Art Vs The Artist The room is silent. The only noise that can be heard are the soft inhales and exhales coming from the audience. Dazzling lights illuminate the stage. The spotlight is on Nate Parker. The writer and director of the period drama, The Birth of a Nation. That night, Nate Parker was awarded the grand jury prize and the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival. As a black man in America, he defied the odds by attaining a prestige award that most only dream of. The crowd roared with excitement as Parker stood on stage with his unblemished prize. Months before its nation wide release, The Birth of a Nation was already getting Oscar buzz and was being praised by dozens of critics across the country as one of the best films …show more content…
And in distant, but similar ways, The Birth of a Nation reflects the harsh realities in todays America. Though the film was not as historically accurate as many might have wanted it to be. The film is still able to capture the atrocities and inhuman conditions that inhabited our country at one point. And if there is an argument that Parkers skin color has nothing to do with why The Birth of a Nation failed, and that his color is a mere coincidence. Parker hasn’t been the only person of color who has been berated. Comedian Bill Cosby also endured a sexual assault case and has been condemned by the public ever since. He 's been hit with a virtual tsunami of public scorn and outrage over his abuse of women, while Allen has more or less given a free pass – even though his misconduct is equally, if not more, disturbing (Daily Kaos). Maybe America has been hit with too many reminders of the wickedness we partook in. Maybe the fear of the Black Live Matter movement caused promotion of The Birth of a Nation to be minimal. Maybe a rape allegation was all the critics needed to dismiss another slave movie. Or maybe, justice for Sharon Loafer 's sister is finally being
The film Jindabyne, is a story about death, marriage, and race in an Australian town in New South Wales called Jindabyne. In the film, four men go fishing, and one of them discovers the dead body of a young indigenous girl. Instead of reporting what they found to the police immediately, they decide to stay and continue fishing. They decide that there is nothing they could do for her, so they tie her legs to a tree and continue with their fishing, reporting the death only when they return home. After they are done with their weekend of fishing and report the incident, conflict starts, as the men are criticized for not respecting the dead. Through the story of the town’s reaction to the four fishermen’s response to the dead girl, the movie shows Australia to be fragmented and divided over white-indigenous relations.
Toni Morrison and bell hooks share the same views on how white America envisions blacks. In bell hooks' essays " Seduction and Betrayal" and " Sorrowful Black Death is Not a Hot Ticket" she focuses in on the portrayal of African Americans on the big screen. In "Seduction and Betrayal" hooks uses Spike Lee's Crooklyn to demonstrate how invaluable the life of a black person is. In " Sorrowful Black Death Is Not a Hot Ticket" she claims the Bodyguard and The Crying Game illustrate the notion that blacks, especially black females, are inferior to whites. In Toni Morrison's introduction to Birth of a Nation'hood , she suggests these same views by looking at the O.J. Simpson case. Through the use of these movies and courtcases, hooks and Morrison suggest that blacks are viewed as worthless, violent criminals, who are subordinate to the white race.
This demonstrates to us that no matter how much your legal or moral laws are violated, what matters is how you as an individual react to the situation, justly or unjustly. This movie is centered around the notion that if you are a person of ethnic background, that alone is reason for others to forsake your rights, although in the long run justice will prevail
Richard Wright’s novel Native Son and Oliver Stone’s film Natural Born Killers are works that focus on the act of murder. Native Son deals with the large impact that race has on the way society sees both white and black communities. Natural Born Killers shows how one’s past and the media one is exposed to can affect ones view of violence. Throughout both the novel and film killing becomes natural to the characters due to the way society has conditioned them.
W. Griffith uses Ben Cameron to show that white men are natural leaders, and that they should posses power and control over everyone else. He uses Silas Lynch to show the consequences of giving power to an African American man, and to show that white people and black people should not miscegenate. In Roger Ebert’s insightful review of the film, he says that “As slavery is the great sin of America, so The Birth of a Nation is Griffith’s sin, for which he tried to atone all the rest of his life”. But the racism in the film is completely unforgivable, and it should not be ignored simply because it displayed some innovative film techniques. The Birth of a Nation is an embarrassment to American cinema, history, and
Released in 1915, Birth of a Nation became America’s first full length film. The three hour silent movie reflected on two families, one from the south and one in the north, ...
On March 3, 1915 the movie The Birth of a Nation was released at the Liberty Theatre in New York City. This film was financed, filmed, and released by the Epoch Producing Corporation of D.W. Griffith and Harry T. Aitken. It was one of the first films to ever use deep-focus shots, night photography, and to be explicitly controversial with the derogatory view of blacks.
