CL 4/7

When I watched Birth of a Nation, I noticed that the whole movie was pretty much based on multiliteracies, in a sense that it was a silent film… ish and that I had to use my imagination to paint a picture based upon reading people and situations in the movie. Yes, there was text dialogue that explained some scenes of the movie, but most of the movie revolved around music genres, stereotypical expressions of the characters and various interactions between the characters to illuminate the story behind the movie. An example of this would be when Gus is walking through the farm and spots young Flora walking to the spring. The way that they portray him hunched over walking, palms fanned, eyes bugged, hiding behind trees and fencing was indicative of him being a predator. The music also switches back and forth from urgent and malicious (when the camera pans to Gus, indicating that he is a dangerous character) to jolly and carefree (when they pan to Flora playing with squirrels).

This negative view of African Americans subsequent to the ending of the Civil War (mostly during the Reconstruction period) was partly due to the influence of false perception and false education of human evolution mixed with ludacris theories of why races were inferior to one another and how possible connections of African Americans and apes explained behavioral differences between certain races. Scientists like Morton and Hoffman practically brain washed white Americans into thinking that African Americans were biologically different, which also influenced racists propaganda and racists films like Birth of a Nation. Especially in a time when Woodrow Wilson was signing new Jim Crow legislature, this made it seem like white supremacy was a norm that was being promoted, not only by films and propaganda, but by our own government as well.

“A handful of social and biological scientists over the last 50 years have gradually forced informed people to give up some of the more blatant of our biological errors. But there must be still other countless errors of the same sort that no living man can yet detect, because of the fog within which our type of Western culture envelops us. Cultural influences have set up the assumptions about the mind, the body, and the universe with which we begin; pose the questions we ask; influence the facts we seek; determine the interpretation we give these facts; and direct our reaction to these interpretations and conclusions.” -Gunnar Myrdal, The Mismeasure of Man Page, Page 55