Witchcraft in the Birth of a Nation Debate

By Jaeyong Shim

[1] Birth of Nation was reprimanded for presenting false images about African Americans being savage. Because of its controversial contents, Representative Lewis R. Sullivan introduced a bill that restricted the production of "show or entertainment which tends to excite racial or religious prejudice or tends to a breach of the public peace." In “Defense of the Sullivan Bill,” D.W. Griffith and Thomas Dixon brought up the freedom of speech stated in the U.S. Constitution that might be violated by the legislation.

[2] Here is the brief summary of their logic against the Sullivan Bill. The freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution, and, since "the moving picture is simply the pictorial press," it can not be forbidden in advance by the censorship. If details of films are not justifiable, they will be punished and criticized by the viewers. In short, Griffith and Dixon argue that the judgment should come after, not before the publication, and it must be only made by the public, not the government.

[3] In order to hold up their contention, Griffith and Dixon have used historical instances or drawn comparison between the film and other literature works. In the "Motion Picture and the Witch Burners," Griffith compared the censorship to witchcraft in the 17th century. Griffith said that Birth of Nation showed potential as a source of not only entertainment but also enlightenment, yet people failed or refused to see it. In other words, without proper reasons, the film was targeted to be condemned in Griffith's point of view like witchburners in the far back past. Moreover, in "The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America," Griffith brought up the Sedition Law, which made it a crime for any newspaper or other printed publication to criticize the government. People were repulsed by the fact that law violated their liberty, contributing to the victory of an opposing party in the presidential election. Griffith, in "Defense of the Birth of a Nation and Attack on the Sullivan Bill" drew an analogy between the film and The Merchant of Venice, which may seem to degrade Jews, by saying that it is "unwise to drag race or religion into the realm of censorship."

[4] Eventually, Griffith and Dixon coherently manifested the problem of the censorship, describing it as a legal weapon to bury their work that was historically complete and, in their views, educational. Censorship may be against the right to freedom of speech; nevertheless, I believe Griffith's argument was contradictory in a sense that African Americans would have felt as if they were being “witchcrafted” by Griffith as much as he felt his film was reprimanded without justifiable reasons.