"THE BIRTH OF A NATION": RACISM INDEX
Lloyd Fonvielle
The first might be described as environmental racism, reflecting the
conventional racism of the dominant culture of early 20th-Century
America. This centered on the idea that blacks were intellectually
inferior to whites, unfitted for social or political equality, and best
treated with a kind of benign paternalism.
In 1915 one might hold such views almost unconsciously, so imbedded were
they in the thinking of the time, and one might find "scientific"
explanations for the inferiority of blacks even in the pages of
authoritative reference works like the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Other viewpoints were available, however -- other public voices which
insisted that blacks were fully the equals of whites and deserved to
participate fully in American democracy and American society. The
attitude of the dominant culture did not go unchallenged, and so
involved a measure of choice, of moral responsibility. Moreover, the
dominant culture benefited psychologically and financially from
maintaining blacks as a permanent underclass and source of cheap labor,
so its view of their inherent inferiority incorporated an element of
self-serving denial.
In short, there was very little about environmental racism which could
be considered morally neutral or benign, even though it could be
entertained by people who were in other respects decent and good-hearted.
The second kind of racism in "The Birth Of A Nation" has a darker
undertone. While it derives from the assumptions of environmental
racism it moves into a frankly pathological realm. It held that blacks
were not just intellectually inferior but animalistic, distinctly
subhuman, and would, if ungoverned by strict regimentation on the part
of whites, revert to bestial behavior, especially with regard to
sexuality, and particularly with regard to sexual aggression by black
males against white females.
The social history of race relations in America provided almost no
evidence to support this view -- quite the contrary. Historically
speaking, sexual aggression and sexual abuse between the races resided
almost exclusively in the sexual predation of white males directed
against black females within the Southern plantation system. This was
the unspoken scandal of ante-bellum society in the South, as Mary
Chestnut confessed ruefully in the original unexpurgated version of her
famous diary.
The fictive threat to white womanhood from black males had origins
within the psyches of white males -- under threat in 1915 from social
causes inherent in a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing America.
Males increasingly worked for and at the pleasure of other men far more
powerful than themselves, and women had access to incomes from office
and factory work independent of male domestic partners.
The male insecurity that resulted was augmented by cultural insecurity
as waves of immigrants began to change the face of America, importing
"foreign" mores, customs, values and even languages that competed with
those of the dominant culture.
In this atmosphere, the casual environmental racism of the dominant
white culture took a more intense and programmatic form -- it mutated
into a defiant celebration of the "Aryan race", an aggressive insistence
on its superiority, and an essentially pathological fear of its
dilution, or even overthrow, by lesser races, especially the animalistic
"Negro" race.
The great success of Thomas Dixon's potboiler fiction, which openly
promoted this new, more self-conscious and aggressive racism, testifies
to its wide cultural appeal at the beginning of the 20th Century. In
his skewed and irresponsibly manipulated version of the historical facts
of Reconstruction, Dixon was presenting a prophecy of what might happen
to white culture if "lesser" races ever again got the upper hand. He
was quite clear about this. His introduction to "The Clansman", the
novel on which "The Birth Of A Nation" was partly based, described
Reconstruction as one of the most important episodes, not in the history
of America, but in the history of the Aryan race.
Thinking of the history of America as the history of the triumph of the
Aryan race was appealing to many in early 20th-Century America -- it
bolstered the manhood of white males threatened by new female power and
new cultural influences. It was psychologically seductive.
One of the men it seduced was D. W. Griffith. It was an ironic tragedy,
since Griffith was himself, by all accounts, a benign sort of racist in
his dealings with individual blacks -- "a bigot trying to be fair", as
James Agee described him -- and also a man deeply sympathetic, in his
way and within his limitations, to the emerging position of the "modern
woman". One can only conclude that the seduction took place on some
level beneath the conscious -- as it must have, surely, to some degree,
for American society as a whole.
I'm not sure the process can ever be wholly understood, but from a
distance it can at least be described, and I think there's some value in
that. In future posts I'll offer some examples of how the two kinds of
racism described above play out in "The Birth Of A Nation".
Mar de Cortes Baja
www.mardecortesbaja.com <http://www.mardecortesbaja.com/blog>
Reel...@aol.com
In his current attempt to whip up the old hatred against D. W.
Griffith over "The Birth of a Nation," Lloyd Fonvielle completely
misrepresents as he has in numerous previous posts the position of the
esteemed writer and critic, James Agee, with respect to the film's
director. Fonvielle quotes Agee as having described Griffith as "a
bigot trying to be fair." In actuality, what Agee said about Griffith
and "The Birth" is the following which comes from his 1948 tribute to
DWG in "The Nation" and is reprinted in "Agee on Film:"
"Today, 'The Birth of a Nation' is boycotted or shown piecemeal;
too many more or less well-meaning people still accuse Griffith of
having made it an anti-Negro movie. At best, this is nonsense, and at
worst, it is vicious nonsense. Even if it were an anti-Negro movie, a
work of such quality should be shown, and shown whole. But the
accusation is unjust. Griffith went to almost preposterous lengths to
be fair to the Negroes as he understood them, and he understood them
as a good type of Southerner does. I don't entirely agree with him;
nor can I be sure that the film wouldn't cause trouble and
misunderstanding, especially as advertised and exacerbated by
contemporary abolitionists; but Griffith's absolute desire to be fair,
and understandable, is written all over the picture; so are degrees of
understanding, honesty, and compassion far beyond the capacity of his
accusers. So, of course, are the salient facts of the so-called
Reconstruction years."
Now maybe Fonvielle will try to resort to some sort of verbal
gymnastics to argue that what Agee calls "a good type of Southerner"
was meant to be a synonym for "bigot." But it's clear that Agee
intended no irony in his phraseology and, while he does not anywhere
in this paragraph use the actual term of "bigot," if anyone is being
characterized by Agee as a bigot in so many words in this passage, it
is Griffith's accusers, those who have long tried to ban the film and,
failing that, to demonize and utterly misrepresent its director.
Whether Fonvielle is deliberately and wilfully misstating Agee's
position in order to bolster his own position, or, more likely, is
simply being careless is ultimately beside the point. The fact is
that Fonvielle is attributing to Agee a view which was in total
opposition to the position the writer actually maintained.
Unfortunately, this distortion by Fonvielle seems typical of his
approach to film history in general. Never having apparently
undertaken any serious, independent research of his own into early
film history, never, unless I am greatly mistaken, bothered to
interview the survivors of this era when they were alive, never giving
any indication that he has even read widely in a subject about which
he tries to represent himself as an expert, all he has to offer are
his opinions, which, like his current screed against "The Birth," are,
more often than not, highly conventional and utterly unoriginal. At
the same time, he persists in posturing himself as a champion of the
artist against the crushing forces of commercialism. But when an
artist like D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin or Abel Gance (he has in
the past e-mailed me tirades against Gance) boldly struck out on his
own as an independent, creative artist in the face of often immense
opposition from the cinema's industrial establishment, instead of
sympathizing with him, Fonvielle tends to condemn the artist for not
conforming to his particular vision of the world. In other words,
Fonvielle's claim to be for the artist is nothing more than a
pretentious pose on his part, particularly when one is familiar with
the titanic, often tragic struggles that visionaries like Griffith,
Chaplin and Gance were forced to wage in order to achieve their
masterpieces. That an artist has a right to forge his own vision on
film, irrespective of whether it or not it adheres to the kind of
timid centrism people like Fonvielle espouse, is something he simply
does not recognize.
Lloyd Fonvielle would not be worthy of a moment's attention were it
not for the fact that conformists like him have succeeded in
undermining the reputation of artists like Griffith and Gance. They
have been less successful with Chaplin, although it is not for lack of
trying. Fonvielle is, like Richard Schickel, a typical example of the
uncreative, ultimately destructive role played by political centrists
with respect to film history, as indeed American life in general, in
recent decades. Ever since the Reagan era when the hard right
captured the government and most of the media while, in a sort of
trade-off, the left opposition became dominated by its most sectarian
faction, the so-called "politically correct," the role of the center
has not been to offer a viable, creative alternative. Rather, the
modern centrist sticks his finger in the wind and adopts whatever
doctrinaire position on either extreme is fashionable or dominant.
Thus, you have Fonvielle running right to vilify Chaplin and the great
artist, Paul Robeson, as little more than Stalinist apologists while
taking from the PC left the anti-Griffith screeds that eventually
caused the center to utterly repudiate him as demonstrated by the
DGA's dropping the Griffith award nearly eight years ago. The ultimate
aim of these exercises in self-righteousness is to undermine the
autonomy of the individual while enforcing a stifling sense of
conformity that aids the corporations and the militarists in their
grip on American society and the world in general.
The issue of racism, which I define as hostility to and/or fear of
different ethnicities, nationalities and cultures, not simply
different skin colors, is a far more complex and extensive problem,
far more sweeping in its reach and destructiveness, than Fonvielle's
reductionist attempt to seemingly scapegoat either Griffith or the
losing side in the Civil War as the source of all the world's racism.
To take an outstanding example from the cinema, there is racism
aplenty in Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky," a great work of
film art, to be sure, but hardly as benevolent and harmless as
Fonvielle claimed in a recent post. Only in this case the targets of
cinematic racism were the Germans and briefly in an opening scene,
Asians. Fonvielle will doubtless argue that racism under certain
circumstances (including "Nevsky") is justified. But once you decide
that some forms of racism are okay, then, in my opinion, you have
utterly compromised the morality of your argument and are only
subscribing to victor's justice. That, alas, is the posture of the
modern centrist, always sticking his finger in the wind to determine
which side is winning before committing himself to a particular
position. It is certainly true of Mr. Fonvielle, who, although he is
now experiencing buyer's remorse, was initially all for Bush's war in
Iraq against those supposedly inferior Arab "ragheads." So, before he
begins labelling a sensitive artist like Griffith a "bigot" or a
"racist," I suggest that Mr. Fonvielle first take a good, long hard
look in his own mirror.
While I doubt that my strong objection to Mr. Fonvielle's line of
argument, which he is now pursuing with zeal against DWG and "The
Birth," will have any effect on him--he seems to be totally
uninterested in views that dissent from his preconceptions--I did at
least want to go on record here in pointing out that Agee, far from
calling Griffith a bigot of any kind, on the contrary vigorously
defended him from his highly intolerant, self-righteous detractors,
censorious individuals who can I think indeed be characterized as
bigots, no matter how noble their stated intentions.
William M. Drew
Feuillade
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
Exactly -- but I shouldn't have put quotes around the word.
The rest of your curious response to my post brings in a lot of ad
hominem accusations about my motives, about censorship, the artist's
right to express himself, my feelings about the Iraq war -- none of
which has anything at all to do with my observations about "The Birth Of
A Nation". If you could marshall some specific refutations of those
observations, just a few reasons why you think they're wrong, I'd be
very interested to read them.
For the record, I think that Griffith is the most important artist who
ever worked in film, that he had every right to make "The Birth Of A
Nation", that it should never be suppressed, and that "Intolerance" is
the greatest movie ever made.
Bill Vermillion
Lloyd Fonvielle <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote:
>There are two kinds, or degrees, of racism in "The Birth Of A Nation".
>The first might be described as environmental racism, reflecting the
>conventional racism of the dominant culture of early 20th-Century
>America. This centered on the idea that blacks were intellectually
>inferior to whites, unfitted for social or political equality, and best
>treated with a kind of benign paternalism.
>In 1915 one might hold such views almost unconsciously, so
>imbedded were they in the thinking of the time, and one might
>find "scientific" explanations for the inferiority of blacks
>even in the pages of authoritative reference works like the
>Encyclopedia Britannica.
In that era - and up until the mid-30s - it seemed to be 'common
knowlege' that non-whites were inferior and treated as such.
It was not just the African-Americans, but the native Indians,
the Chinese brought to the US for the contstruction of the
railroads, and in other parts of the world the almost total
anihilation of native races.
And in that same time frame it seemed to be thought that those
who were impaired in someway were inferior, and laws were passed
to prevent some of them from marrying each other to prevent
the 'problems' from being passed on to future generations.
It seems that it was only until a certain dictator in Europe
promoting ethnic cleansing were many of these ideas found to be
wrong.
You can't just items from the past by the standards of today,
unless you look at the beliefs of that time and take them into
account.
'common knowledge' has often been proven to be very wrong.
Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
Lloyd Fonvielle
> In that era - and up until the mid-30s - it seemed to be 'common
> knowlege' that non-whites were inferior and treated as such.
> It was not just the African-Americans, but the native Indians,
> the Chinese brought to the US for the contstruction of the
> railroads, and in other parts of the world the almost total
> anihilation of native races.
>
> And in that same time frame it seemed to be thought that those
> who were impaired in someway were inferior, and laws were passed
> to prevent some of them from marrying each other to prevent
> the 'problems' from being passed on to future generations.
>
> It seems that it was only until a certain dictator in Europe
> promoting ethnic cleansing were many of these ideas found to be
> wrong.
>
> You can't just items from the past by the standards of today,
> unless you look at the beliefs of that time and take them into
> account.
>
> 'common knowledge' has often been proven to be very wrong.
I agree -- and that's why I try to draw a distinction between what I
call "environmental racism", common beliefs about race that people could
hold almost unconsciously, and the more virulent strain, which carried
such beliefs to pathological extremes.
A good and delightfully ironic example of the distinction can be found
in "Huckleberry Finn", where Huck accepts without question the
environmental racism of his time, uses the "n" word freely and believes
he will go to hell if he helps Jim escape to freedom. But this casual
racism can't overcome his actual knowledge of Jim as a person -- so he
decides to help him escape and accepts the fact that he will go to hell
for it.
Twain, as an artist, could make this leap, Griffith could not, because
his horror at the idea of miscegenation made him see any empowering
freedom for blacks as the first step towards racial mixing. This, I
think, was irrational to the point of being pathological -- something
beyond the casual environmental racism that is also reflected in "The
Birth Of A Nation".
Mar de Cortes Baja
www.mardecortesbaja.com <http://www.mardecortesbaja.com/blog>
Bill Vermillion
And the thoughts of 'racial mixing' continued in the United States
far longer than the rest of the world. And would you not
consider a director of a film and 'artist' in at least some
respects.
I was a kid when WWII ended. Many servicemen coming home in the
next few years with Japanese brides were discriminated against,
and it took years before this went away. The first children
of these families were also somewhat discriminated against in
schools.
In 1989 Shintaro Ishihara [who is described as a nationallist and a
racist ] and ?? Morita [of Sony] co-authored a book/writing
collection called "A Japan Who Can Say No" [never published in the
US but read into the library of congress and then transcriptions of
that appeared on Usenet] had a lot to say.
When the US Government stopped the sale of Fairchild Semiconductor
to a Japanese entity, and then turned around and sold it
to a French company [was it Schlumberger] said the US
was prejudiced against the 'yellow' race.
Only time will tell when the discrimination, be it racial or
religious will end.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> In article <bkRSh.69187$mJ1....@newsfe22.lga>,
> Lloyd Fonvielle <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote:
>>Twain, as an artist, could make this leap, Griffith could not . . .
>
> And the thoughts of 'racial mixing' continued in the United States
> far longer than the rest of the world. And would you not
> consider a director of a film and 'artist' in at least some
> respects.
In all respects. Griffith was a very great artist, fully the equal of
Twain in many respects -- greater in some respects. I just meant that
on the issue of race, Griffith "as an artist" could not overcome his
limitations in this department. His art, and his heart, failed him in
this film, brilliant as it is in many ways. Twain's, in "Huckleberry
Finn", did not. It's useful to look at "Huckleberry Finn" in contrast
to "The Birth Of A Nation". Twain's book incorporates, on its surface,
just as much environmental racism as Griffith's film. It uses the "n"
word hundreds of times, whereas Griffith only uses it a couple of times
-- and people have wanted to ban "Huckleberry Finn" for this reason,
exactly as they wanted to ban "The Birth Of A Nation". But Twain was
able to see blacks as fully human and Griffith was not. The good blacks
in Griffith's film are good because they faithfully serve whites in a
subordinate position, the bad blacks are bad because they want to be the
equals of whites, which leads invariably to a desire to mate with them.
