The Birth of a Nation: Rewriting 101 Years of Misrepresentation

There's some incredibly interesting parallelism going on in Hollywood today; a story that spans for over a century.

The Past - 1915

It begins with Hollywood director D.W. Griffith, who in 1915 wrote, directed, and produced one of the first and foremost overtly racist films in cinema history, The Birth of a Nation. This film was based off of the 1905 novel The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan by Thomas F. Dixon, Jr, and is considered by most film historians to be the first ever full-length feature film, spanning over three hours in length. The film is controversial for several main reasons, namely that it utilizes white actors in blackface makeup to play African American characters, portrays the Ku Klux Klan as the heroes of the story, and stereotypes black characters as all being either unintelligent or criminals. The film was subsequently used by the Klan as a means to recruit new members, and despite countless protests from the NAACP, the movie was an unequaled success.

It is massively unfortunate that a movie with such racist undertones could not merely be dismissed as racist propaganda and nothing more: on the contrary, Griffith's techniques in making the film set the score for filmmaking as we know it today. As The New Yorker's Richard Brody said of the film nearly 100 years after it's release, "The worst part of 'The Birth of a Nation' is how good it is."

The merits of its grand and enduring aesthetic make it impossible to ignore and, despite its disgusting content, also make it hard not to love. And it’s that very conflict that renders the film all the more despicable, the experience of the film more of a torment.

 The Present - 2016

We jump forward over a century to the present day, where an African American actor named Nate Parker writes, directs, and produces a film that is already making history, The Birth of a Nation (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). The Birth of a Nation marks Parker's directorial debut, and he also takes the lead role in the film of Nat Turner, a slave turned rebellion leader in the Southern United States in 1831.

Armie Hammer and Nate Parker in The Birth of a Nation (2016)

The movie will not be released until October (a strategic move to hopefully attract more 2017 Oscar nominations), but has already left a significant impact in Hollywood history. In late January of this year, the film was featured at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah to attract producers. So impressive was the film, that several main studios waged a million dollar bidding war to claim distribution rights, including Netflix, Paramount, and the Oscar-insatiable Weinstein Company. Ultimately, Parker went with Fox Searchlight for $17.5 million USD, an unprecedented sale in the history of the festival.  The film itself only cost $10 million to make, and therein has already garnered a profit.

Parker's use of the same title as the 1915 Griffith film is no coincidence. Said Parker in an interview with Soheil Rezayazdi of Filmmaker:

I’ve reclaimed this title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America, to inspire a riotous disposition toward any and all injustice in this country (and abroad) and to promote the kind of honest confrontation that will galvanize our society toward healing and sustained systemic change.

It will be interesting to see the content of Parker's film, and in particular, I am curious to see how it differs from another Award-worthy (and winning) drama about American slavery, 12 Years a Slave. As discussed in lectures, the film fails in several regards, including several historical inaccuracies in depicting the memoir of Solomon Northup and also depicting the character of Samuel Bass (played by Brad Pitt) as a "white savior" character. Similarly, Fox Searchlight also released 12 Years a Slave, but The Birth of a Nation is distinct in that it was made on a far tighter budget with help from far fewer independent production companies and features the same writer and director. Perhaps outside influence from studio heads will fail to mar the societal good that Parker is intending to spread with the release of his film.

Only time will tell if Parker will find success in his dream of writing the wrongs of history, but it is quite the question: When future generations hear the name "The Birth of a Nation," will they think on a silent, racist propaganda piece, or will they think on a heroic historical drama of a daring slave revolt?

Works Cited:

http://filmmakermagazine.com/97103-five-questions-with-the-birth-of-a-nation-director-nate-parker/#.VzRFTDZjDzI

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150206-the-most-racist-movie-ever-made

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-worst-thing-about-birth-of-a-nation-is-how-good-it-is

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196450/?ref_=nm_knf_i4

http://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/sundance-birth-of-a-nation-1201688520/