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BSA106 D.W Griffiths - The birth of a Nation.

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Based on the book "The Clansman: A historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan" that was written by a North Carolina baptist minister named Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr. who was a bigoted racist.
The 'hero' of the film, Ben Cameron, is a southerner who falls in love with a Northerner. However, following outbreak of the civil war and the assassination of President Lincoln, their romance is cut short. Ben Cameron doesn't like the way black people and white people are told to be treated as equals by the north, but one day after seeing some small black children afraid of white children dressed up as ghosts using sheets, he gets enough inspiration to set up the Ku Klux Klan.
The film ends with Ben and Elsie, the northerner, reunited after Elsie almost marries a black man.

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In "The Birth of a Nation", the Ku Klux Klan are portrayed as the heroes that save the white people from the black people who are taking over the South. This could be one of the reasons that the Ku Klux Klan still use this movie as a recruitment tool to this day.
White supremacy is one of the main ideas in "The birth of a Nation", with the black people portrayed as being happy and carefree as slaves but as soon as they begin to get their freedom they are shown as being dangerous. Black men in the film are portrayed as being rapists and lascivious creeps. One pursues Ben's daughter who ends up falling from a cliff, while another tries to force Elsie to marry him.
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"Within our Gates" (1919) was made in response to "Birth of a Nation" by filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. In "Within our Gates" Micheaux tries to show the audience that racism stems from ignorance and hinders any hope of national unity.
The film shows black people as more rounded characters than how they are portrayed by Griffiths. "Birth of a Nation" shows them as either being bestial or subservient, whereas "Within our Gates" gives more in-depth characters that are more that just a flat character with no real human emotion past animalistic traits. Micheaux shows that the lynching of blacks was not justified as it was portrayed to be in "Birth of a Nation", where it was depicted as a form of self-defense and vengeance. Micheaux's film is set during the same period as "Birth of a Nation" and is seen from the point of view of the protagonist, an African-American who has European ancestry. This combats the 'hero' of "Birth of a Nation" who, being a white male, isn't in anyway a minority. Micheaux's protagonist shows us what is essentially entirely the opposite of what "Birth of a Nation" tells us to be true.

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Griffiths next movie was named, "Intolerance" (1916). However, it was not made to be as an apology for "Birth of a Nation" as people think, it was actually named as a response to people who had been intolerant towards him in condemning "Birth of a Nation".


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