There are no exceptions whatsoever to this rule -- no notion that a
black character might have some existential reality apart from his
relationship to white people. This represents a failure of art as well
as of humane sympathy.
Eric Stott
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
news:vNTSh.20796$YJ4....@newsfe23.lga...
> Griffith was a very great artist, fully the equal of Twain in many
> respects -- greater in some respects.
I can see that. The worst Griffith film I've seen (Dream Street - I haven't
seen anything like The Idol Dancer yet) is merely bad- really more silly
than awful. At his very worst Twain produced some AWFUL work- bad to the
point of being unreadable. There is nothing worse than failed humor- The
American Claimant is a good example but he could be MUCH worse. Of course
the fact he had to write constantly to maintain his extravegant lifestyle is
to blame.
Stott
Bob Lipton
'His limitation' being the points you see him as disagreeing with your
current position. Ah, if he only had your brilliance and creativity,
why, he might have changed the movies as we know them!
Bob
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
>> In all respects. Griffith was a very great artist, fully the equal of
>> Twain in many respects -- greater in some respects. I just meant that
>> on the issue of race, Griffith "as an artist" could not overcome his
>> limitations in this department. His art, and his heart, failed him in
>> this film, brilliant as it is in many ways. Twain's, in "Huckleberry
>> Finn", did not. It's useful to look at "Huckleberry Finn" in contrast
>> to "The Birth Of A Nation". Twain's book incorporates, on its
>> surface, just as much environmental racism as Griffith's film. It
>> uses the "n" word hundreds of times, whereas Griffith only uses it a
>> couple of times -- and people have wanted to ban "Huckleberry Finn"
>> for this reason, exactly as they wanted to ban "The Birth Of A
>> Nation". But Twain was able to see blacks as fully human and Griffith
>> was not. The good blacks in Griffith's film are good because they
>> faithfully serve whites in a subordinate position, the bad blacks are
>> bad because they want to be the equals of whites, which leads
>> invariably to a desire to mate with them. There are no exceptions
>> whatsoever to this rule -- no notion that a black character might have
>> some existential reality apart from his relationship to white people.
>> This represents a failure of art as well as of humane sympathy.
>
> 'His limitation' being the points you see him as disagreeing with your
> current position.
Yes -- and my "current position" is that blacks are fully human, that
they deserve full social and political equality with whites, that
there's nothing wrong with interracial marriage, and that Aryans have no
"birthright" which entitles them to feel superior to or to dominate
other people.
Griffith disagreed, passionately, with all those propositions. I can't
believe that you or anybody else today in his right mind agrees with them.
Lloyd Fonvielle
Agee's assessment of Griffith's genius, and its limitations, is acute
and still convincing. He was indeed one of the greatest artists America
ever produced. Hemingway once said that all subsequent American
literture derives from one book -- "Huckleberry Finn". There's a lot of
truth in that, and I think one could make an equal case for the
proposition that all subsequent American cinema derives from one film --
"Intolerance". Both works are flawed but both contain something
essential and eternally resonant.
Bob Lipton
II didn't say I disagreed with them. I said that his disagreement with
you, the peak and perfection of the human being, is his weakness.
Bob
Bob Lipton
Also sinc you are the audience he made the film for.
Bob
Reel...@aol.com
With all due respect I find to this apparent dichotomy between Mark
Twain and D. W. Griffith to be both false and misleading. Whether
intended by Mr. Fonvielle or not, it ends up implying that Twain, as a
thoroughly tolerant, enlightened artist, was part of an intellectually
superior art to the lowly, bastard art of the "flickers," which, in
its swaddling days, depended on narrow-minded racists, such as he
represents Griffith to have been, for its sustenance. From the
standpoint of artistic maturity and development, comparing
"Huckleberry Finn," the creation of a nearly 50-year-old man who had
been writing for two decades, with "The Birth of a Nation," adapted by
a younger man from another medium with the help of the long-forgotten
scenarist, Frank E. Woods, who had as much to do with the narrative as
Griffith, is in itself a dubious analogy at best. Not that "The
Birth" is any less of a masterpiece in its medium as "Huck Finn" is in
the literary realm, but the ways in which the two works evolved wre
very different. Also, the goals were different. Twain was trying to
unmask the social hypocrisy and injustice, including ideas of racial
superiority, that lay beneath the veneer of civilization. Griffith,
on the other hand, was, as he constantly stated, attempting to
dramatize the horrors of war and military occupation in the belief
that exposing a mass audience to the consequences of war would
engender a desire for peace.
However, beyond a comparison of these two classics with very
different themes, Fonvielle is also asserting that Twain was a better
man than Griffith from the standpoint of sensitivity to racial
injustice. I'm afraid a careful comparison of the total record would,
if anything, be far more favorable to Griffith. In the 1870s, Twain
was absolutely virulent in his expression of contempt for the Native
American. The character of the evil half-breed, Injun Joe, in "Tom
Sawyer," published in 1876, the very year that George Armstrong Custer
was preparing a Final Solution for the Indian problem, epitomizes the
Western racist stereotype of the Native American as a murderous,
untrustworthy savage.
In "Roughing It," published in 1872, Twain not only made the racist
attitudes he then held toward American Indians crystal clear, he
extended this racism to include native Africans as well. He called
the Goshute Indians of Utah "the wretchedest type of mankind I have
ever seen," inferior even to the other "races of savages on our
continent." He said that he had to look through the bulky volumes of
Wood's "Uncivilized Races of Men" to "find a savage tribe degraded
enough to take rank with the Goshutes. I find but one people fairly
open to that shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South
Africa." I really have no taste to retype in full his hateful tirade,
which, in many ways, surpasses even Thomas Dixon's most virulent
passages. (And since Twain always had the literary genius that the
pedestrian Dixon surely did not, Twain's diatribe may be all the worse
because more unsettling in its artistic power.) I will only include
snippets in which he calls the Indians "a silent, sneaking,
treacherous-looking race" who were "hungry, always hungry, and yet
never refusing anything that a hog would eat, though often eating what
a hog would decline; hunters, but having no higher ambition than to
kill and eat jackass rabbitts, crickets, and grasshoppers; savages
who, when asked if they have the common Indian belief in a Great
Spirit, show a something which almost amounts to emotion, thinking
whiskey is referred to." He asserted that "The Bushmen and our
Goshutes are manifestly descended from the selfsame gorilla, or
kangaroo, or Norway rat, whichever animal-Adam the Darwinians trace
them to." He concluded that "wherever one finds an Indian tribe he
has only found Goshutes more or less modified by circumstances and
surroundings--but Goshutes, after all. They deserve pity, poor
creatures; and they can have mine--at this distance. Nearer by, they
never get anybody's."
Twain was 36 at the time he wrote this very forceful expression of
the then-prevalent white bigotry toward the Native Americans, a
prejudice which would culminate five years later in Twain's work in
the characterization of Injun Joe and for the nation as a whole that
same year in Custer's fateful rendezvous with destiny in Montana. It
would take more years for Twain to overcome within himself the kind of
narrow-minded racial attitudes expressed in the passage from which I
have quoted to become the humane, tolerant genius who wrote the
greatest American novel, "Huckleberry Finn," to say nothing of the
many later writings which so brilliantly exposed the injustices and
inequities of human society.
Griffith, by contrast, was already championing the Native American
in many films in his early career, such as "The Redman's View," made
in 1909 when he was 34, and his adaptation of "Ramona" the following
year, a film which introduced the technique of long, vista-like shots,
in this case, to represent the historic horror of whites burning
Indian villages. The same sensitivity to injustice and oppression
would remain a feature of Griffith's work throughout his 23-year
career as a director. I am not denying that, in such a vast "oeuvre"
as Griffith created, you will find a wide variety of social attitudes
expressed, not all of them by any means equally enlightened. Nor did
I cite the above examples of Twain's racism in an effort to discredit
the writer whom I have always revered as America's foremost literary
genius. However, these two artists, both of them complex visionaries,
have had very different fates in their own country. The racism from
Twain that I have cited has long been forgotten. And when his name
does figure as a target of the more zealous PC forces, it is only in
connection with the use of the "n" word in "Huck Finn." Given Twain's
real motives in writing this book, his critics have been easily
refuted, the result being that the great writer is almost universally
revered here, with his writings constantly being quoted by progressive
forces in their criticism of the more retrograde aspects of American
life.
By contrast, Griffith is now known only to a relative handful of the
American public. Unlike with Twain, there are no museums or memorials
celebrating his achievements. The one visible posthumous honor he had
from his own profession, the Director's Guild of America's lifetime
achievement award bearing his name, was publicly stripped from him in
1999 amidst a ritualistic fervor of condemnation and name-calling
virtually unprecedented for an American historical and cultural figure
of such importance. Among the few Americans who today are aware of
his name at all, the vast majority of this minority know him only as
the terrible racist who glorified the KKK in "The Birth of a Nation."
Even the simple fact that the first half of this film depicted the
Civil War is now invariably omitted in the references to him.
While this should necessarily be the subject for another post, I
must emphasize here that, while I am in no sense a Southern partisan
as this is generally understood today, nor do I equate appreciation
for "The Birth of a Nation" as a relevant statement of the human
condition to constitute an endorsement of all the actions undertaken
by the protagonists of the narrative--any more than I view
appreciation of Shakespeare's plays as an agreement with everything
his heroes do--I do have a fundamentally different outlook on the
period of history depicted in Griffith's film than Mr. Fonvielle. I
believe that, just as conservatives have a very romanticized view of
past eras as having been more moral than they actually were, with
prayer in the schools and family values triumphant (conveniently
overlooking such little matters as child labor, capitalist
exploitation of labor in general, rampant sexism, widespread racial
discrimination), liberals, too, have their historic blind spots. And
one of the most glaring is the prevalent idealized view of the
Reconstruction South as an Edenic era of racial equality brutally
interrupted by evil Southerners. In point of fact, it was a period of
rampant corruption and intimidation of the defeated Southerners
enforced by an army of occupation. Fueling this atmosphere were the
wartime hatreds whipped up by Northern politicians. Thaddeus Stevens,
whom Fonvielle cites as some sort of hero, was unstinting in his
detestation of Southerners and indeed it is recorded laughed with glee
when he received news that some of them were starving to death after
the war. It was that kind of malevolence that led to the outrages so
dramatically depicted in Griffith's film, abuses that are inevitable
when a defeated region or country is militarily occupied for a
protracted period of time (see contemporary Iraq for an even more
extreme example). Whatever the noble rhetoric used by the North to
justify its postwar occupation of the South is forever tarnished by
the victors' blatant hypocrisy. For the same North that was
supposedly so concerned with promoting the cause of racial equality in
the defeated South was at the very same time perpetrating genocide
against the Native Americans (Twain's anti-Indian comments quoted
above were made at a time when he supported the North, by the way),
viciously discriminating against Chinese in the West, trampling on the
rights of farmers and laborers, and insistent in maintaining the
exclusion of women from participation in the political process. The
rosy picture that liberal revisionist historians outraged by "The
Birth of a Nation" have painted of the Reconstruction era is, I'm
certain, far from the reality. And to use this historical fantasy as
a basis upon which to attack, not just one film, but the reputation
and artistic integrity of arguably the single most important figure in
film history is, in my view, untenable and should be met by a
forthright statement of the facts as far as is humanly possible.
William M. Drew
Eric Stott
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
> >
> Hemingway once said that all subsequent American literture derives from
> one book -- "Huckleberry Finn". There's a lot of truth in that,
Huckleberry Finn is ALMOST the perfect book, until near the end where Twain
seems to have written himself into a corner. He brings Tom Sawyer into the
plot and the whole subtle structure of the tale turns into the crudest sort
of burlesque. It's like falling in love with a beautiful girl and suddenly
finding her teeth are rotten- except that you can correct bad teeth, but you
can't sit down and rewrite Huckleberry Finn-----not that it hasn't been
tried.
Stott
Eric Stott
of his times. Late in his life he write down the sunstance of a dream he
had: In the dream he met a young sassy black woman in a tight fitting
dress, who was eating a "Mushy sweet potato pie- hot" out of a tin dish with
a tin spoon. Twain buys a pie from her, and asks for a spoon. The young
woman smiles and takes the spoon out of her own mouth and hands it towards
him- he is immediately filled with disgust and loathing........and at that
point wakes. You don't have to be Freud to see this is interesting on
many levels. Is accepting an unwashed spoon from the girl disgusting
because she is black, or because it's straight from her mouth & he would be
disgusted no matter who it was- or is it both? Late in life Twain seems to
have had something of a mild fixation on cleanliness, primarily in his
personal appearance: the white suits & careful management of his hair
reflect this. He also had a definite desire to be with young girls, which
he nicknamed his "Angelfish". He's definitely interested in the black girl,
enough to note her appearance in detail and buy the pie from
her..........and a hot mushy sweet potato pie seems somehow
suggestive..........
Too Much Psychology
Stott
quote...@yahoo.com
Hardly anyone writing about film today would maintain ... that D. W.
Griffith was not an artist; yet, to me, he is the epitome of the
nonartist, no matter how much he may have contributed to the
_technique_ of the film. I would say that Griffith is to the art of
cinema what Achilles Tatius was to the art of the novel. Or that
Griffith did for film what Sackville and Norton, the authors of
_Gorboduc_, did for the English drama. And this, clearly, not because
a film like _Birth of a Nation_ is morally objectionable, but because
it is artistically and intellectually insufficient.
--John Simon, 1967
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
>> . . . my "current position" is that blacks are fully human, that
>> they deserve full social and political equality with whites, that
>> there's nothing wrong with interracial marriage, and that Aryans have
>> no "birthright" which entitles them to feel superior to or to dominate
>> other people.
>>
>> Griffith disagreed, passionately, with all those propositions. I
>> can't believe that you or anybody else today in his right mind agrees
>> with them.
>>
> I didn't say I disagreed with them. I said that his disagreement with
> you, the peak and perfection of the human being, is his weakness.
So if you agree with my position, and therefore disagree with Griffith,
just as I do, how do our views of Griffith and "The Birth Of A Nation"
differ? And how is my disagreement with Griffith any more presumptuous
than yours?
Lloyd Fonvielle
> The
> rosy picture that liberal revisionist historians outraged by "The
> Birth of a Nation" have painted of the Reconstruction era is, I'm
> certain, far from the reality. And to use this historical fantasy as
> a basis upon which to attack, not just one film, but the reputation
> and artistic integrity of arguably the single most important figure in
> film history is, in my view, untenable and should be met by a
> forthright statement of the facts as far as is humanly possible.
Historians are still debating the nature of Radical Reconstruction but
none of them today accept the view of it presented either in Griffith's
film or in the historical works it drew on. Among other things, the
pattern of sexual outrages aganist white women by black males, which
forms the heart of Griffith's drama, is a total fantasy. If you know of
any modern historical sources which claim otherwise, I would certainly
like to know what they are.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Huckleberry Finn is ALMOST the perfect book, until near the end where Twain
> seems to have written himself into a corner. He brings Tom Sawyer into the
> plot and the whole subtle structure of the tale turns into the crudest sort
> of burlesque. It's like falling in love with a beautiful girl and suddenly
> finding her teeth are rotten- except that you can correct bad teeth, but you
> can't sit down and rewrite Huckleberry Finn-----not that it hasn't been
> tried.
Apologists for the novel claim that in the Sawyer episode that ends the
book Twain was satirizing the sort of romantic fiction that he felt
contributed to the mind-set of the South which led it into war (which he
once said he blamed almost entirely on the works of Sir Walter Scott.)
Be that as it may, it certainly represents a switching of gears,
aesthetically speaking, which isn't very satisfying. But you can see
what Twain was trying to do -- complete his critique of America, and his
look at slavery, by exploring the delusional romanticism of people like
Tom Sawyer which he believed was largely responsible for the Civil War.
The idea was too abstract to sustain the ending of the book, but it
had some validity as a cultural analysis.
