tensions, and could incite violence.
Boston Mayor James Michael Curley responded by holding a public hearing. D.W. Griffith as well as Trotter and NAACP leaders testified. Curley claimed he could only censor the film if it were "indecent and immoral." After the filmmaker agreed to cut certain sexually suggestive scenes, the film opened on April 17, 1915, at the Tremont Theater.
Trotter and a number of other African Americans attempted to purchase tickets and were refused. When they protested, police appeared and arrested Trotter and ten others. The following day historic Faneuil Hall was the site of a huge demonstration.
The protests intensified. On the 19th, some 2,000 African Americans assembled at the State House to protest the film. A group of black leaders met with Governor David Walsh, who shortly thereafter introduced the Sullivan Bill to tighten censorship. A group of black women held a meeting at a church in Roxbury on the 25th. "We want 'The Birth of a Nation' removed from the city of Boston," they declared, "and we women of Boston propose to see that it goes."
Two days later, 500 African Americans appeared when the Judiciary Committee held hearings on the Sullivan Bill. On May 2nd, there was an NAACP meeting at the Tremont Temple and then a rally, organized by Trotter, on Boston Common. The Sullivan Bill passed three weeks later, but when the censorship board met, it ruled that The Birth of a Nation was "not at all objectionable."
The film was shown in Boston 360 times over a period of six-and-a-half months. It enjoyed similar success in other cities and was hugely profitable. By the end of 1915, in New York City alone, gross receipts were $3,750,000. In spite ââ¬â or perhaps because ââ¬â of the film's popularity with white audiences, the protests it generated proved to be a watershed in black activism. The film brought national attention to the five-year-old NAACP; when white newspapers covered the protests, which they did, black Americans had a rare opportunity to be heard.
Sources
"African-Americans in Motion Pictures: The Past and the Present"
Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890ââ¬â1920, by Mark R. Schneider (Northeastern University Press, 1997).
"D.W. Griffith and the Birth of a Monster: How the Confederacy Revived the KKK and Created Hollywood," by Mark Calney.
Trotter: A Biography of Black Boston, 1872-1934,by Kerri Greenidge (Beacon press, 2005).
2005-10-14 04:21 | User Profile
[img]http://www.yale.edu/glc/images/tr056a.jpg[/img]
2005-10-14 21:40 | User Profile
Howard, [QUOTE]He objected to the presence of whites in the NAACP leadership and its dependence on white financing.[/QUOTE] Too bad the writer uses the word "whites" when he/she means Jews. :caiphas: [IMG]http://www.xs4all.nl/~ernstmul/images/jewish/jsmile002.gif[/IMG]
I have a copy of this fine film.
2005-10-15 02:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Sertorius]Howard,
Too bad the writer uses the word "whites" when he/she means Jews. :caiphas: [IMG]http://www.xs4all.nl/~ernstmul/images/jewish/jsmile002.gif[/IMG]
I have a copy of this fine film.[/QUOTE]You notice blacks always talk about "whites in the NAACP" this way? It was the same way when Marcus Garvey stormed out of NAACP headquarters in the 20's, claiming it was a "white organization".
Doesn't Steve Ross looks sort of like Morris Dees to you BTW?
2005-10-15 02:32 | User Profile
If you have the misfortune of watching the AMC propaganda regarding this movie, please take the trouble of searching out the links to Birth of The Nation on OD.
Any "show" that can glorify the NAACP, while never mentioning the Jewish control of said organization, is pure unadulterated drivel!
2005-10-15 10:43 | User Profile
Griffith film birthed a nation we still are trying to overcome By Jerry Large
[IMG]http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2004/12/16/402655056.jpg[/IMG]
Seattle Times staff columnist
"Black people are shown manipulating a Northern White politician, beating and killing White people, dancing, drinking and eating fried chicken on the floor of the South Carolina Legislature during Reconstruction, and again and again trying to get a White woman. Gross distortions of reality, except for the White-woman part."
again and again trying to get a White woman. Gross distortions of reality, except for the White-woman part
again and again trying to get a White woman. Gross distortions of reality, except for the White-woman part
again and again trying to get a White woman. Gross distortions of reality, except for the White-woman part
[url]http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002557201_jdl13.html?syndication=rss[/url]
:ph34r:
2005-10-17 19:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Blond Knight]If you have the misfortune of watching the AMC propaganda regarding this movie, please take the trouble of searching out the links to Birth of The Nation on OD. [/QUOTE]I only found [URL="http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showpost.php?p=102302&postcount=1"]this one[/URL]. Are there others?
2005-10-17 22:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Doesn't Steve Ross looks sort of like Morris Dees to you BTW?[/QUOTE]Who is Steve Ross?
2005-10-17 22:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas]Who is Steve Ross?[/QUOTE]One of the guys in the AMC docudrama.
2005-10-18 04:26 | User Profile
Okie:
Just thought that someone had mentioned getting a copy of Birth of A Nation on DVD a while back.
2005-10-18 04:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Blond Knight]Okie:
Just thought that someone had mentioned getting a copy of Birth of A Nation on DVD a while back.[/QUOTE]I thought you meant [B]OD[/B], not [B]CD[/B]. :lol:
One interesting thing I'd never realized about [I]Birth of a Nation[/I] is how it single-handedly led to the rebirth of the KKK, which relates to the interesting and fascinating story of the KKK's rise and fall. I think as usual rightist organizations tend to show themselves unstable and full of anarchic tendencies, that make their long term survival difficult, As certainly we've learned here. But maybe considering how nowadays we have to work just to get a DVD copy of the movie that's getting ahead of ourselves.
2005-10-18 18:45 | User Profile
[QUOTE]But maybe considering how nowadays we have to work just to get a DVD copy of the movie that's getting ahead of ourselves.[/QUOTE]
Not true. BOAN is one of the [I]easiest [/I]films to find on DVD; Amazon alone offers about a half-dozen different editions (indicating it's likely a public domain title by now). Every so often, TCM runs it complete and uninterrupted as well.
The problem a lot of would-be BOAN fans inevitably find is that it's a three-hour long silent movie; this isn't a silent [I]comedy[/I], which moves quickly and is overwhelmingly visual. As important a figure as Griffith was and is, he favored a Victorian style of heavy dramatics and theatrical pantomime that wears most audiences down. Like it or not, after 80 years of talkies, it's tough sledding to acclimate oneself to a style of filmmaking that went out of fashion before our parents were born. If you can't tolerate silent movies, period, you're [I]not [/I]going to suddenly enjoy this one because it's pro-Klan.
It's without a doubt historically important, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be sitting there, riveted to the screen.