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The impact of prejudice and discrimination
The impact of prejudice and discrimination
The impact of prejudice and discrimination
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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.
Director D.W. Griffith used the creation of this movie to experiment with various new methods, bringing the movie to life by using both by using new, complex camera angles and editing techniques. [2]
The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...
...e. Cinema can create new or old perceptions of reality through their depictions of ideas or images. Martyrs of the Alamo is a film that created a new perception of nationalism during a period where there were threats against the United States. D.W. Griffin’s productions of the film perpetuated racial images of Mexicans in order to enhance his central theme. Through out the film we see these racializations through the contrast in characters and how different scenes were created to evoke emotions needed to instill this need to belong.
This week’s readings of the reviews of Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’ and Marilyn Fabe’s “Political Cinema: Spike Lee’s ‘Do the Right Thing’, raised a number of questions regarding not only the moral issues the film addresses but also the intention of the artist. This dialectical opposition, which Pamela Reynolds suggests “challenges the audience to choose” (Reynolds, p.138) between the narrativized hostility shown between that of the hero and villain. More specifically Lee’s portrayal of violence vs passive opposition. This can be perceived through Lee’s technical employment of contradictory quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcom X at the conclusion of the film, which not only highlights this concern but also deluges further into themes of political opposition. Marylin Fabe discusses this where she states that Spike Lee’s film carries a “disturbing political message” (Fabe, p.191). Arguably, ‘Do the Right Thing’ acmes themes of racism (Black vs White); with underlining motifs of imperialism (colonisers’ vs colonised), psychoanalytic (power vs powerlessness) and even Marxist theory (ownership vs public space/consumption), with Clarence Page stating that Lee provides a “public service… (not trying) to provide all the answers, but raising the questions.” (Reid, P.144). In saying this we explore this concept of the role of the artist, with Georgopulos stating that the role of the artist is to create a consciousness within the audience by revealing a fraught set of truths about the human condition. Thusly, the reactions and responses to the films reveal Lee to be successful in conveying his intentions, which back in its zenith, explored this issue of racism in a way that had rarely been seen, and presented the ways in which t...
“Their struggle has been a struggle that every black person went through, one that grew from the seeds of slavery and took hold in a post-civil war America, when blacks gained their freedom (Shadow Boxing - The Journey of the African-American Boxer (Great Documentary), 2012).” It was interesting to learn from the movie that “reconstruction is a defining moment in African-American history in which blacks gained political rights in the south. With these rights, whites saw the blacks gain social equality. Fearing what they saw, whites brought a quick end to reconstruction. (Shadow Boxing - The Journey of the African-American Boxer (Great Documentary), 2012)." It would be interesting to interview people from the past to ask them why they think it 's okay to treat African Americans like that. It made me wonder what white people were thinking in the past. It brought tears to my eyes to learn that blacks quickly lost their new found freedom and lynching
In D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation the interactions between black and white characters represent Griffith’s view of an appropriate racial construct in America. His ideological construction is white dominance and black subordination. Characters, such as the southern Cameron’s and their house maid, who interact within these boundaries, are portrayed as decent people. Whereas characters who cross the line of racial oppression; such as Austin Stoneman, Gus and Silas Lynch, are portrayed as bad. Both Lynch and Lydia Brown, the mulatto characters, are cast in a very negative light because they confuse the ideological construct the most. The mixing of races puts blacks and whites on a common ground, which, in Griffith’s view, is a big step in the wrong direction. Griffith portrays how the relationship between blacks and whites can be good only if the color line and positions of dominance and subordination are maintained. Through the mulatto characters he illustrates the danger that blurring the color line poses to American society.
In America slavery was a serious issue that sparked a civil war between two entities that once considered themselves a unified nation. Native Africans were a rare sight for colonizers due to the aesthetic differences between the colonizers and the indigenous tribes of Africa. The indigenous population of Africa had dark pigmented skin, which to European colonizers seemed odd, which led Europeans to see the indigenous population of Africa as primitive, and subservient to their prominent status, and led to the enslavement of the indigenous population of Africa. These slaves were not seen as people, but merely animals, they were seen as property. The Movie Glory depicts slaves during the civil war as being primitive, and uncivilized, it also depicts the ethnocentric bias towards slaves, even among Northerners in the form of fear, and repulsion, slaves were seen merely as animals, but Glory depicts the idea of progress among slaves and their assimilation and acceptance by others, Glory depicts the struggles any society endures in order to become civilized through the depiction of the 54th colored regime’s training and struggles, to represent the struggles societies endure in their progress and journey to becoming civilized.
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).
Before we get into the movie specifically, we should first talk about representation and how race is represented in the media in general. Representation is defined as the assigning of meaning through language and in culture. (CITE) Representation isn't reality, but rather a mere construction of reality and the meaning behind it. (CITE) Through representation we are able to shape how people are seen by others. Race is an aspect of people which is often represented in the media in different ways. Race itself is not a category of nature, but rather...
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
The film “The Birth of a Nation”1915 by D.W. Griffith, acclaimed to be one of the most innovative films in American history of cinema ,it was a huge commercial success, and yet it states multiple controversial themes. The groundbreaking use of elements of mise-en-scene, cinematography and editing in the scene “Riot in the Master’s Hall” emphasize on key ideas of the film such as the restoration of order, the fear of interracial marriage, and the idea that the empowerment of African Americans threatens white identities. Mise-en-scene is a fundamental source when it comes to understanding a character.
Many times in Hollywood, a movie that intends to portray a novel can leave out key scenes that alter the novel’s message. Leaving out scenes from the novel is mainly do to time limits, however doing so can distort the author’s true purpose of the story. In history, Movies were directed to intentionally leave out scenes that could alter the public’s opinion. This frequently let novel 's main points be swept under the rug. There were times of this at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, where white Americans were the only ones making movies. Not many African Americans had the opportunity to be involved in the process of major productions. Because racism in To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, is underplayed in the film, it shows
African-Americans were often made out to be out of control and dangerous to white women. For instance, the 1915 film Birth of a Nation made African-Americans look like criminals. In one scene,
D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation was one of the most controversial films of the 20th century. Praised by some and resented by others, it was one of the most popular films around the world for its time because of its chaotic effect on the general public. Set in the Civil War era, Birth of a Nation glorifies the Ku Klux Klan while portraying African Americans as reprobates whom sexually coerce white women. Many historians argue that the racist epic is responsible for the second Ku Klux Klan revival as well as a considerable amount of anti-black sentiment. While D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation glorified the Ku Klux Klan and demonized African Americans, it actually helped African Americans gain support for equality.
In the Following essay I will explore and develop an analysis of how the movie Twelve Years A Slave produces knowledge about the racial discourse. To support my points, I will use “The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures” written by Henrietta Lidchi, a Princeton University text “Introduction: Development and the Anthropology of Modernity” and “Can the Subaltern Speak?” by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.