Lloyd Fonvielle
Not really. The fact that Twain was a man of his time, and probably
imbued with a degree of environmental racism, yet still managed, in
"Huckleberry Finn", to portray blacks as fully human, makes for a good
comparison with Griffith, who was subject to the same environmental
influences but couldn't rise above them, at least with regard to blacks.
The fact that Griffith was unusually sympathetic, for an artist of his
time, to other races and ethnicities only points up the irrational
nature of his view of blacks.
Bob Lipton
Because I don't consider myself the pink and flower of humanity, as you
do of yourself. Because when I look at a work like BIRTH OF A NATION I
think about my personal reactions and I also think about the reactions
of its intended audience. Because I don't feel a need to write long
pompous essays which, in the words of Jonathan Swift, celebrate the
observation that "When they sink, we seem the higher." Because I don't
judge a film maker like D.W. Griffith with over 500 films to his credit
by one film. Because I know that in 90 years a lot of my opinions will
be considered ridiculous. Fortunately yours don't have to be aged like
that.
Bob
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
>> So if you agree with my position, and therefore disagree with
>> Griffith, just as I do, how do our views of Griffith and "The Birth Of
>> A Nation" differ? And how is my disagreement with Griffith any more
>> presumptuous than yours?
>
> Because I don't consider myself the pink and flower of humanity, as you
> do of yourself
Your sense of my self-regard is a personal opinion, which I can't answer
objectively, just as you couldn't respond objectively to my opinion of
you as a person -- which is why it make sense to keep ad hominem remarks
out of rational discourse.
> Because when I look at a work like BIRTH OF A NATION I
> think about my personal reactions and I also think about the reactions
> of its intended audience.
My analysis of the film specifically addresses the techniques and
distortions Griffith used to manipulate the emotions and inflame the
passions of his intended audience and takes full account of the
environmental racism present at the time he was working.
> Because I don't feel a need to write long
> pompous essays which, in the words of Jonathan Swift, celebrate the
> observation that "When they sink, we seem the higher." Because I don't
> judge a film maker like D.W. Griffith with over 500 films to his credit
> by one film.
My great admiration for Griffith's work, stated in no uncertain terms,
makes it clear that I am not judging him by one film alone, or using
that one film to dismiss him, to "sink" him as an artist.
> Because I know that in 90 years a lot of my opinions will
> be considered ridiculous.
I doubt if the racism of "The Birth Of A Nation" will look more
respectable in 90 years, or that the act of analysing and condemning it
will seem more "ridiculous" than it does today.
> Fortunately yours don't have to be aged like
> that.
They don't have to be read or responded to at all, but if they are, they
should be responded to rationally and on their merits.
Robert Birchard
of a Nation" as if it were a standalone work born from the mind of D.W.
Griffith. It isn't.
TBOAN is an adaptation of a novel called "The Clansman," by Thomas
Dixon, first published in 1905, and a popular play based on it which
appeared shortly thereafter and had been playing in American theaters for
nearly ten years.
It was also not the first film adaptation of the noveal and play. The
Kinemacolor Company produced a version (never completed) in 1912, and a
"Clansman" traveling company produced a version in Louisiana in 1913 (never
released).
When Frank Woods suggested the property to Griffith (the
Reliance-Majestic Company, for which Griffith worked, was renting the former
Kinemacolor studio) it was at a time when feature films were overwhelmingly
based on popular plays--"Famous Players in Famous Plays" if you will--and
"The Clansman" clearly fitted this profile.
Griffith had made and supervised numerous Civil War related films before
TBOAN, and none of them (as far as I recall) showed the racist tendencies of
TBOAN.
Much of what you say regarding the racist nature of society at the time
is correct. There was a great deal of institutional racism and it was
common for white folks to believe that black folks were inferior; and in
many parts of the country these beliefs were instituionalized in the form of
"Jim Crow" laws and restictive covenants in real estate transactions.
You are also correct in stating that the view of Reconstruction set
forth in Dixon's works and Griffith's adaptation were essentially
historically inaccurate--however, as you also point out, major scholars and
historians of the time supported the view of Reconstruction that was
portrayed in the novel, play and film.
One can, I think, take Griffith to task for being a product of his time,
but to dump on him for the racism of TBOAN is a bit of a stretch.
We have only to look at a situation in our own time to see an
example--the widely reported comments of shock jock Don Imus about the black
women's basketball team. Is Imus saying anything that hasn't been said ad
nauseum by black rappers, stand up comics, filmakers and black folks on the
street? Not really.
Should he be singled out because he was a white guy, and it's okay for
black dudes to say such things 'cause their black, but it's not okay for
whitey to say such things because--well, because he's whitey. Perhaps, but
such a view is fraught with hypocracy and says it's alright for one group to
be boorish and defamatory if it's talking about its own. A dubious
proposition at best.
I would suggest that the wide spread use of such street language has
desensitized society and makes it SEEM acceptable to say such things.
Similarly, in Griffith's time society was desensitized by the prevailing
view and TBOAN was perceived to be perfectly acceptable.
The value of the film today, is as a point of discussion to address the
underlying issues and to educate people about how such racial views became
common currency and why they were based on false premises and assumptions.
It does little good to condemn Grifffith and the film for being products of
their time.
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
news:iDpSh.434144$BK1.3...@newsfe13.lga...
Lloyd Fonvielle
> The problem with your perspective, Lloyd, is that you treat "The Birth
> of a Nation" as if it were a standalone work born from the mind of D.W.
> Griffith. It isn't.
I think I acknowledged pretty clearly that I thought Griffith was a
normally bigoted Southerner of his time who got seduced by Dixon's more
virulent form of racism. But Griffith is morally responsible for
everything that's in "The Birth Of A Nation" -- he had absolute control
over its content.
My point, with which you may not agree, is that there is a difference
between reflecting the casual racism of one's time and deliberately
embracing the sort of pathological racism of a man like Dixon, who even
in his own day was seen by many as an extremist, despite his wide
popularity.
There's casual racism in the rest of Griffith's work, as there is in the
work of artists as different from him as Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton,
but I just don't think the agenda found in "The Birth Of A Nation" falls
into this category or can be rationalized in the same way.
It would be nice if it could, because it's such a brilliant film in many
ways and such an important one -- but it just can't.
I've set out in some detail the examples I see in "The Birth Of A
Nation" of what I call pathological racism, racism beyond the pale of
the conventional prejudice of its time. It's the difference between
portraying all blacks as childlike "darkies" and displaying all
non-subordinate blacks as animalistic monsters lusting to possess white
women. The latter view was NOT common in Hollywood movies or in any of
the popular arts. "Uncle Tom's Cabin", for example, in both book and
play form, was far more popular and influential than anything Dixon ever
wrote -- indeed, he was inspired to write his first Reconstruction novel
to counteract what he saw as the "misrepresentations" purveyed in
Stowe's work.
For Griffith to personally embrace Dixon's extreme form of racism was to
make him more than just a "product of his time" -- and if he simply
exploited it for commercial gain, as the radio shock-jocks of our own
time do, he's in some ways even more reprehensible, morally speaking.
Robert Birchard
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
> Robert Birchard wrote:
>
>
> For Griffith to personally embrace Dixon's extreme form of racism was to
> make him more than just a "product of his time" -- and if he simply
> exploited it for commercial gain, as the radio shock-jocks of our own time
> do, he's in some ways even more reprehensible, morally speaking.
>
I guess w'll just have to disagree on this point. I don't think that
Griffith's making a film based on a play (more than the novel) that was an
established mainstream theatrical attraction necessarily means that Griffith
embraced "Dixon's extreme form of racism," especially because there is
little evidence of that extreme form of racism is any of his other work.
There is plenty of evidence that Griffith held the prejudices of his time,
but little to suggest that he embraced Dixon's point of view unequivically.
There is certainly no evidence of extreme racist tendencies in any of
Griffith's earlier civil war films--he made films with northern as well as
southern heroes (The Battle), and films in which Southerners refused to
fight for the "noble cause" (The House With Closed Shutters--if I'm,
remembering the plot correctly). It is also clear, to anyone who has read
Dixon's book, that Griffith toned down a great deal of Dixon's more
inflamatory rantings (though Griffith may have been following the play in
this respect--I have read the book, but I have not read the play so I simply
can't speak with authority on this point). There was an attempt (laughable
to modern eyes) to balance the evil blacks with the "faithful souls." You,
undoubtedly would take this to be a feeble attempt at balance at best, and
in retrospect it probably is, but some effort was made nonetheless.
Griffith was attempting to make the motion picture the equal of the
stage in the mind of society and critics at a time when movies were seen to
be a lower class and inferior form of entertainment. What better way than
to take a popular middle-brow play and tranform it into something more than
it could ever be on stage.
I don't think Griffith was unaware of the deep feelings the Civil War
still generated in the country. It added to the emotional response to the
film. Today we think very little about how we characterize the war, and
you'll often hear people call it "the war between the states," but in
Griffith's time that designation was an indication of southern sympathies.
In the north the conflict was still called "the war of the rebellion." But
Griffith's motives were artistic rather than political, however misplaced
his choice of subject matter might have been.
The film was not merely a regional success (i.e. it's appeal went beyond
the south). My great-great grandfather, who served in the Union army, saw
the film in 1917. The southern revisionist campaign to recast the conflict
as a "noble cause" in the minds of the nation had been underway for a good
25 years by the time Griffith made TBOAN, and in fact the president of the
United States, southerner Woodrow Wilson, had been one of the architects of
that effort with his own writings.
The real problem with TBOAN is that the nation has firmly embraced the
southern revisionist point of view of the war. If we were taught that
Licoln was cheered by the residents as he strolled the streets of Richmond
immediately after the fall of the confederacy, and that after the war poor
whites and freed blacks joined to form a true Republican majority (that was
before the Republican party became a stand-in for the Dixiecrats) the rich
whites of Mississippi started killing black voters to keep them from going
to the polls and my distant relative Rutherford Birchard Hayes cut a deal to
remove federal troops from the south in order to win the disputed election
of 1876, and that led to the imposition of "Jim Crow," that led directly to
the southern revisionists who wrote to support "Jim Crow," and the TBOAN
should be seen in this context, we might come to terms with our real
history--and TBOAN might be a valuable tool in teaching that history. But
as long as we maintain a misplaced nostalgia for "the red earth of Tara" and
the "glorious lost cause," we are only sticking our heads in the sand.
Reel...@aol.com
>>
> I've set out in some detail the examples I see in "The Birth Of A
> Nation" of what I call pathological racism, racism beyond the pale of
> the conventional prejudice of its time. It's the difference between
> portraying all blacks as childlike "darkies" and displaying all
> non-subordinate blacks as animalistic monsters lusting to possess white
> women. The latter view was NOT common in Hollywood movies or in any of
> the popular arts.
So why, therefore, do you, Lloyd Fonvielle, condemn so violently the
Hollywood system that developed in the 1920s as represented by, among
others, Hollywood producers like Irving Thalberg and censors like Will
Hays? You claim to be an advocate of artistic freedom on the one
hand. But if the artist says something you don't like, then you wail
and moan about how awful it is. Yes, it's true that, under the system
that developed in the '20s and was finalized in the '30s with the 1934
Production Code, a work as controversial as "The Clansman" could not
have been filmed. That's quite likely why, despite continued popular
revivals of "The Birth of a Nation" and repeated announcements in the
1930s and later that a remake of the film was due, that none, in fact,
materialized. Significantly, it's one of the very few top box-office
silent films based on a popular novel or play that was never remade in
the sound era.
Far from being an advocate of artistic freedom as you claim, your
posts on "The Birth," like your posts denouncing Chaplin for the way
he ended several of his films, prove that your rhetoric condemning the
rise of the Hollywood system is so much hot air. In the case of
Chaplin, it's possible that, had he been working for MGM and Thalberg,
the powers-that-be would have insisted he shoot the alternative happy
endings to "The Circus" and "City Lights" that you have indicated you
wanted for those films. In your commentaries on both "The Birth" and
Chaplin's films, you have revealed that what you really want for
cinema has nothing whatever to do with the complexities and often
tragic ambiguities of life portrayed in these works. Instead, you
appear to yearn for a conventional resolution in keeping with the
timid, conventional centrism to which you adhere and with which, in an
almost totalitarian fashion, you attempt to close the door tightly to
alternative interpretations that might challenge your tidy little
black-and-white moralistic world of absolute good vs. total evil.
In conclusion, if you are as appalled by "The Birth of a Nation" as
you claim to be, then you should applaud the later establishment of
the Hollywood system which prevented the production of the kind of
film you find so objectionable. As for me, since I interpret "The
Birth" very differently than you do, I deplore, not the film, but the
efforts to ban it which paved the way for the subsequent restrictions
imposed on film content by the Hays and Breen offices.
William M. Drew
Feuillade
wrote:
> "Lloyd Fonvielle" <l...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
>
> news:LOlTh.9835$2q7....@newsfe19.lga...
>
> > Robert Birchard wrote:
>
> > For Griffith to personally embrace Dixon's extreme form of racism was to
> > make him more than just a "product of his time" -- and if he simply
> > exploited it for commercial gain, as the radio shock-jocks of our own time
> > do, he's in some ways even more reprehensible, morally speaking.
>
> I guess w'll just have to disagree on this point. I don't think that
> Griffith's making a film based on a play (more than the novel) that was an
> established mainstream theatrical attraction necessarily means that Griffith
> embraced "Dixon's extreme form of racism," especially because there is
> little evidence of that extreme form of racism is any of his other work.
>
a little like saying that Chris Columbus made the first Harry Potter
film because he was a warlock.
> There is plenty of evidence that Griffith held the prejudices of his time,
> but little to suggest that he embraced Dixon's point of view unequivically.
> There is certainly no evidence of extreme racist tendencies in any of
> Griffith's earlier civil war films--he made films with northern as well as
> southern heroes (The Battle), and films in which Southerners refused to
> fight for the "noble cause" (The House With Closed Shutters--if I'm,
> remembering the plot correctly).
>
He also made films in which the Klan was portrayed as the villains,
not the heroes.
>
> It is also clear, to anyone who has read Dixon's book, that Griffith
> toned down a great deal of Dixon's more inflamatory rantings (though
> Griffith may have been following the play in this respect--I have
> read the book, but I have not read the play so I simply can't speak
> with authority on this point).
Few could, since the play was never published in the same way that the
novel was.
But I believe that the Library of Congress has a copy of the play
(there's another copy floating around somewhere in Dixon's papers, I'm
not sure where they are, although I think it's in North Carolina), so
if you're willing to make a trip to DC you might be able to give it a
look.
>
> There was an attempt (laughable to modern eyes) to balance
> the evil blacks with the "faithful souls." You, undoubtedly would
> take this to be a feeble attempt at balance at best, and in retrospect
> it probably is, but some effort was made nonetheless.
>
There's no doubt that Griffith did as much as he could to tone down
the more virulently racist portions of Dixon's book.
But since no one reads the book anymore, he gets no credit for it.
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
lot of good points, and I agree with you that the extreme racism of "The
Birth Of A Nation" probably doesn't represent Griffith's last best
thoughts on the subject or the better angels of his nature.
But I would still insist that there IS an extreme form of racism in
film, one which goes far beyond the casual racism of society at the
time, and that Griffith used all his art in very conscious and
deliberate ways to promote it, including blatantly falsifying the
historical sources he claimed to be following.
This last point is telling, I think. Given that the accepted historical
view of Radical Reconstruction at the time tended to support the film's
overall view of the period, Griffith falsified even that -- in the
patently mendacious portrait of Thaddeus Stevens, in the episode of
uniformed black troops rampaging through the South during the war, in
the scene of the black legislature, derived not as Griffith claimed from
historical photographs but from scurrilous political cartoons, and in
the preposterous notion of an elected black lieutenant-governor trying
to rape an aristocratic white lady.
These glaring departures even from the biased historical writings of the
time were all intended to incite revulsion at and fear of miscegenation
and to present miscegenation as the inevitable result of (and underlying
ambition behind) black enfranchisement.
W. E. B. DuBois summed up Dixon's message as: "There's a black man who
thinks himself a man and is a man; kill him before he marries your
daughter!" That message is clear and present, by design, in "The Birth
Of A Nation" -- though Griffith, in his compassion, might have
substituted "take away his political rights so you don't have to kill"
for "kill".
