How Birth Of A Nation Reinforced Antebellum Stereotypes About African Americans

Asians always have perfect scores on the test and aspire to be doctors. African Americans have serious attitudes, are thugs and live in poverty. While all Hispanics are illegal immigrants, who can not speak English and commit vicious crimes. If you watch much television, all of these previous statements may seem true. Television is a powerful source of knowledge that in some ways help us understand others in humanity and ourselves.

The antebellum period’s perception of Blacks in the United States has continued to have profound effects to this day. There is a perceived liberation of Blacks which is misinformed by the accession of Blacks into higher political positions (e.g. President Obama), which many objective scholars view as misplaced. Michelle Alexander states that law enforcement has become one of the many new conduits of suppression for African-Americans. Most crimes by Blacks are from purposeful setups. This is exemplified by a large number of African-American males in correctional facilities today, as well as the wanton brutality on people of color by law enforcement. Discrimination continues against Blacks. It only changes form.

Film and television, for example, have been notorious in disseminating images of racial minorities which establish for audiences what people from these groups look like, how they behave, and “who they are.” The power of the

Since the early developments of cinema, racial tension and the dehumanization of African Americans were portrayed circumstantially on the big screen, and through media. As portrayed in “A Birth of a Nation”, African American’s roles consisted of discriminatory imagery, and low social stature. An early film, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, was the first film to cast a black actor as the main character—even then, the character portrayals were that of a male, white actor. In the early stages of film, African American women had very little, if any, roles in the film industry. “The use of white actors to portray black individuals was common practice carried from the stage to early films” (Collins 77). According to

The film Ethnic Notions present how the media have exaggerated black American’s Image throughout centuries. For example, TD Rice a white comedian who performed in blackface (Ethiopian

Jim Crow is a character that was created by a white man in 1836, who had intentions of displaying derisive and cruel behavior of African-Americans on stage in order to entertain Caucasians. Jim Crow was the law of both Southern and Northern United States for over a half a century. During the 1830’s, Jim Crow was considered one of the most popular forms of mass entertainment Jim Crow had entered the American vocabulary, and many whites all of which came away from minstrel shows with distorted images of black life, characteristics, which led to the aspiration of Jim Crow (Litwack, Preface of Trouble In Mind 1998, xiv). This paper will illuminate one’s knowledge on the etiquettes, definition, history, and the ideology of how Jim Crow came about.

American whiteness as articulated by Birth of a Nation is built on stereotypes, and this is precisely why minstrelsy might have the power to resist racism. Minstrel performances relied on stereotypes to evoke their opposites. It is possible to assume that the discourse of mass entertainment from its minstrel days to current film and possibly beyond, recognizing and accepting blackface conventions and stereotypes were key, almost necessary conditions of American whiteness. "Minstrelsy took the productive ambivalence inherent to the stereotype and magnified it to increase the stereotype's inevitable undoing of itself" (4). But in Birth of a Nation, the determining concept of the stereotype that makes sense is disrupted by the inevitable context provided by narrative: in the film's narrative, African-Americans are seen gently working and playing for their master's benefit prior to the Civil War. This stereotypical representation draws on myths that blackface minstrelsy seemed to ally to the politics of white supremacy; it worked to promote propaganda. Prior to the Civil War, the film explains African-Americans were docile and happy on the plantation because of slave laws imposed by

African American stereotypes began in the media in 1915 when D. W. Griffith’s film the Birth of a Nation came out. The film aired during reconstruction and focused on Southern fears of racial equality. The film ultimately led to southern stereotypes of African Americans as savages. This film fueled the lynching campaign after it aired for 44 consecutive weeks and ultimately sparked the revival of the KKK. The media participated in a public discourse on race that had a direct impact on the lives of African Americans. The film also lead to more representations of African Americans in the public world that summarized the context in which African Americans had been defined since slavery. African American women were stereotyped in a way that dehumanized them which objectifies their existence and that they aren’t human so they deserve unfair treatment. How African Americans were represented in the media years ago transformed into how America thought about African Americans from the media. The idea of the Southern

