Mini-Symposium on Oliver Stone and D. W. Griffith

By the Reel American History class, Lehigh University, July 2010

Teacher's note: As a class, we seemed to support the goal and methods of Oliver Stone in JFK. We did not feel the same way about D. W. Griffith (and Thomas Dixon) in Birth of a Nation? Why? Aren't the issues fundamentally the same? So why did we praise one and deride the other? I thought the juxtaposition of these two central films in reel American history might trigger meaningful reflection on some core issues in reel American history. And I asked the class to try capturing their thoughts in one paragraph. (Prof. Edward J. Gallagher)

Contributors: Lauren Calabrese, Brian Carroll, William Doherty, Sonya Dollins-Colton, Kristen Englehardt, Elizabeth Guzzo, Greg King, Travis Statham, Karen Timmerman

Lauren Calabrese
Both Oliver Stone and D.W. Griffith rely upon the medium of film to reflect their version of the truth. In JFK and Birth of a Nation, Stone and Griffith smash the hegemonic perception of a major historical event and rearrange the historical shards into a mosaic-like whole. American ideologies, values, and ethics are battered around, dismantled, and then restructured to reflect a self-imposed truth. Irrefutably, remapping history distorts images and conceptualizations of culture. However, despite the topical similarity of truth through controversy, there is a major distinction between JFK and Birth of a Nation. Stone and Griffith construct and use their characters in vastly different ways. Griffith’s film is entrenched in glorifying an idealist mindset and seeks to honor the South through exploiting and dehumanizing black individuals. Gross distortion of characters does not reveal a greater truth but perpetuates racist and ignorant sentiment. Whereas Stone’s manipulation of Jim Garrison serves as a vehicle to present unexplored facts of the Kennedy assassination and to encourage others to seek the truth, the caricatures of Silas Lynch or the faithful house servant do not seek to uncover a higher ethical truth. Stone does not set out to portray Garrison strictly by all his action but, rather, uses Garrison as a vehicle to break the perception, to serve as a type of “catharsis” to produce emotional “vomit” if you will. Each viewing of the film creates emotional overtures that inadvertently chip away at the foundation of “inculcated perceptions.” To the contrary, the characters in Birth of a Nation function to present a polarity between good and evil -- black individual’s can be revolutionist aggressors or loyal minions. These stark categorizations limit a viewer’s space to explore and craft an authentic representation of reality. The presentation of a character in JFK does not undermine or castigate a population of American society, whereas Birth of a Nation’s use of characters reverts and regresses into an antiquated system of genocide.

Brian Carroll
Groundbreaking in both their achievements and contributions to the art of film, Oliver Stone and D.W. Griffith could not have been more dissimilar in their methods of portraying historical material. Though each filmmaker tends to fabricate historic details and exaggerate his plot to a certain degree, their objectives and purposes in doing so are drastically different. Whereas Stone’s JFK aims to bring truth and enlightenment to the audience, The Birth of a Nation seeks to spread racist lies about African Americans in an attempt to perpetuate its viewers’ veil of ignorance. For Stone, creating a film about the unsolved questions circulating John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a way to initiate public involvement in historical affairs, as it forces individuals to aggressively question who and what they trust. While Stone’s claims are seen as blasphemous to some, his intentions are at least positive and meaningfulâ€"more than can be said for Griffith. Knowing that things are not always as they appear, Stone’s JFK encourages contesting the status quo, with the filmmaker attempting to educate viewers about the necessity of asking the hard questions (the “why?”) regardless of the repercussions. In this sense, the filmmaker crafts his work to tenaciously tug at the veil of ignorance surrounding society, reflecting a positive objective in Stone's work. Griffith, on the other hand, uses his ability to access countless moldable minds as a catalyst to selfishly assert his racially charged, pro-Klan viewpoints. The Birth of a Nation, unlike JFK, teaches no relevant or profound message to audiences and thus serves no educational purpose -- a necessity when dealing with sensitive, historical subjects. Though Griffith’s cinematic skills and techniques were clearly remarkable for the era of his work, ultimately it is hard to find any redeeming qualities in a work that is still so blatantly offensive nearly a century after its release.