Griffith famously offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who could point
out any historical inaccuracy in his film. DuBois challenged Griffith
to cite one instance where the black lieutenant-governor of a Southern
state tried to rape a white woman or possess her against her will by a
forced marriage. Griffith never responded to DuBois -- the only honest
response he could have given would have exposed his hypocrisy.
Robert Birchard wrote:
--
Lloyd Fonvielle
>Lloyd Fonvielle wrote:
>>I've set out in some detail the examples I see in "The Birth Of A
>>Nation" of what I call pathological racism, racism beyond the pale of
>>the conventional prejudice of its time. �It's the difference between
>>portraying all blacks as childlike "darkies" and displaying all
>>non-subordinate blacks as animalistic monsters lusting to possess white
>>women. �The latter view was NOT common in Hollywood movies or in any of
>>the popular arts.
I notice that you still don't respond to my specific points about "The
Birth Of A Nation", instead trying, in the remarks below, to discredit
them by citing my inconsistencies on other subjects.
I can understand your desire to avoid looking too closely at the plain
evidence of the film, but ad hominem attacks against those who do look
closely at the film don't really constitute a rational response to "The
Birth Of A Nation".
--
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Griffith made the film because he wanted a hit. Thinking otherwise is
> a little like saying that Chris Columbus made the first Harry Potter
> film because he was a warlock.
You are ignoring almost everything Griffith said about what the film
meant to him personally -- and the film itself, which shows no evidence
of having been cranked out like some Hollywood commercial assignment.
> There's no doubt that Griffith did as much as he could to tone down
> the more virulently racist portions of Dixon's book.
>
> But since no one reads the book anymore, he gets no credit for it.
Surely the issue is not whether "The Birth Of A Nation" is less
virulently racist than some other work, but to what degree it itself is
virulently racist.
I have read several of Dixon's Reconstruction novels. They are trash,
written by a hack, whereas "The Birth Of A Nation" was made by an artist
trying to give the trash a more elegant and reasonable veneer. There
isn't much difference between the underlying racist agenda in the novels
and in the film.
Lincoln Spector
Don't bother arguing with these folks.
You have upset their notion of the world, and are therefore evil.
FWIW, I liked your essay on Griffith, and thought it was intelligent. And
works of art that stand the test of time will and must be seen both inside
and outside the context of when they were made.
Lincoln
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
news:24cTh.9795$2q7....@newsfe19.lga...
George Shelps
notm...@address.com (Lincoln Spector) wrote:
>FWIW, I liked your essay on Griffith, and
>thought it was intelligent. And works of
>art that stand the test of time will and
>must be seen both inside and outside the
>context of when they were made.
As always, Lloyd is a valuable contributor
to this newsgroup with perceptive and
intellectually stimulating posts.
I do disagree with him, however, because
I believe he is engaging in a reductiveness at a remove from
the actual experience of the film and
is really a content and thematic analysis
of its subtext,
As watched, as experienced, phenomenologically (to use a 50 cent
word I havent used since grad school),
the movie is a poetic epic of the
American Civil War and its aftermath,
rising to the level of generic depiction
of the tragedy of internecine war. In
short, it is what it appears to be.
Only upon reflection can we separate
out the components of racial prejudice
and sexual anxieties about miscegnation
which do exist intermittenly in the film.
but do not constitute a continuous stream
of meaning---as Lloyd seems to say.
Feuillade
Ouch!
Once again, I wholeheartedly agree.
Tom Moran
Feuillade
wrote:
> Feuillade wrote:
> > Griffith made the film because he wanted a hit. Thinking otherwise is
> > a little like saying that Chris Columbus made the first Harry Potter
> > film because he was a warlock.
>
> You are ignoring almost everything Griffith said about what the film
> meant to him personally -- and the film itself, which shows no evidence
> of having been cranked out like some Hollywood commercial assignment.
>
It was made during the first year of World War I, and was meant by
Griffith to be an anti-war picture.
> > There's no doubt that Griffith did as much as he could to tone down
> > the more virulently racist portions of Dixon's book.
>
> > But since no one reads the book anymore, he gets no credit for it.
>
> Surely the issue is not whether "The Birth Of A Nation" is less
> virulently racist than some other work, but to what degree it itself is
> virulently racist.
>
> I have read several of Dixon's Reconstruction novels. They are trash,
> written by a hack, [...]
You're missing the point, which somehow doesn't surprise me.
Some of the most successful films ever made were derived from trash
written by hacks.
> [...] whereas "The Birth Of A Nation" was made by an artist
> trying to give the trash a more elegant and reasonable veneer. There
> isn't much difference between the underlying racist agenda in the novels
> and in the film.
>
Well, we just disagree about that. Griffith introduced an element of
ambiguity into the film which you deny because you can't see it.
Griffith said (and Lillian Gish said for decades afterwards) that the
blacks were not the villains. The white northerners using the blacks
to disenfranchise the white southerners were the villains of the
piece.
What you seem to ignore is the *real* message of the film, which I
remarked on a decade ago and which seems to have escaped you -- which
is, the film expressly endorses terrorism as a means of achieving
political ends.
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Only upon reflection can we separate
> out the components of racial prejudice
> and sexual anxieties about miscegnation
> which do exist intermittenly in the film.
> but do not constitute a continuous stream
> of meaning---as Lloyd seems to say.
I used to look at the film that way, partly out of denial, I think, and
partly from being distracted by the beautiful imagery. But I think my
point by point analysis, written after watching the film at least ten
times, does show how inextricably and artfully the psycho-sexual element
is woven into the fabric of the film. It comes to dominate, motivate
and drive all the drama in the second half.
There really is an underlying stream of meaning in the film which takes
it out of the realm of the casual racism of its time and makes it a
pointedly pathological document.
Reel...@aol.com
I really think it quite pointless to respond to Lloyd Fonvielle on
this. He apparently made up his mind years ago about there being only
one way to interpret "The Birth of a Nation"--or rather, like the
eternal conformist "centrist" that he is, is repeating the standard
line about the film. This "party line" of his not once takes into
account the possibility of there being intelligent, unorthodox
analyses of the 1915 epic, such as the brilliant commentary by William
Rothman in his 1988 volume, "The 'I' of the Camera." Rothman treats
Griffith's film as a work of tragic complexity, comparable to
Shakespeare, instead of painting it as an evil but simple-minded piece
of agit-prop. Unfortunately, Fonvielle's analysis is hardly on the
same level of sophistication and merely reduces discussion of the film
in a manner very much suited to the present dumbed-down, polarized age
in which meaningful aesthetic criticism has become all but impossible
in the United States.
However, I will continue to point out errors of fact circulated on
this board by Mr. Fonvielle, whether those inaccuracies are his or
whether he is merely repeating without question someone else's
misstatements. So, for the record, it was not W.E.B. DuBois who asked
Griffith whether a black lieutenant governor in the Reconstruction era
had locked up a white girl in an effort to force her into marriage but
rather Moorfield Storey, a well-known white leader of the NAACP at the
time. This may seem like a small thing to point out but over and over
again, I have found that an accumulation of these errors can lead to
much graver misrepresentations.
A far more serious error circulated here by Mr. Fonvielle is one that
he cites from the short Kino documentary on the making of "The Birth
of a Nation." Fonvielle is correct that this information is contained
in the documentary and I believe was supplied by Russell Merritt.
However, the documentary's statement that Griffith claimed he had a
photograph showing the South Carolina black legislators in session is
erroneous. Griffith, in the introductory title to the sequence,
describes his depiction of the legislature as including "An historical
facsimile of the State House of Representatives of South Carolina as
it was in 1870. After the photograph by 'The Columbia State.'" Now
where have I seen something like that before? Oh, yes--the
description of his reproduction of Lincoln's assassination as
utilizing "An historical facsimile of Ford's Theater as on that night,
exact in size and detail with the recorded incidents, after Nicolay
and Hay in 'Lincoln, a History.'" Griffith, needless to say, never
claimed he had access to an actual photograph of the assassination,
nor has Russell Merritt or anyone else said that he made such an
assertion. The reference to the "historical facsimile" of the
Columbia, SC State House is thus almost exactly the same thing as
Griffith's similar characterization of Ford's Theater. Lillian Gish
writes in her 1969 autobiography, "The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me:"
"He (DWG) telegraphed a newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, for
photographs of the interior of the state capital, which held a
majority of Negro representatives after the war, and constructed the
legislative chamber according to the photographs." In other words,
neither Griffith, Lillian Gish, nor, as far as I know, anyone else
connected with the film ever claimed that Griffith had access to
photographs showing the actual legislators in the building, nor is
that what the title means to suggest (anymore than it does with Ford's
Theater). Griffith was merely stating that his set was a faithful
reproduction of the building as it looked at the time the black
legislators met there. To misinterpret or misstate what Griffith said
and to then use that as evidence in order to assail his integrity or
truthfulness is something which, I feel, must be pointed out. It is
only a short step from this, after all, to circulating as fact an
imaginary encounter between Griffith and Cora, his (entirely
fictitious) black maid who, in an invention of Homer Croy in his
highly fictionalized "biography" of D. W., represented her as having
been so appalled by "The Birth" that she indignantly left his
service. As I pointed out in a "Silents Majority" article which is no
longer on the Internet, this fictitious story was presented as having
been an actual occurrence in "Midnight Ramble," a PBS documentary on
early black filmmakers, in an effort to discredit Griffith.
I have no idea whether or not Griffith used political cartoons of the
era as part of his historical background for the scene in the State
House. The action, for the most part, follows closely the
descriptions in Dixon's novel (the scene does not appear in Dixon's
stage dramatization, as I recall). As repellent as I find Dixon's
original descriptions, his account is, in the main, consistent with
the history books of the time when the Dunning School was the
prevalent interpretation of the Reconstruction era. And when
transferred to the screen without Dixon's verbal diatribes, the
sequence under Griffith's direction reminds me far more of the many
scenes in Shakespeare's plays in which the Bard caricatures the
rebellious common people as an uncouth rabble.
As for Fonvielle's overall line of attack in which he continually
assails the film for including fictional events and ascribing to the
fictionalized parallel of Thaddeus Stevens, Austin Stoneman,
characteristics or involvements which are in contradiction of the real
personage, that is part of what is called dramatic license. Applying
Fonviellean logic to "Citizen Kane," Hearst was then perfectly
justified in campaigning against a film which centered around obvious
fictionalized parallels to himself and Marion Davies in a less-than-
flattering light and with inventions intended to discredit the
protagonists. The real Marion, after all, was never an opera singer,
failed or otherwise, nor did she one day pack up and leave W. R., as
Welles's film shows her doing. Nor did Hearst's wife and son die in a
car wreck, as stated in the introductory newsreel. Yet these and
other inventions are so cleverly interwoven with innumerable known
facts about the life and career of Hearst that it might be hard for
many people to distinguish between what is fact and what is fiction.
Therefore, if the litmus test used by Fonvielle against Griffith and
"The Birth" were extended to "Citizen Kane," one could argue that
Hearst was within his rights to attempt to suppress the film and
target the director who was misrepresenting him and the no. 1 woman in
his life.
Of course, if one were to range even further into the world of
literature, then many artists, including such titans as Shakespeare
and Tolstoy, who fabricated incidents involving real historical
individuals to dramatize great events while often showing figures
considered by many heroic in an unfavorable light, would also be due
for Fonvielle's brand of criticism. But as usual, Fonvielle does not
see the broader implications of his line of attack. While Griffith,
in a mixture of naivete and bravado and partly to elevate the standing
of the motion picture, would often state that "The Birth" and other of
his historical epics were as factual as history books, the main title
of "The Birth" states that it is based on a novel, in itself an
admission that it is based on a work of fiction. Unfortunately, as I
have demonstrated with the atrocious example of "Midnight Ramble"
trying to pass off a fictional character like Cora the Maid as a real
personage, the opponents of Griffith and his film never seem to
acknowledge that they are engaged in plenty of dramatic license of
their own, presenting as they do all their little myths and
fabrications as actualities in a sustained effort to destroy
Griffith's reputation and (they think) usher in a golden age of racial
equality. After all, what harm is a little lie when the end result
will be so wonderful?
Mr. Fonvielle accuses me of refusing to consider the issues he is
raising to justify his criticism of "The Birth." But in his attacks
on this film, like many others targeting it, while Fonvielle does not
actually deny the film is about war and aftermath, he rather refuses
to even acknowledge that the film has anything at all to do with a
depiction of the horrors of war and military occupation. To him, it
is simply about the 20th century civil rights movement in 19th century
costumes in which non-violent demands for egalitarian change by black
people encounter the brutal opposition of privileged white
Southerners. However, once you miss as completely as he does the
point of the film and the basic historic reality it depicts, you
overlook what was for Griffith the most important issue of all, one to
which he would return in his work over and over again. The original
advertising for the film in 1915-16 made this all very clear. I have
before me an ad which reads in part as follows:
'THE PLAY'S MESSAGE OF PEACE
IF THIS GRAPHIC PRESENTMENT serves no other purpose, its message for
universal peace marks it of great importance. Morally and
educationally it establishes the futility of armed conflict. A member
of the senate of the United States expressed the foregoing sentiment.
"ANYONE CONTEMPLATING WAR SHOULD SEE THIS PICTURE," added the
senator. "I sincerely believe it will do more to deter people from
engaging in war than anything written or spoken on the subject in
years."
Great care has been taken not to glorify battle. Even the music stops
its motif of glorification to sound the note of terror and desolation
which is the real truth of WAR.
Armies seldom settle disputed questions of state. But where they
accomplish this much, in the wake of conflict, arise newer and more
terrible questions. But for the HATREDS ENGENDERED BY THE CIVIL WAR,
THE SUFFERING OF THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD WOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN
KNOWN.'
This advertisement, clearly reflecting Griffith's personal point of
view, is very much in keeping with anti-war statements he made over
the years. In a 1922 interview in which he discussed an anti-war film
he wished to make, he declared: "When the masses see that war is an
unnecessary thing, there will be no more wars. I have been criticized
for making some of my war films too brutal. They said 'Hearts of the
World' was too brutal. But this war film will be brutal, more brutal
than anything I have yet made." The interviewer, noting that Griffith
normally was "a slow-talking, phlegmatic man," then suddenly got up
from his chair, pounded on his desk and shouted, "War IS brutal. Ask
the Germans. Ask the French. Ask the winners or the losers of any
battle. The German doesn't hate the Frenchman and the Frenchman
doesn't hate the German. They and the men of all nations would plow
their fields in peace all their lives if some few men who seek only
glory for themselves would not arouse them to a false fervour in
which they do not think for themselves.
"They are aroused to this fervour by the picture of men going into
war with bands playing and flags flying. The glory of war! Ask some
of our boys who were over there about the glory of war. Glory to
hell! There is no glory in war.
"The glory of war goes only to a few leaders who run no personal
danger. That has been the history of mankind. Every war has meant a
great loss, paid by the masses. When the masses can be made to
understand this, talk of the glory of war will fall on deaf ears."
