Word: birth
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While The Birth of a Nation is truly a groundbreaking movie for its cinematographic technique (especially in its revolutionary use of parallel editing and dramatic pacing), the film is better known for its overt glorification of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its degrading portrayal of blacks. Its re-interpretive historical plot paints the fall of antebellum Southern culture as a disgraceful tragedy perpetuated by lazy blacks’ conniving and power-hungry “mulattos” and their misguided or equally opportunistic Northern sympathizers...
...short, Griffith’s blacks are ruthless, uncouth, and almost certainly deserving of a good lynching. The Birth of a Nation praises the actions of the KKK and casts Klan members as heroes who are not only justified in their horrific deeds, but morally obligated to forcibly “defend” the white elite from the blacks...
Given the red-in-the-face visceral fury that the original film has incited since its release (see sidebar), Miller’s first reaction upon viewing The Birth of a Nation was surprising. At the time, he was a philosophy/French literature major studying at Bowdoin College, a D.C. expat fed on hardcore punk groups like Bad Brains and a style of ’70s horn-funk called...
Miller was first inspired to remix The Birth of a Nation several years later, after the controversial 2000 presidential election. He noticed that the red and blue states were split along lines, much in the way the Union and Confederate states divided during the Civil...
...election was questioned, partly due to the alleged disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Miller is less unsure of the alleged fraud, describing it as “widely documented” and drawing a connection between the current underhanded tactics of party politics and the events in The Birth of a Nation...