Film is, and has been one of the most significant aspects of American culture for over one hundred years. In addition to entertainment value, film plays crucial social role in conveying the struggles, and hardships of various groups. The importance of film is constantly being changed and driven forward by filmmakers. Without influential directors, there would be no driving force making films that entertain and inform about the perspective of different groups of people. Throughout the history of film, there have been certain directors whose work was so influential it changed the entire film industry. One such director is Charles Burnett. Through his films, Burnett birthed the idea of African American film, films that are made and acted by African Americans that display the struggles of African American people. The themes and ideas that Charles Burnett featured in his films would go on to be the foundation for other filmmaker’s films during African Americans film’s rise to prominence. This paper will focus on the cornerstone themes of Burnett’s work as seen in his films The Killer of Sheep, and My Brothers Wedding. In particular, themes such as family and self-identity will be explored. Links between the themes of these films and more modern films will then be made.

The documentary Thirteenth states that the film Birth of A Nation was the birth of America’s effort towards criminalizing black people, and in specifics black men. With this blockbuster prototype, that essentially grabbed the nation’s attention in frenzy. This film while gaining all

There is perhaps no bigger and more expansive social construction known to man than the construction of race. In earlier times race meant a tie to national origin, Greek race, Roman race, etc. race underwent a big change in meaning to it’s more contemporary form to distinguish biological differences of physical features and skin color (Wiegman 157). Film and television in this century and the twentieth century have aided and perpetuated stereotypes of race. These stereotypes have been most associated with minority or non-white groups in particularly, and most discussed pertaining to African-Americans in these mediums. Dating back to the earliest silent films all the way through the 20th century and into the new millennium

This stereotypical image of Black people will embrace a lot of movies at the beginnings of the cinema. Thomas Cripss, quoted by Anne Crémieux ” revealed “ Most early Negro appearance in film followed the Southern stereotypes of the wretched freeman, the comic Negro, the black brute, the tragic mulatto, in keeping with literary and theatrical tradition” . Furthermore, the Afro American historian Donald Bogle observed five main stereotypes of the Black man: “toms, coons, mulattos, mammies, bucks”. The “toms served theirs masters well”, the coons were funny and stupid black men, the mulattos characterized by their fair skin and their Caucasian features have a tragic destiny, the bucks who represent the evil with the insatiable sexual desire and

        The Birth of A Nation(1915) by D.W. Griffith is a silent movie setting against the backdrop of Civil War and Reconstruction. By portraying the blacks as incompetent and concupiscent, and Ku Klux Klan(KKK) as patriots and heroes, The Birth of A Nation has been considered one of the most controversial movies in America cinema. The release of the movie sparked intense protest among the black communities who were strongly offended. According to Los Angeles Times, the movie is seldom shown publicly nowadays due to its huge controversy. In this paper, I would like to explore D.W. Griffith’s preferred meaning for the movie as well as an oppositional meaning from audience. I would also explore the balance of power between D.W. Griffith and his audiences in determining the meaning for the movie. Griffith intended that the movie was based on real history without involving racism, while a large number of audiences were irritated by his distortion of history which involved racism.

D.W. Griffith, a groundbreaking director, made the first feature-length motion picture that was three hours long. This silent film, Birth of a Nation, was a “landmark film in the history of cinema,” that contributed to popular filmmaking techniques, but at the same time also brought a lot of controversy. The 1915 film was based on a novel by T.F. Dixon, Jr. called “The from the south and assisted in the start of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The two families, however, Clansman.”

The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D.W. Griffith is a silent movie set against the backdrop of the Civil War and Reconstruction. By portraying African-Americans as incompetent and concupiscent, and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as patriots and heroes, The Birth of A Nation has been considered one of the most controversial movies in American cinema. The release of the movie sparked intense protest among the black communities who were strongly offended. According to the Los Angeles Times, the movie is seldom shown publicly nowadays due to its huge controversy. This paper will explore D.W. Griffith’s preferred meaning for the movie as well as an oppositional meaning from the audience. Furthermore, it will examine the balance of power between D.W. Griffith and his audiences in determining the meaning for the movie. While Griffith claimed to have based the movie on real history, a large number of audiences felt his portrayal distorted history, and reflected racist values. Audiences who held the oppositional decoding position made effort to fight against Birth, but the effect was insufficient to counter Griffith’s preferred meaning.