These sentiments can be found in many of Griffith's films, including
"The Birth of a Nation," "Intolerance," "Hearts of the World," despite
its inclusion of anti-German propaganda which D. W. regretted, "Broken
Blossoms," and "Isn't Life Wonderful?" with a portrayal of post-war
poverty in Europe in a powerful film that lacked commercial appeal and
was the beginning of the end of his career. It is a sad thing indeed
when people intent on vilifying Griffith as part of their overall
strategy have succeeded in overlooking this fundamental fact of his
existence as a living, breathing, thinking human being. Time and time
again, he risked his career on his anti-war views, seeing his magnum
opus, "Intolerance," fail at the box office with the US entry into
war, openly condemning the impersonal horrors of modern war even while
publicly expressing support for the Allied aim of defeating the German
empire, telling radical anti-war activist Max Eastman that he agreed
with him, arousing the opposition of white racists with his
denunciation of Western oppression of the Chinese in "Broken
Blossoms," and ultimately losing his vaunted independence as a result
of "Isn't Life Wonderful?" Born as he was into a region still
suffering from the ravages of a recent war, Griffith, I have often
thought, must have suffered in his last years from a depression in
part stemming from the revelations of the almost unimaginable
atrocities of the Second World War. In 1944, in an article carried by
the AP news service, Griffith predicted that war would not cease until
human beings change their dispositions, "and that, perhaps, will be in
the next 20,000 years, because humanity has only been civilized or
half-civilized for about 5,000 years, and we're still infants, morally
and spiritually." I can only hope that it won't take 20,000 years for
Griffith's achievements to finally be acknowledged. But I must admit
that the incessant denunciations on this one film, year in and year
out, does not make me very optimistic. However, while I have no
expectation of ever changing minds that are already closed to the
possibility of other interpretations, I will, when necessary, correct
misstatements and errors being circulated to tarnish the reputation of
the one artist more than any other without whom there would not be an
alt.movies.silent forum in the first place, no matter what other
gifted creators are often discussed here.
William M. Drew
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Griffith said (and Lillian Gish said for decades afterwards) that the
> blacks were not the villains. The white northerners using the blacks
> to disenfranchise the white southerners were the villains of the
> piece.
This view cannot be supported by the plain text of the film. The
emotional jeopardy which drives the second half is the fear of white
women being raped by black males. The entire narrative hinges on this
jeopardy, which is presented systematically as the inevitable
consequence of the full emancipation of blacks. The minute Silas Lynch
is told that he's going to be elevated to the status of whites he starts
lusting after Stoneman's daughter, and the minute he's elected
lieutenant governor he sets about trying to rape her. The film's
dramatic and narrative logic could not be clearer on this point.
> What you seem to ignore is the *real* message of the film, which I
> remarked on a decade ago and which seems to have escaped you -- which
> is, the film expressly endorses terrorism as a means of achieving
> political ends.
It does, but it justifies terrorism, extra-legal murder, vigilantism,
only as a last resort when Aryan "purity" is threatened by the rape of
white women by black males. This is what the Klan rides and acts to
prevent. The re-enfranchisement of white voters is only incidental to
the disenfranchisement of blacks, whose primary (indeed only) motive for
political power is presented as sexual congress with white women.
Lloyd Fonvielle
challenged Griffith on the historical accuracy of "The Birth Of A
Nation" can lead to "graver misinterpretations" but I really don't see
how it affects my basic point -- that Griffith justified his film as
being based entirely on fact, when it wasn't . . . not even on the
"facts" accepted by the historians of his day.
The title card which stated that the legislative chamber shown in the
second half was based on a historical photograph was clearly meant to
imply that the people and behavior depicted, not just the architecture,
were based on historical evidence. They were, in fact, directly derived
from political cartoons, which are shown in Shepard's documentary on the
Kino DVD. Griffith used this same type of disingenuous implication when
he showed uniformed blacks troops marauding in South Carolina during the
war -- as a title card announces that the first black troops were raised
there. This implies that the marauding shown was an historical fact,
when it was a complete fantasy.
Griffith certainly did use "dramatic license" in creating his libelous
caricature of Thaddeus Stevens, just as many artists have used dramatic
license in treating historical figures -- but that's not the point. The
point is that Griffith claimed his drama was based only on historical
fact, whereas it departed radically from fact whenever he wanted to
promote his paranoia about miscegenation.
Nothing Griffith said about his intentions in making "The Birth Of A
nation" trumps the plain text of the film which, while deploring the
horrors of war, concentrates its primary narrative and dramatic appeal
(in its second half almost exclusively) on the horrors of miscegenation.
Reel...@aol.com wrote:
Feuillade
wrote:
You know Lloyd, I'm starting to think that this thread isn't saying
nearly as much about Griffith or TBOAN as it is about you. You're
starting to sound a little unhinged on the subject.
Tom Moran
Feuillade
wrote:
> You say that my mistake in misidentifying the black leader who
> challenged Griffith on the historical accuracy of "The Birth Of A
> Nation" can lead to "graver misinterpretations" but I really don't see
> how it affects my basic point -- that Griffith justified his film as
> being based entirely on fact, when it wasn't . . . not even on the
> "facts" accepted by the historians of his day.
>
As usual.
Tom Moran
Robert Birchard
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
> You say that my mistake in misidentifying the black leader who challenged
> Griffith on the historical accuracy of "The Birth Of A Nation" can lead to
> "graver misinterpretations" but I really don't see how it affects my basic
> point -- that Griffith justified his film as being based entirely on fact,
> when it wasn't . . . not even on the "facts" accepted by the historians of
> his day.
Lloyd, don't you work in the movie business? Or at least have some
familiarty with movie hype?
DeMille claimed his films were historically accurate (and they were . .
. to a point, byt he wasn't slavish about it). For example, Wild Bill
Hickok was killed by Cash McCall, and DeMille incorporated that into "The
Plainsman," but the romance between Wild Bill and Calamity Jane was woven
from the thinnest evidence,. It is total fabrication.
Nearly every week a film comes out "based on a true story" and those who
know something about the subject point out where it deviates from the
historic record.
We have "realty TV," which claims to be real but clearly isn't.
Claiming historical correctness has been a common element of hyping
drama from the time of Shakespeare and before. It is designed to sucker the
rubes into investing more of their emotional capital into a story, and is a
fairly cheap and tawdry (and effective) way of getting the audience to buy
into the drama being presented--because it's "real." It is pretty clear (to
me at least) that Griffith's statements about the "truth" of TBOAN are
nothing more than this sort of hyperbolic hucksterism.
The fact is Lloyd, that when others respond to your direct statements,
you simply refurse to listen or consider the other's opinions. I'm not
suggesting that you agree with any of us, but to say we're ignoring what you
say is the sort of "straw man" argument that Junior High school debaters are
urged to avoid. You desperately need to take a Philosophy or Logic 101
course if you intend to play with the big boys as a social commentator and
media critic.
George Shelps
ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com (Lloyd Fonvielle) wrote:
>>Only upon reflection can we separate
>>out the components of racial prejudice
>>and sexual anxieties about
>>miscegnation which do exist
>>intermittenly in the film. but do not
>>constitute a continuous stream of
>>meaning---as Lloyd seems to say.
>I used to look at the film that way, partly
>out of denial, I think, and partly from
>being distracted by the beautiful
>imagery.
But this is a movie, not a text. The imagery is the film!
> But I think my point by point analysis,
>written after watching the film at least
>ten times,
Exactly my point. You're doing a textual
content analysis.
> does show how inextricably and artfully
>the psycho-sexual element is woven into
>the fabric of the film. It comes to
>dominate, motivate and drive all the
>drama in the second half.
But unless this element functions visually
in the experience of the movie, it is
a secondary level of meaning.
>There really is an underlying stream of
>meaning in the film which takes it out of
>the realm of the casual racism of its time
>and makes it a pointedly pathological
>document.
And I contend that it is an intermittent
"non-streaming" subtheme. When you
watch the film, you are overwhelmed by
the themes of the disasters of internecein war and occupation. Only
upon detached
content analysis is one aware of the
racial component you focus upon.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Claiming historical correctness has been a common element of hyping
> drama from the time of Shakespeare and before. It is designed to sucker the
> rubes into investing more of their emotional capital into a story, and is a
> fairly cheap and tawdry (and effective) way of getting the audience to buy
> into the drama being presented--because it's "real." It is pretty clear (to
> me at least) that Griffith's statements about the "truth" of TBOAN are
> nothing more than this sort of hyperbolic hucksterism.
You're transposing arguments and contexts here. If Griffith was
engaging consciously in show-biz hucksterism when he claimed that "The
Birth Of A Nation" was based stictly on historical facts, then the
argument that the film's racism was based innocently on the history
books of the time falls apart.
More importantly, Griffith defense of the film as historically accurate
in all respects was not made in the context of a typical show-biz
advertising campaign -- it was made in the context of a nation-wide
social and political controversy ABOUT the historical accuracy of the
film. Griffith's many writings and statements about the film were
clearly intended to defend himself against charges of deliberately
falsifying the historical record to promote a racist agenda. Trying to
portray this as "typical" Hollywood hype is quite misleading.
An even bigger point I'm trying to make is that we need to look at
exactly WHERE Griffith falsified the historical record and why he did so
in those specific instances. In each case it involved highlighting the
horrors of miscengenation and the danger to white females from black
empancipation. This can hardly be compared to concocting an
historically dubious romance between Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
I agree that promoting paranoia about white women being raped by black
men was a canny commercial calculation but it falls into a different
catagory of moral activity than bending historical facts to set up a
fictional love story.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> When you
> watch the film, you are overwhelmed by
> the themes of the disasters of internecein war and occupation. Only
> upon detached
> content analysis is one aware of the
> racial component you focus upon.
I think this has more to do with the unconscious environmental racism of
our own time (in which everyone, including myself, participates), which
desensitizes us to the issues, than with what's actually there in the film.
George Shelps
ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com (Lloyd Fonvielle) wrote:
>>When you
>>watch the film, you are overwhelmed by
>>the themes of the disasters of
>>internecein war and occupation. Only
>>upon detached
>>content analysis is one aware of the
>>racial component you focus upon.
>I think this has more to do with the
>unconscious environmental racism of our
>own time (in which everyone, including
>myself, participates), which desensitizes
>us to the issues, than with what's
>actually there in the film.
The film is what it actially appears to be,
a broad, sweeping angry poetic look
at our internecine civil war which is at times marred by both the
environmenta;
racism you mention and the more overt
fears of miscegenation.
You're taking the belmishes and inflating them to the level of
Griffith's "hidden
agenda/"
If Griffith feared and hated black emancipation, why did he idealize
Lincoln as "the great heart" and depict
his assassination as a crucial turning
point in his story? After all, Lincoln
was the architect of black emancipation.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> If Griffith feared and hated black emancipation, why did he idealize
> Lincoln as "the great heart" and depict
> his assassination as a crucial turning
> point in his story? After all, Lincoln
> was the architect of black emancipation.
The film doesn't endorse slavery or condemn emancipation from
involuntary servitude -- what it condemns is black enfranchisment on
terms equal to that of whites, on the grounds that it will lead to the
rape of white women and miscegenation.
I'm sorry if I was unclear on this point.
George Shelps
ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com (Lloyd Fonvielle) wrote:
>>If Griffith feared and hated black
>>emancipation, why did he idealize
>>Lincoln as "the great heart" and depict
>>his assassination as a crucial turning
>>point in his story? After all, Lincoln
>>was the architect of black emancipation.
>The film doesn't endorse slavery or
>condemn emancipation from involuntary
>servitude -- what it condemns is black
>enfranchisment on terms equal to that of
>whites, on the grounds that it will lead to
>the rape of white women and
>miscegenation.
I don't see how you can disentangle
black emancipation from slavey from
the emancipation/enfranchisement of
blacks in general,
Jim Crow legislation continued the
suppression of blacks in another form,
but this was a consquence of Lincoln's
assassination, which Griffith treats
as a tragedy for the South as well
as the North.
Keeping the ante-bellum social
order intact along with emancipation
of the slaves was probably impossible
and I will agree that Griffith idealized
the Southern ethos. I do agree he
deplored its destruction as one consequence of black
enfranchisement---while at the same
time treating Lincoln as a tragic
hero.
This consequent ambivalence is
evident in the film as a subtext,
but it functions only intermittently.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Keeping the ante-bellum social
> order intact along with emancipation
> of the slaves was probably impossible
> and I will agree that Griffith idealized
> the Southern ethos. I do agree he
> deplored its destruction as one consequence of black
> enfranchisement---while at the same
> time treating Lincoln as a tragic
> hero.
>
> This consequent ambivalence is
> evident in the film as a subtext,
> but it functions only intermittently.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. What you see as
subtext I see as the narrative and dramatic motor of the whole film
leading inexorably to its climax.
George Shelps
>We'll just have to agree to disagree on
>this point. What you see as subtext I see
>as the narrative and dramatic motor of
>the whole film leading inexorably to its
>climax.
Yes, but I contend that the "dramatic
motor" you describe is simply not
continuously present and, experienntially,
non-existent in such as scenes as.
for example, the Little Colonel stuffing
the Confederate flag into a Yankee cannon or the poignant homecoming
scene with Mae Marsh---to cite examples
of the two poles, epic and enotional, which is true "motor" of BIRTH OF
A NATION.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Yes, but I contend that the "dramatic
> motor" you describe is simply not
> continuously present and, experienntially,
> non-existent in such as scenes as.
> for example, the Little Colonel stuffing
> the Confederate flag into a Yankee cannon or the poignant homecoming
> scene with Mae Marsh---to cite examples
> of the two poles, epic and enotional, which is true "motor" of BIRTH OF
> A NATION.
The battle scenes have no specific racial content. All the scenes with
the Little Sister are there to set up our horror at her death at the
hands of a drooling black would-be rapist. These scenes, like the
scenes of any good drama, have other resonances as well, but their
function in constructing the emotional climax of the work is paramount.
Incidentally, Marsh's work in the film is amazing -- to me it's the
stellar performance of the whole picture.
SCUnive...@gmail.com
wrote:
i thought the implied rapist was a mulatto (or mixed race)
character.
Am I mistaken?
Eric Stott
<SCUnive...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1176550118....@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> i thought the implied rapist was a mulatto (or mixed race)
> character.
> Am I mistaken?
>
Yes, and as I recall the film or book (I don't know which and I don't care)
made out that the combination was worse- the cunning of a white man mixd
with the instincts of a black, or some such piece of crap.
Lloyd Fonvielle
It's a central proposition of the film that mulattos are by nature
debased -- all of those portrayed in the film, whether educated or
ignorant, are despicable and reveal a bestial character sooner or later.
This is crucial to the film's general paranoia about miscegenation.
The irony of course is that most "mulattos" were the products of rape by
white men of black female slaves -- one of those historical facts that
"The Birth Of A Nation" conspicuously ignores.
When I referred to Gus as a "black" I was following modern usage, but in
the film he is identified as a "mulatto".
George Shelps
>All the scenes with the Little Sister are
>there to set up our horror at her death at
>the hands of a drooling black would-be
>rapist. These scenes, like the scenes of
>any good drama, have other resonances
>as well, but their function in constructing
>the emotional climax of the work is
>paramount.
I don't think this is accurate. The homecoming scene has a stand-alone
value and is climaxed by the mother,
not the Little Sister, drawing the Little
Colonek back into the family.
Harlett O'Dowd
wrote:
> > Yes, but I contend that the "dramatic
> > motor" you describe is simply not
> > continuously present and, experienntially,
> > non-existent in such as scenes as.
> > for example, the Little Colonel stuffing
> > the Confederate flag into a Yankee cannon or the poignant homecoming
> > scene with Mae Marsh---to cite examples
> > of the two poles, epic and enotional, which is true "motor" of BIRTH OF
> > A NATION.
>
> The battle scenes have no specific racial content.
Translation: if it doesn't neatly fit into Lloyd's world view, it is
superfluous.
Lloyd is going to believe what he is going to believe. Engaging in
debate with him is like teaching a pig how to sing - it wastes your
time and annoys the pig.
Let the pig be happy. Thankfully, by (along with the other two
stooges) driving enough people off AMS over the years, Lloyd's
nonsense has a very limited audience, and even less influence, these
days.
George Shelps
>>George Shelps wrote:
Even though I (usually) disagree with
Lloyd and think he is dead wrong about
BIRTH OF A NATION, I regard his posts
as well-thought-out, intellectually
serious, and well-informed.
Furthermore, unlike a number of his critics here, he avoids ad hominems,
questioning
of motives, and slurs on the character abd intelligence of his
opponents.
Robert Birchard
"Lloyd Fonvielle" <ll...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com> wrote in message
> Robert Birchard wrote:
[snip]
> An even bigger point I'm trying to make is that we need to look at exactly
> WHERE Griffith falsified the historical record and why he did so in those
> specific instances. In each case it involved highlighting the horrors of
> miscengenation and the danger to white females from black empancipation.
> This can hardly be compared to concocting an historically dubious romance
> between Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.