In the movie Birth of a Nation, the first half of the story is based off the Civil War, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The movie is divided into two parts, Pre-Civil War America and Reconstruction. After covering the Civil War, the story starts to introduce the Southern Camerons and Northern Stonemans. Birth of a Nation is told from the perspectives of these two families. The rise of the Ku Klux Klan, and Reconstruction is introduced in the second half. In the second half of the movie, racism becomes more apparent.
The most important is a film that is consistent , that is like a spiral that lead the viewer to the unique and specific center that is related. Citizen Kane is one of the best films achieved in the history of cinema. But not only that characterizes this masterpiece, as it is also the riskiest film is conceived within a film , the film that broke with the classical language and inaugurated modernity in film communication. Today you can see still shots that mimic those made by the great Filmmaker Orson Welles and even do it as a tribute , but as something that comes from deep within the story itself that account since Citizen Kane is a classic film modern cinema.
Being one of the few black students to attend Tisch School of the Arts, the aspiring filmmaker’s first year at New York University was a particularly difficult one. Lee’s experiences, race, and upbringing have all led him to create controversial films to provide audiences with an insight into racial issues. Spike Lee’s first student production, The Answer, was a short ten minute film which told of a young black screenwriter who rewrote D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. The film was not well accepted among the faculty at New York University, stating Lee had not yet mastered “film grammar.” Lee went on to believe the faculty took offense to his criticisms towards the respected director’s stereotypical portrayals of black characters (1).
The movie I decided to analyze for this course was American History X (1998), which stars Edward Norton. Though this movie isn’t widely known, it is one of the more interesting movies I have seen. It’s probably one of the best films that depict the Neo Nazi plague on American culture. The film takes place from the mid to late 1990’s during the Internet boom, and touches on subjects from affirmative action to Rodney King. One of the highlights of this movie that really relates to one of the key aspects of this course is the deterrence of capital punishment. Edward Norton’s portrayal as the grief stricken older brother who turns to racist ideologies and violence to cope with his fathers death, completely disregards the consequences of his actions as he brutally murders someone in front of his family for trying to steal his car. The unstable mentality that he developed after his father’s death really goes hand-to-hand specifically with Isaac Ehrlich’s study of capital punishment and deterrence. Although this movie is entirely fictional, a lot of the central themes (racism, crime punishment, gang pervasiveness, and one’s own vulnerability) are accurate representations of the very problems that essentially afflict us as a society.
In the film, “The Men who Built America,” the industrialists: Vanderbilt, Morgan, Edison, Rockefeller, and Tesla all used industrialism in order to generate their fortunes and to “build America.” Each industrialist came up with plans and ideas that would allow/help them to dominate their competitors and to benefit their companies to the fullest. Cornelius Vanderbilt was interested in becoming apart of the railroad business, he was aware that the growth in the future would not be by water but by way of rail. He was interested in railroad transportation and he knew that he wanted to take over Rockefeller’s company. The two industrialists met up and they both wanted to make a deal, the oil business was beginning to expand and he decides to shut the deal with Rockefeller and move
The purpose of the review assignment for the movie “The Great Debaters” was to allow students to learn how to discuss a point intelligently. When research and facts are presented calmly and logically, it is more easily understood. Changing another person’s opinion on an idea is more likely to happen when there is no conflict or disagreement. The instructor wanted the students to view the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive behavior.
In the modern day era, we find in society a ubiquitous usage of technology that seems to be never ending and forever growing. Included with this notion, the broad subject of surveillance is of course included. Contemporary surveillance, or more specifically technological surveillance, has been described as ambiguous; meaning that it is often misunderstood or open to different interpretations. The representation of surveillance within popular culture has played an impacting role on how we as a society perceive it and this raises certain questions that may reflect back on to society. The 1998 film Enemy Of The State directed by Tony Scott, Starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman and Jon Voight is considered to be a ‘spy-thriller’ blockbuster. Its central themes explore a range of surveillance techniques and equipment and also provides some insights, no matter how realistic or unrealistic they may be, into the real life security organisation; The National Security Agency (NSA). Using this film as an example and analysing how these themes are represented will hopefully allow us to key these ideas back to modern surveillance theories and practices.
In many parts of America, people would find it impossible to believe that this film is depicting real events happening in 2008. Yet in other parts, where the under-current of racism is palpable even if not manifested as overtly as at Charleston High in Mississippi, minorities will be able to relate to their own experiences of being made to feel different and unwelcome in many subtle ways every single day. It was shocking to find out this was still happening in this day and age, I rarely witness to any kind of cruelty or racism so to find out that this was a normal thing in Charleston, Mississippi. This was appalling to say the least. Teens are dealing with issues that a teen shouldn’t even be bothered to deal with. The white student were put in a situation where they either defy their parents and do what’s right, or go along with what they said and fall in the line of ignorance. The movie really showed just who was willing to fight for what’s right and who were too scared to break questionable traditions.