A Response Equal in Eloquence and Power
By Eric Weiss, with comment by Jaeyong Shim
[1] The film Birth of a Nation (1915) directed by D.W Griffith was the first to incite outrage within America. Amidst international and political struggle in the early 20th century, one movie uncovered the strife within our own walls. The technological aspect of the moving picture was unprecedented for its time, and the ripples of its profound impact can still be felt in America today. The most virulent political responses to the film took form in debates over censorship; yet no laws could counter the film more efficiently than another film. In this case the artistic response to Birth of a Nation was a film directed and produced by black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux titled Within Our Gates (1919). The plot of Within Our Gates is essential to understanding the subtle and explicit responses Micheaux offers his audience. The film consists of three threads that are somewhat interwoven yet remain separate enough that they can each be considered a unique storyline.
[2] First, Gates begins in the south focused on two good friends living together, Sylvia and Alma. Sylvia has a fiancée in Brazil, of whom Alma is jealous. When Sylvia’s fiancée sends her a telegram saying when he will arrive, Alma intercepts it and frames Sylvia so that Sylvia is with a white man when her fiancée arrives. The fiancée has a fit of rage and breaks off their engagement. After this, Sylvia is distraught and finds work at a school for black children. Tuition at this school is little to none because those families that enroll their children are so poor. Reverend Wilson Jacobs principals the school with his sister, yet they are in financial trouble and will have to shut down soon if they cannot find funding. Sylvia offers to travel north to Boston to try to find a rich person who would fund the school. In Boston Sylvia is hit by a car driven by an old white philanthropist named Mrs. Warwick. At the hospital Sylvia explains her cause, and Mrs. Warwick agrees to help. After conferring with her other white friends, who disagree with her decision to help Sylvia, Mrs. Warwick decides to give 50,000 dollars to the school instead of the 5,000 that Sylvia asked for.
[3] The next thread of the film centers on a black preacher named Old Ned who preaches in Boston and takes kickbacks from the white people in power. In an example of one of his sermons, Micheaux specifically demonstrates Old Ned’s greed. Old Ned receives 100 dollars from rich white people (like Mrs. Warwick’s friend) in order to preach that education is sin and that white people will be damned for their schooling and learning. Although Old Ned is greedy, it is clear in the film that he knows that he is sinning by taking the white people’s money and preaching what they want rather than what he believes.
[4] In the third and final thread, Alma meets Dr. Vivian, a doctor from Boston who saved Sylvia from a mugging and who explains Sylvia’s personal history. When Sylvia was a baby, she was adopted into the Landry family. The Landrys were not wealthy yet had enough money to put Sylvia through school. With her education, Sylvia discovered that her father’s landlord had cheated him out of a significant amount of money. With this information, Sylvia’s father confronts the landlord, and they have a heated argument during which the white landlord exclaims that blacks should still be in slavery. At this moment, a white farmer who was also cheated by the landlord shoots him through the window then runs away. Efrem, the black man who is convinced that white people will accept him if he turns on his own race, spreads the rumor that Landry killed the landlord. The Landrys are forced to flee when a lynch mob forms, and after a week the riot becomes impatient and hangs Efrem, regardless of the fact that he formed the lynch mob. Soon after Efrem is lynched, Sylvia’s mother and father are captured and hung. After the flashback, the film closes with the marriage of Sylvia and Dr. Vivian.
[5] All the scenes and images in Birth of a Nation present the message that black people do not fit into white man’s society. The message presented by Within Our Gates does not directly contradict Birth but rather responds from a different point of view by asserting that black men cannot fit into white man’s society because it is so backward and corrupt. The themes in Gates war with the themes in Birth on the most fundamental level. The major implications of Birth include black peoples’ unquenchable lust for white women, their debilitating impact on white women’s psyches, and their inability to hold positions of power despite insatiable greed. Micheaux responds to these claims in Within Our Gates by exemplifying that women are more than capable of deceit and ingenuity and that driven working black men are just as fit for power as white men.
[6] Griffith articulates his message through meaningful, specific scenes in Birth that convey sweeping generalizations about groups of people such as black people, white people, and women. For example, when Gus chases Little Sister through the woods, Griffith shares implications on women as well as black people. Gus seems unable to convey why he wants to talk to Little Sister, yet even if he could, Little Sister would not have listened. Manic and unresponsive, Little Sister demonstrates the insanity that invades a woman’s mind in the presence of black people. The only black people in Birth are stupid common folk, lusting rapists, or unqualified power-hungry politicians. Specific scenes serve to dehumanize black people, but the absence of blacks portrayed as normal humans results in the dehumanization of the entire race as well.