And isn't that just the point I've been making in all my posts?
Griffith was relying on:
1) History (as set forward by Southern revisionist historians like Woodrow
Wilson and others)
2) Popular culture in the form of a book and play also written by a southern
historical revisionist that was a proven hit with American audiences for
nearly a dozen years by the time Griffth brought TBOAN to the screen.
3) Popular (if misguided) notions of the time with regard to race.
Once again I repeat, for you who seem to be too dense to understand,
Griffith DID NOT make this stuff up. He was following the blueprint layed
down by Thomas Dixon, with regard to plot and message. Those sentiments
expressed by Dixon were commonly held throughout the U.S. at the time.
Griffith simply adapted an existing popular work.
AND, unlike the portrait you paint of Griffith as "racism personified,"
Griffith's film, taken as a whole, points to a much different overriding
thematic concern--as William Drew has pointed out.
Griffith primary message in TBOAN--and his primary contribution to the
adaptation of Dixon's source material-- is the notion that war is not a very
good way to settle human disagreements--that war always leads to unforseen
consequences. Seen in this context, the Cameron family isn't much different
than the German family in "Isn't Life Wonderful."
It could be argued that one of the great failings of Griffith in TBOAN
is that Dixon's underlying work, with its victory of the Klan over the
reconstructionists does not well lend itself to the oft-stated theme in
Griffith's subtitles and epilogue. One could also argue that Griffith fails
to make a case for "Intolerance" in the prosecution of the boy in the Modern
Story--except in the vaguest of connections. The arrest and trial of the
boy was perfectly legitimate, based on the available evidence. These
sorts of lapses are clearly a failing of Griffith's part.
But nowhere else in Griffith's work does he exhibit the hard core racist
tendencies that were the underlying basis of Dixon's source material in
TBOAN, "Broken Blossoms" being perhaps the best example to refute your basic
argument.
That said, Griffith certainly relied on white actors in blackface in a
number of his films, though these characters are invariably meant to be
comic and/or endearing in his other films. Such a reliance on "corking up"
white actors makes these performances unpalatable to today's audiences, but
Tom Wilson made a career playing blackface parts from the Teens into the
early talkie era--not just with Griffith, but with dozens of other
filmmakers. It was a lementable theatrical convention in retrospect, but
one that was common in films and on stage at the time. Al Jolsn, to give an
example from the stage, never appeared out of blackface until "The Jazz
Singer," Eddie Leonard was also a blackface entertainer throughout his
career on stage. We may not care for this sort of thing today, but that's
the world Griffith lived in. Well into the 1940s the Chinese character were
rotinely played by white folks--it makes well intentioned dramatic fare like
"The Good Earth" and "Dragon Seed" unwatchable today, although audiences
still seem to have a fondness for the portrayals of Warner Oland and Sidney
Toler as Charlie Chan, Peter Lorre a s Mr. Moto, and Boris Karloff as
Fu-Manchu
In retropsect, as I and others have said many times in respose to your
rantings, it can be seen that Griffith's adaptation of Dixon is based on
faulty history, but that was an idea not widely held at the time--in fact
one could argue that the nation as a whole was much enamored of the southern
revisionist historians' view of the conflict.
If you do not care for my analogy from "The Plainsman" (and you clearly
refuse to do so because if you acknowledged the wider implication of the
basic notion I raise it would undercut your own feeble arguments), look at
DeMille's similar "historical" defences for for the lesbian dance, or the
goring and nudity in "The Sign of the Cross" or more recently Mel Gibson's
defense of the quasi-pornographic sadism in "The Passion of the Christ" the
defense is always that it is "history." And, as I've said, this defense of
drama as being based in reality is at least as old as Shakespeare.
As for your oft-expressed notion that "promoting paranoia about white
women being raped by black
men was a canny commercial calculation but it falls into a different
catagory of moral activity than bending historical facts to set up a
fictional love story," again I repeat it WAS NOT Griffith who bent these
historical facts, it WAS Thomas Dixon. One can fault Griffith for bringing
Dixon's material to the screen, but Griffith DID NOT add racist elements to
Dixon's source material, and HE DID attempt (however feebly) to tone down
and counter balance Dixon's more outrageous passages.
These are the points we have been trying to make. This is not an
apologia for Griffith, but merely a statement that TBOAN has to be seen in
the context of its time and its social and historical setting. Griffith's
greatest crime, perhaps, is the same crime that many popular artists are
guilty of--making specific characters seem generic.
Today, for example, Blacks are commonly portrayed as drug dealers, pimps
and gangsters. Arabs are invariably terrorists, etc. Such portrayals are
not untrue in the sense that there are black drug dealers, pimps and
gangsters and there are Arab terrorists in the world. By focusing on such
characters for dramatic purposes, however, writers and filmmakers ignore
other blacks and Arabs who are none of these things. It is a comon failure
of popular culture.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> These are the points we have been trying to make. This is not an
> apologia for Griffith, but merely a statement that TBOAN has to be seen in
> the context of its time and its social and historical setting.
I've tried to indicate exactly how and where "The Birth Of A Nation"
reflects its social and historical setting, and how and where it goes
significantly beyond its social and historical setting in promoting an
extremist racist agenda.
Yes, Griffith's general portrait of Reconstruction reflected the
professional historical view of it at the time -- but it also departed
radically from that contemporary historiography in order to promote its
paranoia about miscegenation. It did not rely innocently but
misguidedly on faulty historical sources -- it distorted even those
biased sources in a deliberate way. Nor was that distortion in any way
comparable to the typical historical distortion practiced by Hollywood
to juice up a story, because it had a political and social agenda about
which Griffith was dishonest, to say the least.
Griffith didn't invent the racism of American society, which on one
level he innocently reflected. Nor did he invent the extreme form of
racism preached by Thomas Dixon -- but his embrace of that extreme form
of racism was not so innocent and cannot be viewed as simply "a
reflection of his times."
You may not agree with my contention that "The Birth Of A Nation"
contains two different types or degrees of racism, but you can't make a
convincing case against my contention by assuming a priori that it's
wrong and treating all the racism in the film as though it had a single
nature and source.
Harlett O'Dowd
> Furthermore, unlike a number of his critics here, he avoids ad hominems,
> questioning
> of motives, and slurs on the character abd intelligence of his
> opponents.
BTW, what of my previous comments do you consider an ad hominem
attack? My contention that Lloyd dismisses out of hand anything that
does not conveniently fit into his carefully crafted world view?
Or that Lloyd, Moran and you - with your endless navel gazing and (OT)
fighting - have driven scores of long-time AMSers away from this NG?
George Shelps
chris.c...@worldspan.com (Harlett O'Dowd) wrote:
>>Furthermore, unlike a number of his
>>critics here, he avoids ad hominems,
>>questioning of motives, and slurs on the
>>character abd intelligence of his
>>opponents.
>BTW, what of my previous comments do
>you consider an ad hominem attack?
None. I wasn't referring to you.
I was thinking of such as William Drew,
who has even been known to yell "fascist!" as a trump card in a debate.
> My contention that Lloyd dismisses out
>of hand anything that does not
>conveniently fit into his carefully crafted
>world view?
Hello? Most people try to maintain a
point of view consistent with the evience..
Lloyd never dismisses contrary views
out of hand, he simply counters with his
own. What would you do differently?
>Or that Lloyd, Moran and you - with your
>endless navel gazing and (OT) fighting -
>have driven scores of long-time AMSers
>away from this NG?
Listen, pal, Moran (and some clown
called Bachusio) have an ad hominem
flame agenda motivated by politics. I never initiate political or flame
posts.
And while you may disagree with Lloyd---and I usually do--the quality
and intellligence of his posts far
outweight the loss of unamed "long-time
AMSers" whomever they may be. (As to
"long-time" criteria, I've been posting
here myself for 10 years...)
Lloyd Fonvielle
> BTW, what of my previous comments do you consider an ad hominem
> attack? My contention that Lloyd dismisses out of hand anything that
> does not conveniently fit into his carefully crafted world view?
He may have had this in mind:
"Let the pig be happy. Thankfully, by (along with the other two
stooges) driving enough people off AMS over the years . . ."
Calling someone a pig and a stooge would be considered ad hominem
attacks by most reasonable people.
Feuillade
wrote:
<snip>
> Yes, Griffith's general portrait of Reconstruction reflected the
> professional historical view of it at the time -- but it also departed
> radically from that contemporary historiography in order to promote its
> paranoia about miscegenation. It did not rely innocently but
> misguidedly on faulty historical sources -- it distorted even those
> biased sources in a deliberate way.
>
And you know this how?
How many of these works have you actually read?
Titles, please. Authors would be nice, too.
Tom Moran
Feuillade
wrote:
>
> Or that Lloyd, Moran and you - with your endless navel gazing and (OT)
> fighting - have driven scores of long-time AMSers away from this NG?
>
enough.
Tom Moran
George Shelps
>>BTW, what of my previous comments
>>do you consider an ad hominem attack?
>He may have had this in mind:
>>"Let the pig be happy. Thankfully, by
>>(along with the other two stooges)
>>driving enough people off AMS over the
>>years
>>BTW, what of my previous comments do you consider an ad homine
Yes, I had mentally attributed that to another poster, but it belongs to
"O'Dowd."
Readers of this newsgroup will be hard
pressed to find similar slurs among
Lloyd's posts.
>Calling someone a pig and a stooge
>would be considered ad hominem
>attacks by most reasonable people. . .
Lloyd Fonvielle
I know the Griffith-era historiography of Reconstruction mainly through
refutations of it -- no one in their right mind would wade through the
stuff itself. John Hope Franklin's famous book on Reconstruction offers
a good overview and demolition of it. Kenneth Stamp's book on the same
subject is also important.
Revisionist histories of Reconstruction demolish many myths about it
previously accepted as historical fact, but I have never run across any
reference to any historian ever asserting that Thaddeus Stevens had an
affair with a mulatto housekeeper, that black troops in South Carolina
went on rampages against whites, or that any prominent elected black
official ever tried to rape a white woman. These incidents were
invented out of whole cloth by Dixon and then dramatized cinematically
by Griffith.
The portrait of Stevens in the film is pure malicious slander, as is the
portrait of black troops in South Carolina during the war. Glatthaar's
"Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White
Officers" records the wartime activities of the black regiments in South
Carolina and will readily disprove Griffith's portrait of them in the
first half of "The Birth Of A Nation" as marauding maniacs.
As for the incident of the black lieutenant-governor trying to rape a
white woman, Griffith's silence in response to Storey's challenge on
this point is eloquent testimony to the fact that it was the product of
paranoid fanatsy, with no basis in any historical source. If Griffith
could have provided such a source I'm sure he would have.
Reel...@aol.com
>
> > Titles, please. Authors would be nice, too.
>
> I know the Griffith-era historiography of Reconstruction mainly through
> refutations of it -- no one in their right mind would wade through the
> stuff itself.
I think that this statement by Lloyd Fonvielle in which he states that
he will never read any books that disagree with, or challenge, his
point of view is as revelatory as anything he has ever said. It is
also why I feel debate with him is ultimately useless.
My appreciation to the many on this forum who have done a very
effective job of countering the exaggerations and misstatements
inherent in Mr. Fonvielle's typically over-the-top, holier-than-thou
rhetoric. At the same time, since I did play a role in stirring up
Fonvielle even further, my apologies to people on this forum,
including those who have understandably felt it is going nowhere with
endless chestnuts like the old "Birth" controversy that Fonvielle,
with his apparently constant need for attention, just felt he had to
provoke. Perhaps I should have let it slide on the grounds that if
nobody pays his diatribes any mind, he'll just move on to something
else. However, because for seemingly the thousandth time, he was
misrepresenting the position of James Agee, I thought I should at
least point out what the writer actually did say with respect to
Griffith. And yes, because he has what I see as a deplorable habit of
going off on a tangent on subjects about which he appears to know
little due to a mind that seems permanently closed to any opinion but
his own, I felt I had to point out why his general approach is so
problematic.
As for the issue of "ad hominem" personal attacks, I am only
responding to the series of posts that Lloyd Fonvielle has sent here
over the years. A handful have been good with some interesting
insights, although usually his better ones don't inspire much
discussion. (Neither do most of mine, by the way. I'm not
complaining, merely pointing out that in many cases, people presumably
absorb the information proffered without feeling the need to make
further comment.) However, a large percentage of Mr. Fonvielle's
posts reflect what I find to be a moralistic and self-righteous tone,
wordy but with seemingly little thought or study behind them, posts so
over-the-top that they invariably set a lot of people off to respond.
Now it may very well be that in his personal life, Lloyd Fonvielle is
a great guy. He may be a loyal friend and responsible for innumerable
acts of charity. He may demonstrate the utmost integrity in business
dealings. He may be a whiz at chess, a wonderful dancer, a formidable
skier, and a linguist fluent in 20 languages. So I am not criticizing
Mr. Fonvielle on any of the above. None of that is relevant to his
level of expertise in film history. I am merely registering my
objections, my very strong objections, not only to his latest tirades
against Griffith and "The Birth of a Nation," but to an overall
pattern of historical abuse that does a disservice to the cause of
film history that he claims to support. It is on this issue that I
evaluate him, or rather, not him personally but the caliber of the
writing that he posts here on the subject of cinema history. And when
he presumes to set himself up as a judge over Griffith as being some
kind of evil racist, then, yes, I do think Mr. Fonvielle's attitude
towards Arabs and the subject of Western imperialism in general is
fair game. Also, to point out, as I did, that he's talking out of
both sides of his mouth when, on the one hand, he decries efforts by
the industrial establishment to curtail artistic freedom, whilst
simultaneously, he deplores it when an artist like Griffith or
Chaplin, operating in apparently total autonomy, projects a vision
that is not in keeping with his own outlook.
To conclude, in response to Fonvielle's latest rantings about
Griffith being guilty of slander and falsification by showing black
troops rampaging in South Carolina during the Civil War, a mulatto
lieutenant governor locking a white girl in a room with the intent of
forcing to marry her, a powerful congressional leader with a black
mistress etc., I have the simplest answer. The main title of "The
Birth of a Nation," both the original silent version and the early
sound music and effects reissue, states: "Adapted from Thomas Dixon's
novel, 'The Clansman.'" Now does Fonvielle know what a novel actually
is? My edition of "Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary" defines a
novel in part as "an invented prose narrative." And in this context,
the word "invent," again according to the dictionary, means "to think
up or imagine." My edition of "Funk & Wagnalls Standard Desk
Dictionary" defines a novel as a "fictional prose narrative." And
what is fiction? Funk & Wagnalls defines fiction as "Prose works in
narrative form, the characters and incidents of which are wholly or
partly imaginary."
The point here is that by acknowledging from the main title itself
that his film was based on a novel, Griffith also acknowledged that
much of "The Birth" stemmed from the imagination. For all the titles
proclaiming the historical authenticity of certain scenes, Griffith,
by admitting at the outset that the narrative derived from a novel,
placed his work in a different category than a documentary, a history
book, a biography, a piece of journalism, or, if I may say so, a post
on a.m.s representing itself to be entirely factual in its data and
analysis. I guess Mr. Fonvielle and I just have different concerns.
I am much more outraged over the violations of known facts by those
who are supposed to be giving us the absolute truth than what stems
from the imagination of those creating fiction, whether or not the
work being created is something that particularly appeals to me. To
me, someone like Judith Miller fabricating a story about Iraq for "The
New York Times" that helped lead to a bloody war is much more heinous
than either Griffith or even Thomas Dixon, as much as I may dislike
the tone of Dixon's writings. If Fonvielle is unable to distinguish
between those engaged in the art of fiction, something which is
ultimately invented whatever its basis in reality, and those who,
professing to be telling us the unvarnished truth, brazenly make up
things to advance an agenda--if he cannot tell them apart, then, in
the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet, he is indeed "frighted with false
fire."
William M. Drew
Feuillade
But first quotes me responding to Lloyd:
>>> How many of these works have you actually read?
>
>>> Titles, please. Authors would be nice, too.
>
>> I know the Griffith-era historiography of Reconstruction mainly
>> through refutations of it -- no one in their right mind would wade
>> through the stuff itself.
