The most innovative film in cinema history is often considered the most racist. But did this ambitious, high-budget blockbuster simply reflect the racial beliefs of a nation, or did it create them?
We often praise or condemn films based on how they portray certain parts of Society. They might challenge a damaging stereotype or do the opposite and reinforce one. In fact, there are numerous problematic tropes that we see in cinema over and over again; just look at Pop Culture Detective and his videos on how male sexual assault is played for laughs or how romance is often used as an excuse for abduction.
Yet the eternal chicken and egg question remains. Do problematic themes in film simply reflect society’s values and behaviours or are they guilty of something far, far worse? Do they actually cause us, the audience, to develop ignorant perspectives based on the fictional worlds put before us?
Many have wondered about the role visual media has played in the rise of hate crimes, prejudice and mass violence in recent years, yet establishing a causal link between the two seems increasingly far-fetched. With so many different forms of always-on, easily accessible TV channels and streaming services now the norm across many societies, how can we be sure if media actually causes audiences to change their behaviour?
One way to answer this question is to travel back to a time when the internet didn’t exist and cinema itself was a brand-new phenomenon. A time when we weren’t overwhelmed by a deluge of choice from Netflix or Amazon Prime, but rather, there was one film that people watched exclusively. In 1915, this film was The Birth of a Nation.
Originally named “the Clansman”, The Birth of a Nation debuted in California in 1915 and soon became a prominent landmark in film history. The film tells the story of two rival families on opposite sides of the civil war. It was the first to use what we would consider staples of film production today; a musical score, close-ups, fade-outs and extras – all radically new at the time. In the words of Jonathan Kline: “virtually every film is beholden to it in one way, shape or form.” All in all, the three-hour long film ended up reaching a mammoth audience of 50 million people and was even played in Woodrow Wilson’s white house.
But the film is not only famous for the role it played in the development of cinema; it is infamous for the role it played in race relations. With its glorification of lynching and the perpetuation of damaging stereotypes, It is often regarded as the most racist film ever made. In the words of Ian McEwan: “The film argues that giving black people rights was a terrible, terrible error, that they did all sorts of horrible things that actually they didn’t do, and that the noble Ku Klux Klan was this wonderful saviour that saved America,”
This portrayal allowed the Klu Klux Klan, an organisation that was effectively dead by 1915, to rise from the ashes. The KKK adopted the film as a recruitment tool, and this allowed it to grow into a major organisation by 1920. In fact, they only started burning crosses and wearing white hoods only after these symbols appeared in the film.
Unsurprisingly, black activist groups protested against the film. The NAACP protested at premieres across the United States, embroiling the movie in controversy. They also launched a public education campaign, attempting to address the film’s inaccuracies.
Yet racism was hardly a new phenomenon at the time. Even before the film was released, lynchings, race riots and racist beliefs were all too common across the country. This opens up the question as to whether the film simply reflected the views of an already racist society or further inflamed them. Did the film cause racist violence?
A new working paper by Desmond Ang at Harvard University tackled this very issue. Since the film was released as part of a roadshow, travelling to various cities for one or two nights ahead of a wider release, Ang was able to isolate analyse the films’ impact. On average, he found that lynchings increased by five times their usual amount after the show came to each county. Yet this wasn’t the only disturbing finding.
By comparing the 606 counties that saw the film to the thousands that didn’t, and controlling for a number of demographic differences, he was able to test whether KKK chapters, or Klaverns, were more likely to pop up in places where the film was shown. Unsurprisingly, he found that counties that had been visited by the roadshow were three times more likely to develop local KKK chapters.
In fact, without the film, the Klu Klux Klan might never have survived the early 1900s. They’re now one of the most well-known and well-established white supremacist groups in America.
This brings me to perhaps the most disturbing thing to come out of Ang’s research, that these horrifying effects have lasted to the present day. Counties that saw the Birth of a Nation are still more likely to have a local Klan chapter and continue to have higher rates of hate-crimes against African Americans than counties that never saw it.
Ang sums up his findings with the words:
It’s obviously a pretty scary result and speaks to media’s potential ability not simply to incite racial violence in the short-term but also to galvanize the formation of hate-based organizations that then persist over time, even over a century in this case
In a world of echo chambers, where social media, and biased news channels are viewed as just another place to validate your pre-existing beliefs, we need to be open to the possibility that media can just as easily shape our beliefs and influence our behaviour. Its power must not be underestimated.
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