The birth of a nation : the cinematic past in the present / edited by Michael T. Martin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Martin, Michael T., editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Birth of a nation (Motion picture : 1915).

Race in motion pictures.

United States--Race relations.

United States.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

xii, 314 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2019]

Summary:

"Over one hundred years since it premiered on cinema screens, D.W. Griffith's controversial photoplay The Birth of a Nation continues to influence American film production and to have relevance for race relations in the United States. While lauded at the time of its release for its visual and narrative innovations and a box office hit with film audiences, it provoked African American protest in 1915 for racially offensive content. In this collection of essays, contributors explore Griffith's film as text, artifact, and cultural legacy and place it into both the historical and transnational contexts of the first half of the 1900s and its resonances with current events in America, such as #BlackLivesMatter, #HollywoodSoWhite, and #OscarsSoWhite movements. Through studies of the film's reception, formal innovations in visual storytelling, and comparisons with contemporary movies, this work challenges the idea the United States has moved beyond racial problems and highlights the role of film and representation in the continued struggle for equality"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Revisiting (as it were) the "Negro problem" in The birth of a nation : looking back and in the present / Michael T. Martin

The birth of a nation's long century / Cara Caddoo

Great moments from The birth of a nation : collecting and privately screening small gauge versions / Andy Uhrich

D.W. Griffith's The birth of a nation : transnational and historical perspectives / Melvyn Stokes

Defining national identity : The birth of a nation from America to South Africa / Peter Davis

Comment : is The birth of a nation a Western? / Alex Lichtenstein

Serial melodramas of black and white : The birth of a nation and within our gates / Linda Williams

The rhetoric of historical representation in Griffith's The birth of a nation / Lawrence Howe

Something else besides a Western : Django unchained's generic miscegenations / Paula Massood

12 years a slave and The birth of a nation : two moments in representing race / Julia Lesage

Engineering different equations in the wake of The birth of a nation : blackface and racial politics in Bamboozled and Dear white people / Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris

Race, space, sexuality, and suffering in The birth of a nation and Get hard / David C. Wall

Anger or laughter? the dialectics of response to The birth of a nation / Chuck Kleinhans.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780253042354

0253042356

OCLC:

1051056052