William Doherty
In the films JFK and The Birth of a Nation, directors Oliver Stone and D.W. Griffith both try to pass off “reel” American history as “real” American history. Yet to a person, we supported the goals and methods of Stone’s JFK and not Griffith’s methods. The question is: Why? While both men were both re-writing history in their films, I think that we support Stone’s film more because we in the class, like most Americans, didn’t believe the version of that November 1963 day’s events that the government wrote for us in the first placeâ€"that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, etc. The “official” version of what happened that day in Dallas is something that Americans have questioned during the course of 46-plus years, so we enter the movie-going experience willing to buy what Stone is selling in a senseâ€"perhaps not to the extent that Stone goes to by saying that the JFK conspiracy is so far-reaching as to threaten the end of the democratic system in Americaâ€"but we’re at least on board that Oswald didn’t act alone.

In Griffith’s case, we’re happy with the “real” American history version of the Civil Warâ€"that the “right” side won, slavery ended, and that America is a greater country now because the South was defeatedâ€"so the chances of us buying his “reel” American history were slim, at best. Making things harder for Griffith, of course, is the way that he portrays African-Americans as savages throughout the film. If that weren’t enough, Stone has two other huge advantages on his side: 1) he has a persuasive “salesman” for his reel American history story in Kevin Costner, who is not only building and then arguing the case for the jurors in the film, but he’s building and arguing it to us as audience members (meanwhile, Griffith’s film has literally no dialogue and therefore no salesman to sway us to even believe part of his reel American history tale); and 2) Stone’s brilliant use of the Zapruder film footage, a piece of real American history, makes his work of reel American history easier to believe. There aren’t actors in the Zapruder film. It’s Kennedy himself in the car being shot in rapid succession, leaving little doubt in my mind that there had to be more than one shooter.

Sonya Dollins-Colton
Griffith and Stone had every right to make their movies, whether right or wrong. To them, their films were historical truth. Griffith and Stone defended themselves by quoting their facts, and both men attacked the issue of censorship. This brings me to the questions, “What is historical truth?” “Should society censor film when deemed untruthful?” Film and history are subjective to the one telling the story. Whose story is right? I do not think that we as a society should censor films, books, etc., because we do not believe what they say or contain is correct. No one has a single hold on history, and the current history of our nation, I believe, is still the white man’s history. My historical truth, my story, is different from yours, and it should not be censored.

Kristen Englehardt
Looking at JFK and Birth of a Nation from an educational perspective, I think both films stand to support curricular goals and enhance students' educational experience. In recent years there has been a shift in educational goals and benchmarks to support the need to help students develop their critical thinking and problem solving skills across content areas. These films both present a period in history through artistic interpretation rather than historical fact. The fact that these movies are not historically accurate does little to detract from their educational value; instead, it raises their worth by providing teachers with a medium that allows for students to engage their skills in critical thinking/problem solving. I think it would be interesting to have students watch two films representative of a time period and have students analyze the different interpretations. JFK could easily be used in an assignment in which students were to conduct research of their own to determine the legitimacy of Stone's conspiracy theory. Students could research the Reconstruction era to ascertain whether Griffith's depiction of the time differed from history’s rendition. When I think about how films such as these can be used to enhance education and students' understanding of history, it seems less important that these movies are accurate when the interpretations presented provide an opportunity to help students develop their abilities to think critically about a given situation.

Elizabeth Guzzo
JFK and The Birth of a Nation may have very different settings, but both films bring up very controversial times in United States history. After watching JFK, I applauded Stone for his valiant effort to bring light to the potential conspiracy surrounding Kennedy’s assassination. After The Birth of a Nation, however, I felt furious at Griffith for his portrayal of the Civil War. Both directors took a risk in creating controversial movies, so is it strange to react so positively to one and so negatively to the other? I feel that my love of Stone and hatred of Griffith directly relates to their stance on social justice, especially for the black population. Stone displays African Americans in a positive light. He shows how this group of people influenced the election, and he also has the characters that call JFK terrible names like “a nigger lover” look evil and unjust. In general, Stone wants justice for a crime that has not been solved and which had a lot of shady investigations and answers. I feel like Stone was just in his quest for answers, and he had good characters that made the American population question the Warren Commission, along with possible suspects. Griffith, on the other hand, had an evil goal in making the movie. The Civil War and Reconstruction is not an unsolved crime. While the point-of-view depends on whether a person is seeing history from northern, southern, or slave eyes, the general public nonetheless knows the basic facts. In my opinion, Griffith’s main goal is to portray slaves negatively and confederates positively. Stone’s movie asked for social justice; Griffith’s film did the exact opposite. It took a race of people already repressed and made life even worse for them. I understand that Griffith wanted to show the southerners, losers of the Civil War, in a way that is heroic, but he did not need to bash an entire race of people to do so. I read an interview with the real life Garrison who said he wished there was a way to make Shaw’s homosexuality unrelated to the case; he was guilty because he committed a crime, not because of his sexual orientation. Griffith did the exact opposite, showing blacks as evil simply because of their race. I can applaud Griffith on his amazing film techniques but never on his content. Stone wanted action for JFK’s investigation; Griffith wanted a negative reaction toward a specific group of people.

