Dixon was also one of the first to recognize the value of the motion picture as a propaganda tool, and through his films he spread his dogmatic views on race, communism, socialism, and feminism. Slide argues that Dixon's complex and often contradictory stances and personality cannot be viewed in simple terms, and he places Dixon's body of work in its socio-historical context. He chronicles the North Carolina writer's transformation from a major supporter of the original Ku Klux Klan in his early work to an ardent critic of the modern Klan.
The life worth living 2. Southern history on the printed page 3. Southern history on stage 4. Southern history on film 5. The fall of a nation 6. The foolish virgin and the new woman 7. Dixon on socialism 8. The red scare 9. The final years Raymond Rohauer and the Dixon legacy.
Includes bibliographical references p. View online Borrow Buy Freely available Show 0 more links Related resource Table of contents at http: Set up My libraries How do I set up "My libraries"? In the Dixon family joined the general American migration to the good lands of the west, themselves going to settle with relatives and friends in central Arkansas. In , during the midst of the war, the small family determined to return to North Carolina. Marching with livestock, thirty-two slaves, and a covered wagon, the Dixons passed perilously through the armies bloodily contesting for possession of Atlanta.
For a time, the family lived on a farm. Later in , however, they moved into the town of Shelby where Dixon opened a store to supplement his meager income as a minister. Like so many Southerners in those difficult years of Reconstruction , the Dixons labored hard for a meager living. As a child in Shelby, Tom helped his father in the store. Also, he came to know and idolize his uncle Leroy Mangum McAfee. McAfee was graduated from The University of North Carolina in , entered the Confederate Army at the opening of hostilities, and was promoted to colonel of the Forty-ninth North Carolina Regiment before he was twenty-five.
In , the Dixons moved to a farm near town. During the next four years, before moving back to Shelby, young Tom came to know hard labor in the fields. Dixon was educated by his parents and in the Shelby Academy. In he followed his older brother Clarence to Wake Forest College.
At Wake Forest, Tom distinguished himself as a scholar, winning the highest honors attained up to that time in the Baptist school. His academic achievements earned him a scholarship to graduate school in the recently established Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He entered Johns Hopkins in the fall of , enrolling in the famous seminar offered by Professor Herbert Baxter Adams.
One of his classmates was another young Southerner, Woodrow Wilson. In Baltimore Dixon became enamored of the stage. Within a few months, he left graduate school and moved to New York, determined to become an actor. In college he had established himself as a brilliant orator, but bitter experience finally persuaded him to abandon his efforts to enter the theater. He returned to Shelby and began to read law. In he was elected to the General Assembly and immediately sought election to the speaker's chair.
Although he did not win the speakership, he proudly took his seat on the floor of the house when the legislative session began, four days before his twenty-first birthday. As a legislator he participated in shaping the first bill ever passed to pension Confederate veterans.
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He also joined in a movement to promote public education. After the session, he was admitted to the bar, experienced early success as a lawyer in Shelby, and on 3 Mar. However, he found the practice of law frustrating. After much soul-searching, he resolved to follow his father and older brother into the ministry. Ordained, he took churches first in Goldsboro and then in Raleigh. Quickly gaining fame, he moved on to a pulpit in Boston and, after , in New York.
In New York, he was soon marked as an advocate of the "social gospel" because of his activities to promote political, economic, and social reform. In Dixon left the Baptist church to become a nondenominational minister. The protesters were successful in stopping the film and others like it from being shown in several places, but large cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Boston, and San Francisco kept the picture in theaters. As the fight began to wane, W.
DuBois said, "If the film was a cruel slander upon a weak and helpless race, then the race must learn to use its money for films, poetry, music and its own history" , acknowledging that the fight for censorship leads to a long and negative battle. Davenport relates the film Dixon's novels, all of which contain racial themes.
Dixon's four root concepts that contribute to his overall mythological view of the South include southern uniqueness, union, mission, and southern burden. Each novel exemplified situations of Southern superiority, triumph, and racism ring true. Dixon claims recurrently that the Southern way of life, free of industrialization and clad in American spirit, hold the true key to the definition of Americanism.
