Wordplay: Griffith's Case for the Defense
By Katherine Prosswimmer, with comments by Lynn Farley
[1] I focused on Griffith and Dixon’s defense of their movie and their argument against the Sullivan Bill, which would enforce censorship of any “show or entertainment which tends to excite racial or religious prejudice or tends to a breach of the public peace.†Not surprisingly, Griffith and Dixon vehemently oppose the bill. While it is clear that Griffith and Dixon’s portrayal of the civil war and Reconstruction elicited a strong negative reaction from many viewers, the two argue that the Sullivan Bill would violate their freedom of speech. I found their arguments to be quite fascinating. While the fundamental points of their arguments are sound, much of what Griffith and Dixon argue suggests either that they don’t fully understand why their work is being condemned or that they are aware of this and simply aim to shift the blame to some other aspect of their work.
[2] In demonstrating this, I found Griffith’s “The Motion Picture and the Witch Burners†to be most appropriate. Griffith says, “but The Birth of a Nation is a motion picture, and the motion picture is at present the witch of modern times, and at all times there must be witches to be burned.†In this part of his argument, Griffith tries to focus on the fact that it is motion pictures in general that are being condemned, not just The Birth of a Nation. I think it is important to note that The Birth of a Nation was not being condemned because it was a motion picture. Instead, if motion pictures were being condemned at all, it was because of the way in which The Birth of a Nation chose to portray history. Here Griffith tries to shift the negative focus onto the medium of The Birth of a Nation rather than the content. (see comment by Lynn Farley)
[3] However, Griffith later makes the strong point that “the motion picture has progressed. It is capable of conveying a given message in many ways enormously more effectively than any mode of expression the world has ever possessed. It is already performing this work.†I have to (mostly) agree with this statement. Each medium of entertainment has its own tone and method of “conveying a given message,†and while I think it is unfair to say that motion picture’s method is “enormously more effective than any mode of expression the world has ever possessed,†I do believe it is a unique method that should be celebrated as much as any other method. It is quite possible that the realness of movies helped contribute to the backlash against The Birth of a Nation -- I’m assuming the The Clansmen had many similar attitudes and scenes since The Birth of a Nation was based on it, but I don’t know that there was as strong of a backlash against it as The Birth of a Nation (there may have been, but since we haven’t read anything about that, I’m going to operate on the assumption that there wasn’t). I agree with Griffith, then, that it seems unfair to censure entertainment simply because a new effective medium of entertainment was produced.
[4] In another instance, Griffith says, “All drama must of necessity be conflict -- battle, fight. How are we to depict the right unless we show the wrong? Unless we show the evils of a vicious past, how are we allowed to be the means of guiding the footsteps of the present generation?†Here, I think Griffith actually stumbles across an important point in the argument against the Sullivan Bill, though he clearly is trying to get at something else. The key element of this statement is Griffith’s question: “How are we to depict the right unless we show the wrong?†Griffith follows this with the question “unless we show the evils of a vicious past how are we allowed to be the means of guiding the footsteps of the present generation?†which clearly demonstrates that Griffith believes The Birth of a Nation is being censured simply because it depicts an unpleasant part of American history. I find it very hard to believe that Griffith and Dixon were unaware of the way their film would be perceived and believe Griffith uses this statement to make it seem as if the people who tried to pass the Sullivan Bill were the narrow-minded, unpatriotic ones. (see comment by Lynn Farley) However, Griffith’s quote accidentally upholds the opposing argument as well when he asks, “how are we to depict the right unless we show the wrong?†The outrage The Birth of a Nation caused with its biased portrayal of African-Americans was clearly felt by many to be “wrong.†While it was unsavory to many, The Birth of a Nation still managed to convey what is “right†by allowing many audiences to acknowledge that it was “wrong.†Here, I think that Griffith (though accidentally) successfully conveys the importance of freedom of expression through film.
[5] Aside from the convoluted logic that Griffith and Dixon employ, they did manage to effectively argue against film censorship. I think that William Doherty, a previous RAHer who wrote an essay on this topic, said it best when he said, “ Ironically, without D.W. Griffith's fight against this billâ€"a self-centered one, to be sure, because he felt as though the bill was simply aimed to destroy The Birth of a Nation -- it might not have been possible to have forms of entertainment years later in this country that tackled race head on and taught us important lessons such as Norman Lear's groundbreaking TV show All in the Family in the 1970s or Spike Lee's masterpiece Do the Right Thing in the late-1980s.†He aptly concludes his essay by saying, “Ironically, it took a man who made a racist film that didn't further this country's discourse on race, in my opinion, in Griffith, to effectively argue that government shouldn't censor forms of entertainment that excite racial or religious prejudice to free people like Lear and Lee, two guys at the opposite end of the universe politically from him, to make works that did help people think about and discuss race in a constructive manner.â€
Comments
As observers of history, it's difficult to not impose our enlightened (fingers crossed since it's been 100 years) 21st-century non-racist judgment on what transpired in the past. We know that Dixon and Griffith's beliefs were dead wrong. However, after reading their essays, I find it completely plausible that they were unaware that the public would react negatively to the film. (Mind you, most of this "public" was comprised of Northerners and a "few Negro agitators.") These two men were racists through and through. They were brought up in a racist South, they looked up to Confederate parents, admired Ku Klux Klan bigots, and saw nothing wrong with slavery. When prejudice is that ingrained into a person's core, it's difficult to comprehend that a non-racist world exists. Dixon expressed "the passionate faith" of 25 million Southern white people, and Griffith held a white supremacist president in the highest regard: "as a great man has said of a certain motion picture, 'It is like teaching history by lightning.'" As misguided as we know they were, the two clearly felt they had created a masterpiece of truth and art in Birth of a Nation. I'd venture a guess that they spent more time defending the picture, than they did making it, which speaks well of most of the human race. At least there's a majority that does know right from wrong.
In support of this comment, I felt this quote from Griffith was important to include in Katie's view. He was a master of re-direction: "It is softening the hard life of the plain citizen with beauty and sweetness; it keeps men away from saloons and drink, because it gives them a place of recreation in pleasant surroundings; it brings to the poor who are unable to travel away from their own dingy surroundings the beauty and poetry of moving foreign scenes, of flowers, waving grasses, the beauty of uplifted mountain crests, and the wonders of nature." Clearly, a medium so wonderful could not contain the malice that Birth of a Nation was accused of possessing. Motion pictures were art forms capable of uplifting "man slowly and painfully with much torture and aching of joints out of the state of beasts." Griffith had nothing but the best intentions. The public merely feared new technology, and it was his job to help them overcome this new art form. In that sense, Griffith's employment of the re-direction technique was sheer brilliance. The words white, Negro, north, and south are conspicuously absent from the Witch Burner essay. When you're reading of Shakespeare, Goethe, Confucius, and Christ, it's easy to forget what all the fuss is about.
