Analysis Of The Movie ' Birth Of A Nation '

D.W. Grifiths 1915 film The Birth of a Nation, is widely recognized as one of the most consequential films in American cinematic history - it contains many new cinematic innovations and refinements, technical effects and artistic advancements, including a brilliant color sequence at the end, that laid the foundations for modern filmmaking. In 1993 the film was elected into the National Film Registry, and in 1998 voted one of the "Top 100 American Films" by the American Film Institute. Aside from its influence on Hollywood, the film has left an indelible mark on American culture as one of the most prolific pieces of anti-black propaganda of all time.

The movie I watched is Lincoln. This movie is about President Abraham Lincoln’s struggles to free all slaves permanently before the Civil War ended. The movie is set in 1865, just after Lincoln was reelected. Lincoln is faced with a moral dilemma. His goal is to pass the amendment to ban slavery forever, but if the war ends before he can do this he’ll never get the opportunity. As he pushes to get the votes he needs to secure the bills passing a peace offer is brought forth by the Confederates. Lincoln must now decide to either end the war now and save thousands of lives or to delay the end of the war and have the chance to save not only current lives but also future lives from a life of slavery.

Labeling theory. The labels that people are given affect their own and others’ perceptions of them, leading to conformity or deviance (labels can be good or bad)Most people resist the negative labels others try to give us, however, if we hear that we a thug long enough, we may finally accept that label and start living as a thug. Black race is the most stereotyped out of many races. Due to being consistently stereotyped they really become who they are being stereotyped as. In the starting of this movie

“ Some of these early productions have racial themes which reorganize the world in such a way that black heritage is rewarded over white paternity; they are schematic renunciations of the prevailing order of things in white American society where, historically, the discovery of black blood meant sudden reversal of fortune, social exclusion, or banishment.” (Gaines, P.3) Within the movie the amount of mistruths about African Americans was sad. Within the movie you notice that the blacks were always or seem to be yelling, acting uncivilized and doing

The movie's success depends on using dated stereotypes: "angry black woman," "thuggish black man," and "innocent" white women. White men,

The rest of the film is about the obstacles that main character has to face because of racist remarks against black people and stereotypes. I like the way the director exposed common stereotypes, represented in the movie as the

If a movie of this sort had such an emotional impact on me, it is no wonder people embraced these ideas back then. The use of new and popular media methods in those days was more than adequate in transferring the black inferiority ideas to the general public. Beginning at the early 19th century with the happy, dancing, toothless, drunken Negro with big, bold and white lips to the image of the mid 21st century African-American, the media has always used these images to convey inferiority. These images implied inherent traits in the black community. This whole community was represented in the new media as one who can not be collateralized and integrated in to society without being happily enslaved. Most of these images had great commercial values that made it all the more impossible for the rest of the nation not to embrace the African American stereotypes.

In the film there are many videos and clips of African Americans being poorly mistreated by whites and police officers. One of the short films shown in the movie was titled “The Birth of a Nation.” In this short film there were scenes of a black man being pushed, punched, teased, etc. by white men just for the fun of it. There were also scenes of a white man raping a black women because blacks were looked down on as lesser than whites.

The movie’s main focus is racism in the southern United States. It was at times hard to hear the KKK members in the movie describe African Americans in such vile words. The movie accurately portrays racism in the south; a good portion of whites really believed that blacks were the scum of the earth. Blacks were separated from the population, and routinely harassed, beaten, and sometimes killed because of their race.

How does the film shown reflect the time in which it was made, and satirise American stereotypes, views, and society?

professor of law, and civil rights advocate argues that African Americans were arrested for extremely minor crimes like loitering or vagrancy. While incarcerated, the prisoners, African Americans, had to provide labor to help aid in rebuilding the economy of the South after the Civil War. Jelani Cobb, also an American writer, educator, and professor of journalism, states that after the mass incarceration was a rapid transition of a kind of mythology of black criminality. The Birth of a Nation, a film directed by D. W. Griffith, was successful yet controversial. It portrayed black men as sexually aggressive towards white women, animal-like and unintelligent. The movie helped in demeaning the African American, it also credited as being one of

Discrimination is reprehensible, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, and it’s not easy for members of a despised class to overcome the reasons why the majority loathes them. The film also

The beginning of the film offers a panoramic view of the landscape as the car of the film crew passing along the winding road. Director Kiarostami’s visual strategy of long takes and long shots attracts the audience’s attention to every aspect of the frame which is like a painting, and a series of paintings brings the stunning images of the landscape

The actions of the black characters support the cultural stereotypes that are pervasive throughout this film. A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing (Iftkar, 2013). Blacks are

And while there is truth in that this was the way that Whites viewed African Americans, the film does a disservice by cementing the image of black people as animalistic. In fact every single image you see of a black person in the film is negative and demeaning.