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Just seeing this now, but this week I will be teaching Birth of a Nation and like many other "hard films" it cannot and should not be ignored. It is a moment in a classroom where not only the historical moment of production can be discussed (the place of Woodrow Wilson, for instance and the rise of Oscar Micheaux as a direct consequence of BOAN) and how the techniques of editing and scene composition made the contents (overtly racist) digestible to the audience and (in not a different way that Scorsese for instance can make wise guys like Joe Pesci seem "like-able". Many scenes work so that the viewer is aligned (through camera shots such as a POVs) to feel the "unfairness" of reconstructions so that we feel sympathy and thus allegiance with the South and southerners. This is why the film is so important in terms of the development of formal elements and so powerful as a piece of propaganda. Because it works and did work for the audiences of that time and this one. Every semester I teach this, folks who don't know the history of the film or reconstruction take the "side" of the south in short clips precisely because of the filmic techniques. This is the unearthing of ideology as a political unconscious in the words of Fred Jamison. Every text has them and the work of film analysis as opposed to "reviews" is to bring this to light, which is why Marxist film crit is the strongest heuristic that we have, and why the methodology of film analysis is the focus, not aesthetics. As my wife put it.."who ever thought that was a *good* movie anyway?" _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