[7] In response to these implications, Micheaux utilizes his characters to refute Griffith’s generalizations. The characters Alma and Sylvia in Gates are both independent, strong-willed, and intelligent women who have struggled through hardship and made it out the other side. Sylvia’s father and mother were hung, and Alma plots to frame her friend because of her jealous nature. According to Griffith, if a woman experiences any sort of trauma by a black man, her good sense will deteriorate because the trauma will be too much for her to handle. This view is exemplified in Birth when Little Sister jumps off a cliff because Gus was attempting to speak to her. In Gates Sylvia and Alma both demonstrate the intelligence the average woman has, but Mrs. Warwick completes the package. For a predominately black cast of characters, Mrs. Warwick shows how caring and intelligent white women can be. Mrs. Warwick serves to make Gates far superior to Birth for the simple fact that Micheaux uses Mrs. Warwick to solidify his statement on women; by portraying this white old women as a kind, generous, understanding, and intelligent person, Micheaux illuminates the inconsistency of Birth’s portrayal of women, while simultaneously showing his audience how women act in reality without the bias of race.
[8] Another group of people Griffith generalizes about throughout Birth is black men. Through scenic interpretation Birth labels black men as power-hungry, greedy, corrupt, and incapable politicians. One of the most shocking scenes of the movie takes place when blacks have the majority in the legislature and refuse to let whites state their opinions. Also in this scene the blacks are eating chicken and have their shoeless feet propped up on desks. Clearly Griffith implies that blacks are unfit for power because they are lazy and do not care for others than themselves. Another scene that expresses a similar message takes place when blacks only vote for other black people regardless of what the white people say or do. When the audience views these two scenes, even if they are not explicitly told that blacks are lazy and good for nothing, the images are so powerful that it becomes embedded in their subconscious regardless. This near-subliminal messaging is why Birth is such a powerful and moving film.
[9] Yet no matter how powerful Birth’s images, Micheaux counters the message they imply with equal force. In Gates, the preacher Old Ned is crucial to Micheaux’s statement regarding the similarities between whites and blacks. Old Ned takes kickbacks from the white people in power for preaching what they want him to preach rather than what he knows is right. The bribe says many things about many different people. The fact that Micheaux has a black man succumb to greed would seem to support Griffith’s generalization about black people as greedy, power-hungry scum, but it in fact equates blacks and whites, for white people are subject to greed in Gates. Examples of this are the landlord that cheated Sylvia’s father out of a significant amount of pay, as well as the white people in power who bribe Old Ned. White people exploit the black man’s virtue and love of religion by paying Old Ned. Those who attend his sermons believe in him, and when Old Ned preaches staying away from education, he perpetuates the economical and social caste that keeps blacks below white people. If white people were all virtuous, they would accept that black people deserve to rise through society, and Old Ned would not be paid to teach fallacies. Micheaux equates the two races and allows his audience to see that both blacks and whites are capable of sin, and anybody â€" black or white, man or woman, northern or southern â€" with greed in their heart is susceptible to corruption.
[10] Birth is considered one of the most moving films of its era not only because of the force with which it sends its message but also because of the reaction that it incited in the public as well as the political and artistic responses born against its controversial message. The political responses consisted of censorship debates and other decisions on whether to show the film publicly. Arguably more important than the political reactions are the artistic responses such as Within Our Gates, because they directly attack the content of the film and call its messages of white supremacy into question.
[11] Besides the scenic analyses that contradict Birth’s messages, the title Within Our Gates has meaning in itself. The title is a response to Birth, and it asks its audience to realize that racism and social inequality is happening within our own gates of America. This internal struggle plagues our population to this day, yet the majority of the public had no idea that this war continued forty plus years after the Civil War came to a close. Micheaux had a powerful message in mind, one that could match the intensity of Birth, and he succeeded. Within Our Gates was immediately censored from the public when it came out because of its groundbreaking ideals. Not that these were any less horrible than the themes in Birth, but this film was about black and white people being equal, which was even more controversial than films that made out white people as an evil, destructive race. This artistic response was effective because it did not respond to Griffith’s themes with malice but, rather, intellectual reasoning. To equate whites and blacks was a stroke of genius on Micheaux’s part, because this equality is what white people were so afraid of during the reconstruction. Without uttering a single word, Micheaux reveals the insecurity and irrationality behind Birth of a Nation while never overtly opposing its ideals. Not to say Micheaux did not contradict these themes, but he always implied their inaccuracy rather than overtly denying their accuracy. As far as artistic responses go, Within Our Gates was the most powerful because the audience could feel the truth in its message: blacks and whites are both humans, and while each race has its differences and nuances, both are connected by the same human vices and virtues that connect us all. (see comment by Jaeyong Shim)
Comments
In today's world in which diversity is respected, we understand the powerful message that Micheaux tried to deliver. Micheaux seemed to be relatively fair in depicting the lives of African Americans in the 1920s. For instance, Micheaux blamed not only whites but also blacks who merely pursue their own interests through Old Ned and Efrem. Also, Micheaux, through Mrs. Warwick, recognized the generosity of some white people. Due to the fairness, it is easier for the audience to take the film as it is than Birth of a Nation, a film that is driven by mass generalization and dichotomy between races.
However, I am not certain if it attained a consensus of Americans in the 1920s in which inequality was still rampant. It is said that Birth of a Nation was a big commercial success. In other words, many white people might have shared a view of Griffith toward African Americans. They would be reluctant to accept ideas of Micheaux who created independent black women characters and a black doctor character. In addition, Within Our Gates was presented in different versions because of different censorship standards of different cities and states, and I suppose some of cut out scenes may have been influenced by racial inequalities toward an African American director.
