We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue - the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word - that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.
Keep in mind that Birth of a Nation is a silent film and so “quotes” from it are those presented on title cards. More to the point, however, is that Birth of a Nation is really the first “modern” theatrical feature in the sense of separating what came before and what came after (in terms of film-making, not in terms of its backwards and vicious racial politics). The film introduced essentially every aspect of what is considered a feature that audiences take for granted today. Because it was such a revolutionary—and evolutionary—step forward in the progression of the medium, its director D.W. Griffith felt compelled to preface what was to come with this call for understanding. Griffith reveals his keen mind as a revolutionary force in cinema here by engaging in a little rhetorical manipulation: knowing that his film would be attacked for its violence and other perhaps questionable attributes, he attempts to proactively transform those attacks against him personally into an assault against free speech and artistic expression. The genius here is linking his film to the Bible because it is impossible to argue against the value of “teaching morality” by illuminating the dark side when the Bible itself uses such tactics.
The bringing of the African to America planted the first seed of disunion.
The film opens with this title card, thus making it one of the most disturbing aspects of the film as it relates to complaints about the explicitly racist content. What is problematic is not so much what the card asserts, but the ambiguity implied by what it does say. The accompanying visuals which follow are of slaves, abolitionists and a fictionalized character based on anti-slavery firebrand Sen. Thaddeus Stevens. What is not show are slave traffickers and plantation owners. Thus the implicit message of this title card—shockingly—is that the discord which led to the Civil War was not caused by those “bringing” slaves to America, but the slaves themselves and those who fought against the rights to own human beings.
“The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation . . . until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”
This is a quote from the man who was President of the United States at the time of the film’s release. The quote is derived from Wilson’s book, History of the American People. Whenever anyone ever attempts to argue that Birth of a Nation is not a film which fosters a distinctly racist ideology, one need only point to this quote for refutation. The film is drenched with support and admiration for its view of the purpose and intent of the KKK and by extension is accepting of its most vile tactics. The Ku Klux Klan, according to the film’s socio-historical revisionist approach to history was not an organization founded merely on the most primal racist impulses of hatred and prejudice, but was, in fact, an organization necessary for the protection of southern culture, racially pure bloodlines and the virginity of young white maidens terrified of becoming victims by the uncontrolled primitive lust of black males. The existence of any single one actually needing protection by such extreme measures is, of course, dubious at best.
“The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defence of their Aryan birthright."
The connotation of the term “Aryan” in association with the German Nazi has somewhat muddle the racist aspect of this particular quote. Prior to that adoption as a term of racial superiority and at the time the film was made, Aryan was more simply a referent merely to Caucasian race as a separate entity from African, Asian, Indian, Arabic, and Semitic races. Essentially racist, the defense implied here is of white Americans to remain in power over freed black slaves. It is still corrosively and unabashedly racist, but mere chronology disallows it from being related to Nazi ideology.
