McEwan - The Birth of a Nation

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The Birth of a Nation

Paul McEwan

Paul McEwan 2015

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Images from The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith, 1915), David W. Griffith Corporation/Epoch Producing Corporation

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ISBN 9781844576579

Acknowledgments

This book would not exist in its present form without the extensive feedback of my students at Muhlenberg College, who have tolerated my over-interest in the film for a number of years, and whose thoughtfulness has repeatedly shaped my ideas and the books content. I am grateful to my Film History class of 2014, who read the manuscript, and particularly indebted to Katrina Faust and Francesca Fillis, who were patient and thorough proofreaders. I am also thankful to my colleague Roberta Meek for useful advice about the books design and perspective, and to Philippa Hudson for making innumerable improvements to the text. Sophie Contento from BFI/Palgrave was helpful from the proposal stage to final edits. Clearance for image rights was graciously supported by the Daniel J. and Carol Shiner Wilson Grant for the Completion of Scholarly Projects at Muhlenberg College.

Most of this book was written while on a research sabbatical from Muhlenberg in the fall of 2013, and I owe much to my colleagues, who have helped me carve out a place for writing and research amidst the daily pressures of working in a vibrant liberal arts college. My wife Eileen was my first editor and my sounding board. She and my children Grace and Max are a constant source of inspiration, as is my sister Nichola, a teacher and a crusader, to whom this book is dedicated.

Introduction: True as That Blade

In an introduction to The Birth of a Nation that was shot for the films re-release in 1930, D. W. Griffith sits for an awkward staged interview with the actor Walter Huston, who had recently starred in Griffiths Abraham Lincoln (1930). Huston gives Griffith a Confederate battle sword as a gift, and they discuss Griffiths most famous film. Huston asks Griffith if The Birth of a Nation is true, and Griffith initially replies true as that blade. Upon reflection, though, he softens a bit and says, Yes, I think its true but as Pontius Pilate said, Truth? What is the truth?

This is perhaps Griffiths most revealing moment in the history of his responses to The Birth of a Nation, and the only surviving public comment in which he expresses the slightest doubt that his film is anything less than the absolute historical truth. In 1915, he had written that it was based upon truth in every vital detail, a somewhat bizarre claim given that it is a work of historical fiction in which most of the primary characters are either made up or only loosely based on real figures. The Birth of a Nation had been adapted from a novel by Thomas Dixon, first published in 1905, and a subsequent stage play.

To modern viewers, The Birth of a Nation is sometimes incomprehensible. We expect that films created in the past will include stereotypical images of minorities, but a film in which the Ku Klux Klan are the heroes becomes more shocking with every passing decade. Many first-time viewers, especially younger ones, have trouble believing that such a film was ever made, let alone that it was incredibly popular.

Assessing the historical legacy of The Birth of a Nation requires grappling with a complex calculus of racism and art, a mixture that has created arguments and confounded viewers for the past century. The Birth of a Nation is, in the simplest terms, one of our cultures greatest artistic achievements and one of its most racist artefacts. Our temptation has long been to try to combine these two ideas by arithmetic in an attempt to determine whether the net result is positive or negative, or whether one simply cancels out the other. For much of its history, the impossibility of reconciling these two conflicting ideals has led otherwise well-intentioned people to simply ignore the racism, to try to set it aside so that they can consider the film as art unencumbered.