Davenport also discusses the South's argument that through the difficult experiences of the reconstruction era they have proven their moral superiority to the North, for instance, in their ability to triumph against the "corruption and degradation" existent in the North because of industrialization. Southerners claim "pastoral uniqueness" in their projected visions of pastures and beautiful fielded landscapes. However, Davenport brings to the surface the underlying meanings of these claims and , in turn, the four major arguments.
The south uses these slogans to "defend against the Negro and industrialism" as if there was a link between the two. In essence, Davenport's essay serves to pry at the seemingly logical arguments the South upholds as a shield against its racist roots and fears of inadequacy. Dixon argues against two primary points from an article in the Boston Journal: Dixon argues first that censorship is wrong on ethical grounds, which apply to all such works. He states that he would never support a bill to censor a piece called The Nigger , which was written in direct response to The Birth of a Nation and which supports interracial marriage.
Dixon also defends his version of history, citing evidence to support his claims of rampant "negroes" and northern suppression of southern states' rights during the Reconstruction. Reply to the New York Globe. New York Globe 10 April Dixon's response to the Globe is a challenge for the editor to actually find something factually wrong with his book and the film. He accuses the editor of attacking him without even solid evidence to back it up, specifically a quote by the Globe accusing Dixon of portraying the Stonemans of Washington as "paramours of quadroon mistresses, moved by petty spite.
He invites the Globe to question the validity of any of the facts he presents, declaring that he will remove his play from the stage if any established historians find them false. Arguing that he is merely portraying history as it happened from a light that may not be viewed as moral by all, he finishes by asking the thought-provoking question,"is it a crime to present a bad black man, seeing we have so many bad white ones?
Birth of a Nation-- Propaganda as History. Reprinted in Race and History: While most criticism Griffith's depiction of historical events, Franklin places the blame at the feet of Dixon: He traces Dixon's feelings back to his experience visiting the South Carolina state legislature at the age of eight.
Franklin goes on to chronicle Dixon's rise to fame as the successful author of a trilogy of books depicting his interpretation of the Reconstruction, contending that the criticism Dixon received as far outweighed by praise for his writing. Franklin briefly discusses Dixon's adaptation of his successful novel into the widely known play of the same name. The success of this play lead to Dixon's desire to see his work depicted on the silver screen. Franklin argues that Griffith's film is closely derived from not only Dixon's Clansmen but also from his first novel, The Leopard's Spots.
Dixon set out on a stealthy maneuver to make sure that his ideas represented in Griffith's film were seen by the general public throughout the entire country. In doing so Dixon bypassed moral methods of approval and, instead, went straight to President Wilson, an old college friend, for approval and then to members of the Supreme Court. While Dixon spoke publicly about the historical accuracy of both the film and his publications, his personal agenda had never been to provide a realistic interpretation of fact.
Franklin maintains that is was this agenda that brought on a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, along with a new generation of writers to carry on his sentiments. Griffth's audience is "clearly white, Protestant Christian, sentimentally idealist and, at least potentially, sympathetic to a racist ideology. Throughout the entire ABA format of the film--ABA denoting white rule, then black rule, and again white rule--the whites are depicted as steadfast "horizontal" in terms of filming strategy and the blacks are frivolous and jittery "vertical" in terms of filming strategy.
While generally people would consider this stereotype to hold true for just the southern or "good" white people and only the defiant or "bad" black people, Griffith unwaveringly casts both the northerners and southerners equally and also shows no sympathy towards loyal black servants. In fact, the character "Mammy," despite her obedience, still acts oafish for example: Griffith is consistent with his use of words within the film.
Unlike many other silent films, Griffith uses historical quotations within his captions and has a written border that acts as anti-piracy control. These two uses of written word help to legitimize Griffith's claims. Gallagher makes the argument that Griffith's film uses several techniques to promotes racist ideology.
He points out the privileged positions that all white characters have and that these characters are prone to transcendental moments that the black characters of the film are denied. This makes the black population seem unfit to hold position of power. This results in the chaos that ensues when the blacks take control of the Southern government in the second half of the film. By making all the protagonists white characters, Griffith ensures that his audience will hold grudges against the black antagonists.
