D.W. Griffith's Movie, Birth of a Nation Shows the Reality of Racism

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Birth of a Nation uses its histrionic plot to show how tangled destinies of a southern and northern family before and after the Civil War. It willingly portrays southern blacks as spiteful and uncivil, the northern whites as crafty, dishonest, and conceited, and the film’s southern whites as anguish recurrent radical and erotic mortifications at the hands of white northerners and black southerners before factually being saved by the thoughtful, Ku Klux Klan. The film is divided to show the different aspects of those two sides during this historical time. During this time Africans were coming to America and it started the reconstruction on our country. D.W. Griffith made this film to show us the reality of racism at this point in time.

The importance that this period in time and how it influenced us now. For some would say that this film is the ugly truth and that it shouldn’t be shown. But personally, this film has opened my eyes to the struggle and fear that our people have to accept change. Racism was and somewhat still is one of the issues that most try to keep under wraps. This film relieves the ugly truth in Griffith’s perspective and should be explained and understood. “This is an historical presentation of the civil war and reconstruction period and is not meant to reflect on any race of people of today” (second half, Birth of a Nation) Griffith’s perspective on the occasions of the plot is ironic, comprehensive, and is intense enough to offer the material for its own inconsistency.

That’s the very meaning of Griffith’s practicality, the formation of a filmic style that accompaniments to this very day, in many different ways. The changes and alterations, and that reflect the creator’s sureness that cinematic symbols, ...

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...rue. For this reason and others, Birth of a Nation's claims to historical accuracy would be amusing, if not for the terrible inferences of the film. That said, this film should be seen, mainly because it offers an article of a fatal method of rational that is by no means dead. It also represents the pop cultural moment when Northern and Southern whites submissive over the reminiscence of the Civil War, mainly to the disadvantage of blacks. Lastly, those who want this film branded only give ammunition to the fools who still praise the KKK. Overall this film is beneficial whether we like it or not. I have always found that hiding and acting like something didn’t happen causes more tension and questioning. People are drawn to things that are trying to be kept away, the mystery and the wonder factor keeps people wanting to know. That’s why this film should be shown.

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