Despite its blatant racism, 'Nation' still needs to be seen
The first and only time I watched D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" in its entirety, I was a college student enrolled in a class on the African-American image in film. Though I'd heard of Griffith and what is widely acknowledged as his masterpiece, I knew nothing about the film when the black-and-white images began flickering across the screen in our small classroom.
Three hours later, we all sat slack-jawed, unable to even make eye contact with one another. It was the only occasion during my four years of college when I can recall a roomful of know-it-all students being rendered completely silent. That the 1915 film, based primarily on Thomas Dixon's play, "The Clansman," is considered one of cinema's groundbreaking achievements (it's regarded as the first epic narrative and a pioneering work in technical structure and editing) was totally lost on us. What resonated was its virulent racism. Blacks (actually played by white actors in blackface) are depicted as dumb and dangerous brutes, while the Ku Klux Klan is hailed as a group of gallant heroes protecting the virtue of white womanhood and uplifting the South after its defeat in the Civil War.
In the past 20 years, I've watched bits and pieces of "The Birth of a Nation," and my initial revulsion always gets the better of me. Still, even though it's unlikely I'll ever sit through this film again, I do not believe it should be consigned to some dusty closet, never to be shown in public again.
Last week, a Los Angeles theater owner canceled a planned screening of "The Birth of a Nation" after civil rights groups promised protests outside the venue. In launching a series on cinema's most important silent movies, Charlie Lustman, who runs the Silent Movie Theatre, described the film as "the biggest and most cinematic gem in history." Still, he intended to show a disclaimer denouncing the film's overtly racist content.
That wasn't good enough for Los Angeles NAACP president Geraldine Washington, who maintained the film possesses "no positive value whatsoever" and charged its screening would "run the risk of creating unrest and hate crimes." When the film opened in 1915, it all but served as a Klan recruitment tool, attracting more than 25,000 marchers to celebrate the movie's Atlanta premiere. The NAACP blamed the film, which President Woodrow Wilson allegedly compared to "writing history with lightning," for inciting racial violence.
I'm not wholly convinced that a screening today of "The Birth of a Nation" would fuel racial violence, if only because it's hard to believe that bigots or separatists possess the required attention span for a three-hour black-and-white silent film. Yet, the movie remains deeply divisive. In 1999, the Directors Guild of America removed Griffith as the namesake of their prestigious annual award, citing the desire to "create a new ultimate honor for film directors that better reflects the sensibilities of our society at this time in our national history." And in 1995, Turner Classic Movies canceled a planned airing because of what the cable channel's spokesman called "heightened racial tensions" following O.J. Simpson's acquittal on murder charges.
If a film, especially one made nearly 90 years ago, can send this nation into racist convulsions, then we're in a lot more trouble than we think. Besides, with the film so rarely screened (though it is available on DVD), how many people have actually seen it?
To relegate Griffith's film to the shadows is to ignore part of our history. "The Birth of a Nation" was made 50 years after the end of the Civil War, and it clearly reflected not only Griffith's ideas -- he was, after all, a white Southerner of his times -- but a fractured country in the unyielding grasp of open racial hostility. (In 1916, Griffith released "Intolerance," seen by some as an apology for his earlier epic.)
"The Birth of a Nation" represents a moment in time, albeit one many may now find shameful. Much like Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 Nazi propaganda documentary "Triumph of the Will," an equally acclaimed, equally troubling film, "The Birth of a Nation" is a painful totem to our own intolerance and to how such ill feelings still vex us today.
More important, banning "The Birth of a Nation" short-circuits vital discussions about how the film galvanized African-Americans to become involved in filmmaking. Black film pioneer Oscar Micheaux, most notably, created "Within Our Gates" in 1920 as a pointed response to the racism of Griffith's masterwork.
It also discards any chance to discuss early 20th-century representations of African-Americans in popular culture and to assess what progress has been made -- yes, we now have Denzel Washington as the hero in "The Manchurian Candidate," but how do we rectify the stereotypical buffoonery of "Soul Plane" or the modern-day minstrel act of the Fox TV show "Method and Red"? (And why aren't people protesting those current images, instead of a near 90-year-old film few have seen?)
Let younger generations see exactly what "The Birth of a Nation" is, if only to prove that as a nation we aren't so fragile that a film can again shatter us. Perhaps it can provoke those thoughtful conversations we so desperately need about where this nation has been, and where it still must go.
Renee Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column runs on Tuesdays. She can be reached at graham@globe.com. 