The ironies that exist in the film are another tool that Gallagher mentions. One example that he uses is that Stoneman, who crusaded for black equality, has a daughter whose honor is almost compromised by a mulatto man and is then saved by the Ku Klux Klan. The wording of the titles is another factor that Gallagher recognizes, as it is intended for a certain audience and makes references to certain historical events in a twisted way. The titles are therefore used to manipulate the audience. Gallagher writes of Griffith's narrative techniques as a vehicle for the racist ideas apparent throughout the film.
Griffith's accomplishment is impressive yet such a portrayal of history, and particularly of black people, is not legitimate. Griffith speaks out against the paper's claim that the film's exhibition is "for purely sordid reasons," with his rebuttal that great pains were taken in creating the film to contrast the bad with the good in an effort to portray the battle between right and wrong.
Here, Griffith asserts that the film was meant to celebrate the black community, responding to his critics by saying, "If prejudiced witnesses do not see the message in this portion of the entire drama we are not to blame. Throughout his letter Griffith continues to elaborate on the support the film has garnered since its opening, noting the names of several members of the clergy as well as the film reviewer for the Globe itself.
Griffith both defended his film and attacked a bill that had been introduced by Lewis R. Sullivan, then a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which would make it a criminal offense to produce any "show or entertainment which tends to excite racial or religious prejudice or tends to a breach of the public peace. Responding to the immense criticism he received, Griffith constructs his article to shun critics seeking censorship not only over his own respective work, but also the cinematic medium as a whole. After first addressing the visual and temporal advantages of motion pictures as compared to the written word, Griffith makes the bold claim that film has been wrongfully persecuted by critics since its inception.
The filmmaker states, "the motion picture is at present the witch of modern times, and at all times there must be witches to be burned. While the filmmaker acknowledges the fact that every new entity must go through an "inquisitorial gate," he pleads for film's rite of passage to be less brutal than those of the arts preceding it. In doing so, the filmmaker calls for a strong resistance to cinematic censorship, avidly defending feature films for their unique ability to convey messages more effectively than all other modes of expression. Griffith charges censorship with "demanding of the picture makers a sugar-coated and false version of life's truths" and "seriously hampering the growth of the art.
His main argument is that freedom of speech applies to film just as it does to printed press, and Griffith intends to be quoted as a free speech advocate. He prefaces this pamphlet by stating, "This book is not copyrighted. The press is invited to freely use its contents.
Peter Noble's article in the previous issue of Sight and Sound inspired this enraged response from D. Griffith and Seymour Stern. The duo collaborates retaliating against Noble's claim that the film is anti-Negro. Griffith has a small bit endorsing Stern, but Stern carries the weight of the argument, saying that Noble is entirely incorrect in stating that Griffith "is guilty of an anti-Negro bias, consciously maligned the Negro race, and depicted the Negroes and Negro politicians as monstrous caricatures.
Hackett's condemnation of the film is extremely visible. He is especially critical of Mr. Dixon's "personal temperament," which far exceeds those of others in the sense that he has a "lack of inhibition" and his depiction of the Negro in the moving picture is really a depiction of his own "malignity. Negroes are inflamed with power and are abusing it constantly, something that was never seen during Reconstruction.
Because of Dixon's likely personal portrayal of Negroes, they are destroyed by the Ku Klux Klan, which appears to be right in audience eyes after "Mr. Dixon has identified the Negro with cruelty, superstition, insolence, and lust. Hammond notes that "There were, as far as I have been able to determine, no well publicized debates or objections to the film's racist representations, no attempts to censor or ban the film at local exhibitions and no public disturbances such as those which accompanied the film in the United States. The mere hugeness of this successful undertaking is almost stupefying.
American Racist: The Life and Films of Thomas Dixon - Anthony Slide - Google Книги
Therefore, this film provided the people with an insight as to what was really happening on the battlefield. This film was also very relatable for the British people because they found a connection between the South and Germany, giving the British hope for a bright future. Inscoe outlines the reception the stage production of the story, as well as that of Griffith's film. Dixon's work was motivated by racial prejudices, his inspiration supposedly watching Uncle Tom's Cabin , in which the "sympathetic portrayal of its black characters" greatly distressed him. Dixon was "determined to correct such misconceptions" and to tell the southerners' "true story.