>
> I think that this statement by Lloyd Fonvielle in which he states that
> he will never read any books that disagree with, or challenge, his
> point of view is as revelatory as anything he has ever said. It is
> also why I feel debate with him is ultimately useless.
Damn! You beat me to it! :)
The sad fact is that Lloyd doesn't let the fact that he doesn't know
what he's talking about keep him from expressing an opinion.
But if he does feel like getting off his ass and actually learning a
little something, he might want to try and find these books by William
Archibald Dunning:
Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction (1898, rev. ed. 1904)
Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877 (1907, repr. 1968)
As well as these books by prominent members of "The Dunning School":
J.W. Garner - Reconstruction in Mississippi - (1901)
Walter L. Fleming - The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama -
(1905)
Charles W. Ramsdell - Reconstruction in Texas - (1910)
W.W. Davis - The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida - (1913)
J.G.de Roulhac Hamilton - Reconstruction in North Carolina - (1914)
C. Mildred Thompson - Reconstruction in Georgia - (1915)
Thomas S. Staple - Reconstruction in Arkansas - (1923)
But I feel like I'm giving Lloyd too much credit. Why should he
actually do the research and give an informed opinion when he can
simply talk out of his ass?
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
> the tone of Dixon's writings. If Fonvielle is unable to distinguish
> between those engaged in the art of fiction, something which is
> ultimately invented whatever its basis in reality, and those who,
> professing to be telling us the unvarnished truth, brazenly make up
> things to advance an agenda--if he cannot tell them apart, then, in
> the words of Shakespeare's Hamlet, he is indeed "frighted with false
> fire."
Griffith offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who could point out
historical innacurracies in "The Birth Of A Nation". That alone
distinguishes his claims from the normal claims of a creator of fiction.
I've pointed out three egregious inaccuracies, all of which serve to
enforce the film's racist agenda. It's a fair point.
Like most who've tried to argue with my comments, you switch frames of
reference according to convenience. Griffith's film is based on history
as it was known at the time, you say, but when it's pointed ou that he
departed significantly from history as it was known at the time, you say
he was just creating fiction.
You can't have it both ways.
The idea that no one has a right to comment on the film or on
Reconstruction unless he or she has mastered every work ever written on
the subject is absurd. I've read a number of respected books which
survey the historical literature on Reconstruction and my understanding
of it is more than sufficient to offer an informed opinion on it.
Have you read all the literature on the subject? Can you point to any
historical work from Griffith's era which supports his portrait of
Thaddeus Stevens' personal life, his portrait of the depradations of
black troops during the war, his portrait of a black lieutenant-governor
as a rapist?
Forget for a moment my motives in asking these question -- forget for a
moment my views on the war in Iraq. Just answer them.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> The sad fact is that Lloyd doesn't let the fact that he doesn't know
> what he's talking about keep him from expressing an opinion.
>
> But if he does feel like getting off his ass and actually learning a
> little something, he might want to try and find these books by William
> Archibald Dunning:
>
> Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction (1898, rev. ed. 1904)
> Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877 (1907, repr. 1968)
>
> As well as these books by prominent members of "The Dunning School":
>
> J.W. Garner - Reconstruction in Mississippi - (1901)
> Walter L. Fleming - The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama -
> (1905)
> Charles W. Ramsdell - Reconstruction in Texas - (1910)
> W.W. Davis - The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida - (1913)
> J.G.de Roulhac Hamilton - Reconstruction in North Carolina - (1914)
> C. Mildred Thompson - Reconstruction in Georgia - (1915)
> Thomas S. Staple - Reconstruction in Arkansas - (1923)
>
> But I feel like I'm giving Lloyd too much credit. Why should he
> actually do the research and give an informed opinion when he can
> simply talk out of his ass?
Are you implying that you've read all these books? If so, I'm
impressed. I've only read the one by Fleming. Otherwise I'm familiar
with the Dunning school only through later surveys (which tend to
demolish its basic assumptions, facts, sources and theses.)
At any rate, assuming we now have an expert on the subject engaged in
the debate, one who's personally mastered the particular texts in
question . . . let's get down to the facts actually relevant to my
arguments. Have you found in any of these books support for Griffith's
portrait of Thaddeus Stevens' personal life, support for his depictions
of the depradations of black troops during the war, or any source for
his portrayal of a black Reconstruction-era lieutenant governor as an
attempted rapist?
(Not holding my breath here . . .)
Feuillade
wrote:
babe.
But nice try for attempting to evade the issue.
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
> You are the one making the assertions. The burden of proof is on you,
> babe.
Hardly, snuggle-puss. I listed some of the books I read that inform my
opinion -- you listed a lot of books you may or may not have read that
may or may not inform your disagreement with my opinion.
> But nice try for attempting to evade the issue.
The issue is whether or not Griffith tried to be historically accurate
in the more scurrilous sections of "The Birth Of A Nation", whether or
not he had even a shred of historical support, however biased, for the
more outrageous elements of his story. You have contributed nothing
whatsoever to the discussion on this subject.
Robert Birchard
> Feuillade wrote:
Have you found in any of these books support for Griffith's
> portrait of Thaddeus Stevens' personal life, support for his depictions of
> the depradations of black troops during the war, or any source for his
> portrayal of a black Reconstruction-era lieutenant governor as an
> attempted rapist?
Lloyd, The above is a fine example of how you choose to present your
argument, and it demonstrates why your argument does not hold water.
The character of Austin Stoneman was created by Thomas Dixon, NOT
Griffith. It is Dixon's portrayal that Griffith recreates in the film, it
is not a portrayal of his own conception. While there are parallels between
the fictional character of Stoneman and historical personage of Thaddeus
Stevens, Dixon chose in creating his dramatic character to change the name
for the very reason that he was making stuff up. Had Griffith opted to
forego Dixon's fictional name and refer to the screen character as Stevens
instead of Stoneman, then you might have a point that Griffith was
specifically sliming and maligning an historical figure who did few of the
things attributed to the character in the film. But he didn't. He simply
recreated (for better or worse) the fictional character created by Dixon.
Perhaps you ought to read "The Clansman."
Feuillade
wrote:
> Feuillade wrote:
>> You are the one making the assertions. The burden of proof is on you,
>> babe.
>
> Hardly, snuggle-puss.
The fact that you believe this is part of the problem.
You are the one making the allegations. And you are the one who
admittedly has not done the reading that either would or would not
back up those allegations.
You are the one dealing in almost pure ignorance, and bragging about
it.
> I listed some of the books I read that inform my opinion -- you listed
> a lot of books you may or may not have read that may or may not
> inform your disagreement with my opinion.
I listed the books that you would have to read in order to prove your
point that Griffith's take on Reconstruction differed markedly from
that of the historians of his time.
And it's clear that you can't be bothered.
> > But nice try for attempting to evade the issue.
>
> The issue is whether or not Griffith tried to be historically accurate
> in the more scurrilous sections of "The Birth Of A Nation", whether or
> not he had even a shred of historical support, however biased, for the
> more outrageous elements of his story. You have contributed nothing
> whatsoever to the discussion on this subject.
>
I wouldn't say that. I would say that I have amply demonstrated that
you don't know what you're talking about on the subject of Grifith's
historical accuracy or lack of such.
Tom Moran
Robert Birchard
> Reel...@aol.com wrote:
>
> Griffith offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who could point out
> historical innacurracies in "The Birth Of A Nation". That alone
> distinguishes his claims from the normal claims of a creator of fiction.
> I've pointed out three egregious inaccuracies, all of which serve to
> enforce the film's racist agenda.
An interesting point, but I'm sure that Griffith had no fear of losing
his $10,000.
The film IS historically accurate in the broad sense. There was a civil
war, there was slavery, there was an historic Ku Klux Klan, there were black
legislators, Lincoln was assasinated. There are a number of historical
reconstructions in the film, either of locations or events based on cited
sources.
But, the Camerons are fictional, Austin Stonmean is fictional, the
inspriation for the birth of the Klan is fictional, Gus is fictional, Silas
Lynch is fictional (and may well have been developed by Dixon as a black
counterpart to the white villain Simon Legree in "Uncle Tom's Cabin").
There is some "emotional truth" in the film--i.e. "Southern ermine" and
the homecoming scene, Ben's reacton to Flora's death, the Cameron family's
reaction to the assasination of Lincoln, the mooning sentry in the hospital,
etc., but these moments are dramatizations that may reflect genuine human
emotions but which may not have been experienced in exactly these same ways
by any real people living or dead.
So Griffith could easily argue that TBOAN was historically accurate, and
still full of fictional elements that could not, strictly speaking, be
considered to be part of the historical fabric of the piece.
Again to draw on DeMille. "The Crusades" tells a love story between
Richard and Berangaria. It is historically accurate in the sense that the
two were real historical figures and they were married, but beyond that
everything else with regard to their relationship is totally made up
because, thus far at least, there is no historical record of Berangaria
beyond a few bare facts. DeMille felt is was perfectly legitimate to
"supply the missing pieces" in an historical narrative.
So "The Crusades" puts some real historical figures--Richard,
Berangaria, Saladin--and a bunch of fictional characters--into a real
historical setting (the third Crusade) and the arc of the Crusade is told
with reasonable accuracy, so one could argue, as DeMille certainly did, that
the film was historically accurate even though the entire narrative was a
work of fiction.
For dramtic purposes DeMille even treats Saladin in an inconsistent
manner. At the beginning of the film DeMille has Saladin overseeing the
destruction of Christian symbols. Later he has the same character allowing
Christians to worship. DeMille's motivation (as detailed in a transcript of
a conversation with other Paramount execs, as detailed in my book "Cecil B.
DeMille's Hollywood") was to have a villain the audince could identify with
to set up the motivation for "The Crusade," It was easier and dramitically
more expedient to personify that in the single character of Saladin than it
was to set up a separate character for this purpose. The Crusades were
dubious adventures from a moral point of view at best, and the Chritian and
Muslim perspectives on these events are undertsandably diferent--not unlike
the persepectives of northerners and southerners in "The War of the
Rebellion" or "the War Between the States."
I'm certain that Griffith would have argued along the same lines.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> The character of Austin Stoneman was created by Thomas Dixon, NOT
> Griffith. It is Dixon's portrayal that Griffith recreates in the film, it
> is not a portrayal of his own conception. While there are parallels between
> the fictional character of Stoneman and historical personage of Thaddeus
> Stevens, Dixon chose in creating his dramatic character to change the name
> for the very reason that he was making stuff up. Had Griffith opted to
> forego Dixon's fictional name and refer to the screen character as Stevens
> instead of Stoneman, then you might have a point that Griffith was
> specifically sliming and maligning an historical figure who did few of the
> things attributed to the character in the film. But he didn't. He simply
> recreated (for better or worse) the fictional character created by Dixon.
>
> Perhaps you ought to read "The Clansman."
I've read "The Clansman". It makes no sense to me to say that Griffith
is off the hook for "The Birth Of A Nation" because he just followed
Dixon. Nobody was holding a gun to his head, and he deviated from Dixon
when it suited him. He's morally responsible for everything that's in
"The Birth Of A Nation".
If he'd called Lincoln by some other name and saddled him with a mulatto
mistress, would that be any less scurrilous than what he did to Stevens?
Maybe Dixon and Griffith didn't want to get sued by Stevens'
descendants, but there's no other figure in history that Stoneman could
possibly represent and he's made up to look exactly like him.
You can call it creative license or you can call it vile slander, but it
proves that Griffith was distorting history deliberately to promote his
racisct agenda and was thus not simply reflecting the historical sources
available to him.
You can't have it both ways. Either Griffith was making a good-faith
attempt to present history in a fair way or he was distorting it
deliberately to sell a despicable point of view. The fact that Dixon
gave him a model is utterly beside the point.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> I would say that I have amply demonstrated that
> you don't know what you're talking about on the subject of Grifith's
> historical accuracy or lack of such.
I would say you're just being silly. Reading responsible critiques of
the historiography of Reconstruction is a perfectly valid way of
familiarizing oneself with the subject. Unless one is an academic, one
doesn't need to read every book ever written on a subject in order to
have an informed opinion about it -- and this is not an academic forum.
Incidentally, why don't you name just one book YOU'VE read about
Reconstruction or about the early historians of Reconstruction?
Harlett O'Dowd
wrote:
The Crusades were
> dubious adventures from a moral point of view at best, and the Chritian and
> Muslim perspectives on these events are undertsandably diferent--not unlike
> the persepectives of northerners and southerners in "The War of the
> Rebellion" or "the War Between the States."
please, "The War of Northern Agression."
Lloyd Fonvielle
> But, the Camerons are fictional, Austin Stonmean is fictional, the
> inspriation for the birth of the Klan is fictional, Gus is fictional, Silas
> Lynch is fictional (and may well have been developed by Dixon as a black
> counterpart to the white villain Simon Legree in "Uncle Tom's Cabin").
Stoneman is not fictional in the same sense that the Camerons are
fictional. He's a thinly-veiled, unmistakable portrait of a real
person, deliberately falsified to promote a racist agenda. The
maurauding black troops during the war are fiction masquerading as fact,
the behavior of the black legislators is fiction masquerading as fact,
and the portait of a black-lieutenant governor as a rapist is extreme
historical distortion, not designed to promote drama but to make a
political point about the consequences of black enfranchisement.
These distortions of fact to promote an essentially political and social
agenda are simply not comparable to normal dramatic license in the
service of effective storytelling, plain entertainment. Comparing them
to De Mille's, or even Griffith's, characteristic brand of
historically-flavored hokum is simply misleading.
Bob Lipton
> Feuillade wrote:
>
>> I would say that I have amply demonstrated that
>> you don't know what you're talking about on the subject of Grifith's
>> historical accuracy or lack of such.
>
> I would say you're just being silly. Reading responsible critiques of
> the historiography of Reconstruction is a perfectly valid way of
> familiarizing oneself with the subject. Unless one is an academic, one
> doesn't need to read every book ever written on a subject in order to
> have an informed opinion about it -- and this is not an academic forum.
>
> Incidentally, why don't you name just one book YOU'VE read about
> Reconstruction or about the early historians of Reconstruction?
>
>
>
And as you've defined "responsible critiques" as those in alleged
agreement with your position, you're off the hook?
Bob
Lloyd Fonvielle
> And as you've defined "responsible critiques" as those in alleged
> agreement with your position, you're off the hook?
One of the central assumptions of the Dunning school was that blacks
were a childlike race who couldn't handle freedom and needed strict
supervision by whites. It was in the context of such thinking that it
made its case against Radical Reconstruction. It would be very hard
today to find any responsible historian "agreeing" with this view.
It's sort of like saying that in order to condemn anti-Semitism, you
first need to read the "responsible" proponents of anti-Semitism, in
order to have a balanced view. But there are no "responsible"
proponents of anti-Semitism, and I don't have to immerse myself in
anti-Semitic literature in order to know this. Reading ABOUT the
Dunning school is depressing enough -- reading its literature in depth
would be an utter waste of time.
Slogging through "The Clansman" and "The Leopard's Spots" was quite
enough -- and quite nauseating.
Eric Stott
Stott
Feuillade
wrote:
> Feuillade wrote:
> > I would say that I have amply demonstrated that
> > you don't know what you're talking about on the subject of Grifith's
> > historical accuracy or lack of such.
>
> I would say you're just being silly.
>
And I would say that you're talking out of your ass -- which you have
a long habit of doing around here.
>
> Reading responsible critiques of the historiography of Reconstruction
> is a perfectly valid way of familiarizing oneself with the subject.
>
Really? And is "reading responsible critiques" of, say, Shakespeare,
an acceptable substitute for reading the actual works of Shakespeare?
I can see Lloyd now -- "I don't have to read "Hamlet" to have an
opinion on it! I've read the Cliff Notes!"
That would be about par for the course for you, Lloyd. You're the
Master of Sciolism.
>
> Unless one is an academic, one doesn't need to read every book
> ever written on a subject in order to have an informed opinion about
> it -- and this is not an academic forum.
>
No one is suggesting that you have to have read *every* book on this
subject.
