Hate Mail - A Cineaste Denies that Birth of a Nation Had A Major Influence In The KKK Revival Of The 1920s

My dog took another turn for the worse, but isn't in pain.  I can't justify euthanizing my loyal dog just because taking care of him is inconvenient so I'm nursing him.  He's an old man's last dog after having been an old lady's last dog and I don't want to betray his trust.

Anyway, that's a long way of saying I don't have time to deal with this topic, myself, in the way I'd like to.  So, here, from PBS's American Experience website.  I'll point out the money quote because I know it's too much for someone like you to read two short paragraphs
 ... the Klan disbanded.  Nearly 50 years later, in 1915, "Colonel" William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan after seeing D. W. Griffith's film Birth of A Nation, which portrayed the Klansmen as great heroes. 

The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate soldiers and other Southerners opposed to Reconstruction after the Civil War. In the waning years of Reconstruction the Klan disbanded. Nearly 50 years later, in 1915, "Colonel" William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan after seeing D. W. Griffith's film Birth of A Nation, which portrayed the Klansmen as great heroes. Simmons made his living by selling memberships in fraternal organizations such as the Woodmen of the World, and looked to the Klan as a new source of membership sales. In his first official act, he climbed to the top of a local mountain and set a cross on fire to mark the rebirth of the Klan.

In its second incarnation, the Klan moved beyond just targeting blacks, and broadened its message of hate to include Catholics, Jews and foreigners. The Klan promoted fundamentalism and devout patriotism along with advocating white supremacy. They blasted bootleggers, motion pictures and espoused a return to "clean" living. Appealing to folks uncomfortable with the shifting nature of America from a rural agricultural society to an urban industrial nation, the Klan attacked the elite, urbanites and intellectuals.

So, boo, hoo, The KKK revival of the 1920s was a direct result of that first big Hollywood epic.  It was a terror movement reborn in the movie industry.  

Update:  And from the BBC:

“It [also inaugurated] the use of certain kinds of racial stereotypes which then became repeated again and again, right up until the 1960s and even beyond,” says Rice. As a case in point he cites a particular moment in the film that showed black lawmakers in South Carolina “as certain bestial simians eating fried chicken and bananas, leering at white women in the galleries”.

But the film’s racism was heightened because critics and film historians have judged it to be so brilliant in its use of cinematic techniques. “I don’t think we would remember this film as we do had it not been for the way [Griffith] uses parallel editing and shows us the KKK [rushing] in to save [the heroine], on horseback no less,” Ellen Scott says. “And he cross-cuts that image with the image of [a] black man attacking various people. So we have these two images cut together and in some sense the suspense that creates is the main impact of the film. I think that the film’s techniques were woven in with the film’s racist power.”

But the film’s racism was heightened because critics and film historians have judged it to be so brilliant in its use of cinematic techniques. “I don’t think we would remember this film as we do had it not been for the way [Griffith] uses parallel editing and shows us the KKK [rushing] in to save [the heroine], on horseback no less,” Ellen Scott says. “And he cross-cuts that image with the image of [a] black man attacking various people. So we have these two images cut together and in some sense the suspense that creates is the main impact of the film. I think that the film’s techniques were woven in with the film’s racist power.”

So, the same tropes that FOX "news" uses, that Donald Trump mines for his hate-campaign speeches are also descended from Birth of A Nation.   That's one of the really bad things that mass media-entertainment can do, it can misrepresent history and reality in a way that convinces even college educated people that its malignant fiction is reality and it becomes an immediate cultural influence and part of the common heritage of large numbers of people.  It influences their political thinking and their voting.  If the word hadn't been used already, what the movies do just about every single time they touch on history could be called "deforming" their audience.  The movies are some of the most destructive spreaders of malicious and false history in the history of our species.  

Perhaps on some better day I can get round to giving this a fuller treatment.

Update:  Well, dear, apparently it's too complex for you guys to fathom but let me point out something about how that thing called "time" works.  1915 came before the 1920s.  An event that happened in the 1920s couldn't have an effect on events in 1915 but an event, a major event, a major event in the culture would be expected to have effects on the period that came soon after that event.  Really, you people are stupider than Gerald Ford was ever accused of being.  I take that back, you're stupider than Dan Quayle, and that's plenty stupid enough to be getting on with.

Didn't they teach you how the counting numbers worked in the early elementary school years?