Dixon was pleasantly surprised by the southern audience's enthusiastic approval of his work. It was embraced as a reminder for the South of what its people had been through and as a correction for the North's misrepresentation of the past. Although the response was generally positive, some were "shocked by the play's theme and even more so by the emotional endorsements it had inspired. In Griffith's film, the racist motivation was not so clear cut. Griffith himself denied any inspiration of the sort. It was moderated further with the broadening of its scope to the Civil War years along with Reconstruction.
The audience's response to Griffith's film came mostly from the technical leaps it made. It was "not only the longest motion picture made up to that time but the most ambitious. Inscoe estimates that these groups succeeded in editing about blatantly racist scenes from the film, but in little else. For the most part, the film's audience "either ignored, minimized, or substantially altered" the racial issues of the film.
Instead, they focused their attention on its anti-war appeal.
When Should A Racist Film Be Required Viewing? Right Now.
Regardless of Dixon and Griffith's true intentions, the audience of the stage production of this story related to it because of their Negrophobia, whereas Griffith's audience was more concerned with the film's impressive technicalities and their own southern pride. Kirby addresses all of the racial groups that Griffith portrays in his films -- Native Americans, Chinese migrants, and, most importantly, African Americans. Griffith's films as typical for the era, providing audiences with the stories they wanted, particularly those that focused on white supremacy and domination.
Griffith is "a self-conscious Southerner and a frank racist," and Kirby provides thorough summaries of Griffith's films, highlighting his typical white perspective on the various racial groups. Ultimately, though he appreciates Griffith for his amazing directing skills, Kirby believes Griffith to be a sheer businessman who created mediocre films with predictable story lines.
History, Ideology, Narrative Form. Lang addresses the ideas of historical interpretation, the forms of historical romance and melodrama, the division of the North and South, the themes of virtue and villainy, and the role of Abraham Lincoln in the Reconstruction of the South as seen in Griffith's Birth of a Nation and Dixon's The Clansmen. Lang suggests that Griffith's film was less about historical accuracy and more about providing an interpretation of events that romanticized them. Lang supports this claim through contention that films need a character —- they require emotion —- they do not necessarily require a realistic approach to historical events.
He then goes on to discuss the representation of Dixon's The Clansmen as a historical romance. Lang questions the legitimacy of Dixon's work in relation to the form since the depiction of the Ku Klux Klan strays so far from historical fact. From here Lang sets out to establish Griffith's film as a melodrama. He does this through close examination of the subtitles used by Griffith throughout the picture. Lang also discusses Griffith's use of the division between the North and South as emotional fodder for the audience. He contends that Griffith uses this as a platform to depict the fight between good and evil.
In further establishing this thematic battle, Lang refers to Griffith's use of "virtue" and "villainy. Lang concludes his argument by examining Griffith's treatment of Abraham Lincoln as the savior of the South.
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He claims that Griffith's depiction of the Reconstruction era suggests that had Lincoln not died, the South would have turned out quite differently. The Reception of The Birth of a Nation. While Birth of a Nation has been the cause of much controversy since its debut in , Lennig contends that the critics have exaggerated the level of sensationalism created by the film. He traces the reception of the film from its inception to some of its most recent critics in order to establish fact from fiction. From the very beginning of its promotion, Griffith and Dixon used gross exaggeration as a means to garner public interest in the film.
Lennig documents the opening of the film in Riverside, California, indicating that it met with great success. He then goes on to discuss the films change in title -- from The Clansmen -- as well as its private viewing with the President and members of his staff. Here Lennig discusses the massive misrepresentation of Woodrow Wilson's famous words, "like writing history with lightning. This belief resulted in a media war in which critics of both sides began to speak about censorship. While there was certainly controversy surrounding the film, Lennig maintains that the majority of society did not understand why the film was receiving so much attention.
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Most people had no concept of the offensive portrayal of the black community presented in the film: