Despite of its notoriety for racism, The Birth of a Nation (1915) by D. W. Griffith is a film that offers plenty of American history in the 1910s. This paper asserts that the film is a good historical text to understand America’s social history, political history and film history. Before discussing the film’s historical authenticity and accuracy from various aspects, the function and reliability of a film as a historical text is compared to written history.
When we learn about history, most of the time we rely on historical texts that are written by historians. In other words, we learn history by reading texts that have been interpreted by historians. In contrast, we can also learn history through unwritten historical texts such as paintings,
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As a result, the inclusion of the excerpts makes the film be appear more genuine and authentic on screen, similar to a documentary film. Another example that makes the film to be authentic is the use of tableaux to pay homage to Mathew Brady, the Civil War photographer. In short, the film shows the events the lead to the nation’s split, the Civil War, Lincoln’s assassination, the struggle during the Reconstruction Era and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. All these events showed in the film are Griffith’s pro-Confederate view of the nation. The film tells the story of the martyrdom of the Southerners during the Civil War and Reconstruction era which leads to the birth of a unified nation, the United States. In addition, the film used fictional characters to depict the emotions and experiences of the Southerners during and after the war. Although the reality constructed in the film may differs to the actual reality, the film was able to take the emotional and experiential aspect of a history into account, enabling the audience to have immerse themselves in the past, which is often unachievable in written historical texts. Therefore, while the historical content of the film might not be accurate, the perspective that it offers toward the effect of Civil War and the Reconstruction Era enables the audience to see the American history with the emotions of the Southerners.
History of the Film
Apart from the film’s historical account on the American society and politics, the analysis of the film could also reveal the history of American film. By studying the aesthetics and technical of the film, we can understand how the story telling through screen has evolved. Furthermore, studying from the consumer point of view, we can also understand how films have been consumed over the years.
Film