Greg King
Both Stone and Griffith/Dixon claim historical accuracy and factual basis for their films. Both JFK and The Birth of a Nation were attacked as having lacked these very things. The difference comes when Stone and Griffith/Dixon attempt to refute these claims. Stone was working under conditions at which very little "fact" was present and much hypothesizing was going on. He incorporated what facts he accepted into the film, he decried the acts which put further facts out of his reach, and he hypothesized from there. Griffith/Dixon were operating on a much longer period of time, which existed as fact in the memories of far more people (while it is doubtful that the Reconstruction affected more people than J.F.K's assassination, certainly more people had first-hand experience with the details of the situation). Griffith/Dixon claimed historical accuracy but failed to provide the kinds of direct, understandable proofs that Stone did. In all, I believe it comes down to the fact that we all seem to "know" that the Reconstruction did not occur the way Griffith/Dixon portrayed it, while we all seem to, at the same time, "know" that what Stone proposes has a ring of truth. It comes down to our guts, for better or worse.

Travis Statham
I think that our objection to supporting these two “historians” is one that a lifetime has cultivated. We seem to support Stone's ideas that although his version of JFK's assassination may not be right, there certainly is room for interpretation and there are lots of sketchy things going on for that event. Meanwhile, we lash out at Griffith as an irresponsible and disrespectful man who should never have created such a movie. However, let's look at the real issues these men are bringing up. Stone is bringing up an event that not a lot of students in this class have been close with. Sure we may have heard about JFK's death, but we've never researched it or spent any great amount of time thinking about it outside of some random articles or perhaps watching JFK on A&E when were 11. Racism, however, is an issue we've dealt with for a very, very long time. Many of us are familiar with the concept every day; we see how it has changed the world around us. We've been taught over and over that racism is bad, that to be racist is like saying the Holocaust didn't happen. Then we watch this movie and see this ludicrous portrayal of average African Americans and rightly react against it. It goes strongly against the very ideals of our time, smashing our ideas of equality. We don't really understand what it's like to be racist, to have a burning desire to eradicate another race of people, so we cannot identify with Griffith's Southern sentiment. If, for instance, Griffith had painted a beautiful portrayal of the black race attempting to dig itself out of the very deep hole slavery had entrenched it in, we would look at him as a master of history, something we would want to see. And if Stone had not only questioned Oswald's innocence but threw his pointing finger not to the government but to another lone black man, we would be up in arms over the obvious racial elements that would bring up. These directors are not what we are arguing over or supporting; it is the issue itself and how familiar we are with it.

Karen Timmerman
Both Olive Stone and Griffith & Dixon had similar aims in the creation of their works: to present the truth to the American public. Both used nearly all facts along with excellent cinematography and acting to pull their films all together into convincing historical pieces. However, the actual content of JFK and Birth of a Nation differs so vastly that one can see how reactions to these two films are far from congruent. Stone presents a film in which he is urging Americans to search for the truth, to fight to be told what actually occurred on that fateful day that their President was assassinated. Although he takes liberties with some facts and may put a few characters, such as Clay Shaw, in a bad light, in the end his movie honors the dead President, someone respected by millions all over the nation. Stone is intensifying the strength of the belief of almost 70% of Americans that the Warren Commission Report was bogus and the U.S. Government had something to do with JFK's murder. Although attacked by critics and members of the government itself, the movie is popular among the public because it does not shove in our faces that Garrison's theory is the absolute truth, but it brings to light many discrepancies and urges us to refuse to be ignorant. Griffith and Dixon, on the other hand, while their play and film Birth of a Nation is entirely based on fact, it is from an extremely narrow point of view. While one cannot ignore the unprecedented cinematography and the artistry with which the film was created, there is still the racist and prejudiced tones that haunt the entire movie. Although their goal was to make the South "feel better," and they had in fact used Negros that appeared faithful to their white companions, the majority of the nation did not share Griffith's view. In a time in which many more were urging equality than in the time of the Civil War, Griffith's film was viewed as a portrayal of blacks as vicious and almost mocking to the few that were shown as more tame. Unlike Stone, Griffith and Dixon were attempting to push their racist opinions down the public's throats, who were much less receiving of this than Stone's film urging the search for the truth of the assassination of one of America's most beloved Presidents.