I see that TCM is airing "Birth of a Nation" this evening...

[devilgrrl]

I've never seen this movie but want to out of morbid curiousity, how DW Griffith didn't think it was racist is beyond me - Jesus, Helen Keller thought it was! Anyone else going to watch this KKK membership drive video? Later on in the evening they're showing 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' too. Why it's racist American movie fest!

:eyes:

[GOPisEvil]

1. Well, TCM is doing a month-long look at race in Hollywood.

So, I suppose it makes sense to show the bad and the good, eh?

[argyl]

2. You can view this movie as an historic document. It was made only 50 years

after the end of the Civil War and it's now been 90 years since it's release.Yeah, it's racist as hell but it's also a reflection on the state of race relations in the early 20th century. As such, it's very watchable in a trainwreck sort of way.

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. Regardless of what we in modern times think of its content,

it's an important piece of cinematic history and rightly a classic.

[terrya]

5. I agree.

Obviously, it's racist. It's pro-Ku Klux Klan, for Christ's sake. The content is, rightly, shameful today.

But this was the silent era. Nothing like this...attempting to bring history to the screen...and in epic form, no less...was attempted before. D.W. Griffith was a visionary genius and "Birth of a Nation" should be regarded as a classic.

[democracyindanger]

4. Is it colorized?

'Cause then at least everybody will be a kind of weird shade of brown and green.