But you haven't bothered to read Dunning or any of his "school" and
yet feel free to express opinions about authors you haven't read.
Which I somehow find typical.
And you wonder why no one takes you seriously.
>
> Incidentally, why don't you name just one book YOU'VE read about
> Reconstruction or about the early historians of Reconstruction?
>
My expertise is not at issue, babe. Yours is.
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
> . . . is "reading responsible critiques" of, say, Shakespeare,
> an acceptable substitute for reading the actual works of Shakespeare?
It wouldn't give you enough information to be able to comment
authoritatively on his style but it would give you enough information to
know he never wrote a play set in Tibet and to confidently contradict
anyone who said he did write a play set in Tibet.
You're arguing that no one who hasn't read every book ever written by
the Dunning school can have a valid opinion about that school, which is
nonsense.
Why not abandon these frivolous debating tactics and answer a simple
question -- do you really think there's any chance, whatsoever, that any
historian of the Dunning school ever reported as fact that Thaddeus
Stevens had a mulatto mistress? Or that any historian of the Dunning
school ever reported as fact that any black lieutenant-governor of any
Southern state under Reconstruction ever tried to rape a white woman?
Even granting that perhaps you haven't read every book ever written by
the Dunning school, or even one, or even any books ABOUT the Dunning
school, what's your common-sense gut instinct on this? Your best
reasonable guess?
Reel...@aol.com
To repeat what I said, as much as I appreciate the highly informed,
intelligent comments of Bob Birchard, Tom Moran and others posting
here, I think it's pointless for any of us to try to argue with Lloyd
Fonvielle. An auteurist gone wild, he lives in his own Manichean
little world in which film directors are entirely all-powerful,
autonomous beings, either agents for absolute good menaced by fiendish
producers or avatars of the devil responsible for all the world's
evil. However, until this thread is mercifully exhausted, I will
continue to point out Mr. Fonvielle's many errors and misstatements.
In this case, I wish to respond to his claim that no historian, even
of the Dunning School, ever stated that Thaddeus Stevens had a mulatto
mistress, that this was a slanderous allegation cooked up by Thomas
Dixon and faithfully adapted without question by D. W. Griffith for
"The Birth of a Nation." In actuality, many historians and
biographers, including some of those sympathetic to Stevens and
antagonistic to the Dunning School and the portrayals in "The Birth,"
have long expressed their belief that the unmarried Stevens had a
sexual relationship with Lydia Hamilton Smith, his mulatto housekeeper
and confidante who lived with him for over 20 years until his death in
1868. All Mr. Fonvielle has to do is Google "Thaddeus Stevens Lydia
Smith," and he will find plenty of online articles on the subject.
The rumors were rampant in Stevens's lifetime and appeared in print.
Unlike other rumors, including a published allegation that when he was
a young man, he impregnated a young black woman and then killed her to
keep her quiet, Stevens never publicly denied the rumors that the
widowed Mrs. Smith had become his wife in everything but name. So
were the rumors that Thad and Lydia were sleeping together true?
Let's just say that the probability theirs was a sexual relationship
is much greater than that nearly every star of Hollywood's golden age
was a closet gay, a fanciful notion dear to most of today's
biographers. In any case, Fonvielle's claim that Dixon and Griffith
made it all up out of whole cloth is absolutely false. They would
have found many references, I'm sure, in histories of the era to
Stevens's relationship with Lydia Hamilton Smith, upon whom the
character of Lydia Brown was based. Fonvielle is equally incorrect in
his speculation that the reason they changed Stevens's name to Austin
Stoneman was to avoid a possible lawsuit by Stevens's descendants.
Since the life-long bachelor Thaddeus Stevens, in fact, had no direct,
legal, recognized descendants, that was scarcely an issue. But since
Mr. Fonvielle never seems to bother with even the most elementary
research, using the kind of information that can be readily found on
Google, he apparently never discovered that little detail, either.
As I indicated in an earlier post, there is no substantive
difference, either morally, aesthetically, historically, or
dramatically, between the creation of fictionalized characters based
on real individuals in "The Birth of a Nation" (Austin Stoneman, Lydia
Brown) and in "Citizen Kane" (Charles Foster Kane, Susan Alexander).
I am sure, however, that Fonvielle will try to deny the parallel,
arguing that William Randolph Hearst was a bad man, a terrible monster
who deserved to be taken apart on screen, while Thaddeus Stevens was a
wonderful advocate of humanity fighting the evils of slavery who
deserved to be depicted in the most favorable of lights, even in a
fictive portrayal. If the woman in Hearst's life ended up maligned,
too bad but she lived with the guy and helped sustain him, so she
deserved it.
In actuality, there are a number of intriguing parallels between
Hearst and Stevens. Hearst in his day actually did fight through his
newspapers for a number of important social reforms that benefited the
common man during the Progressive Era, while Stevens likewise fostered
notable social reforms aiding the ordinary citizen in his state prior
to the Civil War. Both men, however, had a bellicose streak,
continually fomenting hatred against certain targeted enemies,.and
were not entirely ethical in all their dealings. And, of course, both
men were the subject of widespread gossip in their day concerning
their longtime relationships with women who were said to be their
mistresses. Finally, that they both became pivotal to two of the
greatest, most ground-breaking masterpieces in film history is yet
another parallel.
William M. Drew
Feuillade
wrote:
> Feuillade wrote:
>> . . . is "reading responsible critiques" of, say, Shakespeare,
>> an acceptable substitute for reading the actual works of Shakespeare?
>
> It wouldn't give you enough information to be able to comment
> authoritatively on his style [...]
It wouldn't give you enough information to be able to comment
authoritatively. Period.
> [...] but it would give you enough information to know he never wrote
> a play set in Tibet and to confidently contradict anyone who said he
> did write a play set in Tibet.
>
Thanks for the non sequitur.
>
> You're arguing that no one who hasn't read every book ever written by
> the Dunning school can have a valid opinion about that school, which is
> nonsense.
>
Actually, I'm *not* arguing that, and it's a typical example of your
style. Misstate your opponent's position and hope no one will notice.
I'm arguing that you don't know what you're talking about. And I'm
arguing that because if you have not read the books in question you
don't have enough authority to make an informed statement.
Ann Coulter wrote an entire book "refuting" Darwin and evolution when
it's obvious to anyone who reads her book that she's never read
Darwin.
Do you have to have read *all* the books of the Dunning school?
Perhaps not. But you haven't bothered to read any of them while at
the same time pretending as if you're an expert on the subject.
You're a phony, Lloyd. Who do you think you're kidding?
>
> Why not abandon these frivolous debating tactics and answer a simple
> question -- do you really think there's any chance, whatsoever, that any
> historian of the Dunning school ever reported as fact that Thaddeus
> Stevens had a mulatto mistress?
Try asking William Drew that question. (Heh heh heh...)
> Or that any historian of the Dunning school ever reported as fact that
> any black lieutenant-governor of any Southern state under Reconstruction
> ever tried to rape a white woman?
>
Did they ever report as fact that there was a mansion in Georgia
called Tara?
Or that there was a family in South Carolina named the Camerons?
Earth to Lloyd. "The Birth of a Nation" is a fictional film based on
a novel. As such it is under no obligation to prove, to you or to
anyone else, that every character and every incident is literally true
-- any more than Thackeray has to prove to you or anyone else that the
events in "Vanity Fair" really happened.
Do we have to define "novel" for you?
Tom Moran
Lloyd Fonvielle
odd that you report rumors about Thaddeus Stevens circulated by his
enemies as though they were historical facts. The question I asked was,
did any historian of the Dunning school ever report as fact that
Thaddeus Stevens had a mulatto mistress? A source citation would be useful.
Do you know anything about Lydia Hamilton Smith? She was by all
accounts a remarkable woman, thought to be involved in the Underground
Railroad, helping fugitive slaves get to freedom in Canada. She ran
Stevens's home and business, he insisted his visitors call her Mrs.
Smith and treat her respectfully, and he left her money in his will
which she used to purchase and successfuly run her own business. There
is no evidence that Stevens' relationship with her was sexual -- much
less that she was the infantile, scheming, lascivious creature portrayed
by Griffith in his film. Knowing a few facts about Lydia Smith makes
Griffith's portrayal of her in some ways more reprehensible than his
portrayal of Stevens.
But even this misses the larger point. What if the relationship between
Stevens and Smith was sexual? What if they loved each other but were
unable to marry because of the laws against miscegenation? What then of
Griffith's characterization of their relationship as "the weakness that
blighted a nation"? What possible motive could anyone have for wanting
to minimize the mean-spirited vileness of this attitude?
You also conveniently pass over the other question I asked -- did any
historian of the Dunning school ever report as fact that a black
lieutenant-governor of a Southern state under Reconstruction ever tried
to rape a white woman?
You seem to think that the buck can be passed indefinitely. Griffith
didn't make-up the scurrilous caricature of Stevens in "The Birth Of A
Nation", he got it from Dixon -- and now, Dixon didn't make up the
scurrilous caricature of Stevens found in his work, it was based on
earlier scurrilous gossip.
Is no one in this whole sorry process morally responsible for any of
their behavior?
Susan Alexander is a good comparison. She was clearly meant to be a
caricature of Marion Davies, and I think almost everyone would agree
that the caricature was unfair, malicious -- even contemptible. It was,
however, motivated out of spite, mischief and bad taste -- not in order
to promote a vile form of racism, which makes it slightly less
offensive, at least to me, than Griffith's caricature of Stevens and the
estimable Mrs. Smith.
Reel...@aol.com wrote:
--
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Earth to Lloyd. "The Birth of a Nation" is a fictional film based on
> a novel.
Earth to Tom. "The Birth Of A Nation" is a fictional film whose
incidents Griffith claimed were all based on historical facts. They
were not. There were undoubtedly kindly plantation owners like the
Camerons in the ante-bellum South -- there was undoubtedly no black
lieutenant-goveror during Reconstruction who tried to rape a white
woman. You really can't see the difference?
> Do we have to define "novel" for you?
Do I have to define for you the difference between historical fiction
and racist propaganda?
Feuillade
wrote:
> Feuillade wrote:
>> Earth to Lloyd. "The Birth of a Nation" is a fictional film based on
>> a novel.
>
> Earth to Tom. "The Birth Of A Nation" is a fictional film whose
> incidents Griffith claimed were all based on historical facts. They
> were not.
>
Oh, really?
There wasn't a Civil War?
There wasn't a Reconstruction?
Both the Civil War and Reconstruction are historical facts.
Does that mean that every character and incident in "The Birth of a
Nation" has an exact historical parallel? Of course not, any more
than every character and incident in "War and Peace" has an exact
historical parallel.
Only a retard would think differently.
Once again:
"The Birth of a Nation" is a fictional film based on a novel.
You don't seem to be able to get this simple concept through your
skull.
I'm starting to think that William Drew is correct when he says that
discussing this subject with you is a complete waste of time.
> There were undoubtedly kindly plantation owners like the
> Camerons in the ante-bellum South -- there was undoubtedly
> no black lieutenant-goveror during Reconstruction who tried
> to rape a white woman. You really can't see the difference?
>
> > Do we have to define "novel" for you?
>
> Do I have to define for you the difference between historical fiction
> and racist propaganda?
>
Once again, Lloyd. This time with feeling:
What part of "fiction" don't you understand?
Tom Moran
Eric Grayson
> discussing this subject with you is a complete waste of time.
Oh! And Tom wins a cigar! Thank you, Mr. Drew for pointing out the
obvious.
Lloyd Fonvielle
> On Apr 18, 4:13 am, Lloyd Fonvielle <l...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com>
> wrote:
>>Earth to Tom. "The Birth Of A Nation" is a fictional film whose
>>incidents Griffith claimed were all based on historical facts. They
>>were not.
>
> Oh, really?
Really. Many incidents were blatant inventions designed to promote the
film's racist agenda.
> There wasn't a Civil War?
>
> There wasn't a Reconstruction?
There are many actual historical facts reflected in "The Birth Of A
Nation". There are also many blatant violations of fact. I think
there's something to be learned from recognizing the difference. You
obviously could care less.
Feuillade
wrote:
Tom Moran
Feuillade
wrote:
> Feuillade wrote:
> > On Apr 18, 4:13 am, Lloyd Fonvielle <l...@fabulousnoSPAMwhere.com>
> > wrote:
> >>Earth to Tom. "The Birth Of A Nation" is a fictional film whose
> >>incidents Griffith claimed were all based on historical facts. They
> >>were not.
>
> > Oh, really?
>
> Really. Many incidents were blatant inventions designed to promote the
> film's racist agenda.
>
> > There wasn't a Civil War?
>
> > There wasn't a Reconstruction?
>
> There are many actual historical facts reflected in "The Birth Of A
> Nation". There are also many blatant violations of fact.
>
What part of "fiction" don't you understand?
Have fun playing by yourself, because I'm getting off the trolley at
this stop.
Tom Moran
Harlett O'Dowd
> Have fun playing by yourself, because I'm getting off the trolley at
> this stop.
BY? Don't you mean *with*?
Feuillade
wrote:
You know, for a fleeting moment I thought about going there, and then
decided against it.
Tom Moran
Harlett O'Dowd
I'm not called Harlett for nuthin!
Robert Birchard
> Robert Birchard wrote:
>
> You can't have it both ways. Either Griffith was making a good-faith
> attempt to present history in a fair way or he was distorting it
> deliberately to sell a despicable point of view. The fact that Dixon gave
> him a model is utterly beside the point.
>
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, Lloyd. Do you ever read any of
your stuff before you post it? And do you ever bother to read anybody
else's stuff and think about it before you shoot from the lip?
I simply do not accept your "either/or" premise. It is stupid and
mudle-headed. Dramatists have long mixed history with fiction with motives
that may have been pure or impure or both, or neither.
"Richard III"
"Macbeth"
"They Died With Their Boots On"
"Tombstone"
"The Three Musketeers"
"Marie Antionette"
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
"Johnny Tremaine"
"Ben and Me"
"Till I come Back to You"
"Hands Up"
"Brigham Young"
"Napoleon"
"Abraham Lincoln" (to mention another Griffith film)
"Letters From Iwo Jima"
This is just a random off the top sampling without breaking a sweat.
Often historical characters are whitewashed (as in "Brigham Young"), or
their actions are completely made up from scant evidence (as in "Letters
from Iwo Jima") or their real life motives and actions are bent to suit the
needs of a story (as in "The Three Musketeers," in which the historic queen
of France is portrayed as having had an affair with a man perceived to be an
enemy of the state), or they are idealized for propeganda purposes (the
sitting King of Belgium in "Till I Come Back You"--a benign portrayal that
inores Belgian atrocities in the Congo, even as it condemns German
atrocities in Flanders Fields).
What I am merely saying is that all the extreme, hateful racist elements
you rightly abhor in TBOAN are present in Dixon, and none of them are
present in any of Griffith's other work. It is not unreasonable to surmise
that Griffith was perhaps being more faithful to his underlying source
material that you care to believe. I don't expect you to agree or disagree,
but only to be open to the possibility that Griffith may have been motivated
by reasons other than those you ascribe to him.
George Shelps
Feui...@aol.com (Feuillade)
wrote:
>On Apr 18, 1:34 pm, Harlett O'Dowd
><chris.conne...@worldspan.com>
>wrote:
>>>Have fun playing by yourself, because
>>>I'm getting off the trolley at this stop.
>>BY? Don't you mean *with*?
>You know, for a fleeting moment I
>thought about going there, and then
>decided against it.
Yeah, hat's what we need on AMS---encouraging a twerp like Moran.
Look, I disagree with Lloyd's viewpoint
on TBOAN, and I have said so, and
Lloyd and I have agreed to disagree.
But I see no justification for the gratuitous
insults, slurs, and ad hominem attacks
that have been made here Even the most temperate critic, Bob Birchard,
unfairly characterized Lloyd's posts
as "ranting."
Why not simply rebut Lloyd, point by
point, and move on?
Lloyd Fonvielle
> Have fun playing by yourself, because I'm getting off the trolley at
> this stop.
I for one am certainly going to miss you.