“Rebirth of a
Nation” is essentially a “remix” of the infamous 1915 film by D.W. Griffith
entitled, “ Birth of a Nation.” This “remix” essentially highlights certain
aspects of the film to present the filmmaker’s point. In this case, DJ Spooky
gives the film his own soundtrack, some narration, and new graphical overlays
highlighting some particular images. In addition, the film is cut down from its
original length to a more presentable 100 minutes. The result is a version of
the film more relevant to modern audiences, but still no less disturbing.
At the end of the
film, DJ Spooky asks two questions, the first of which is whether Griffith’s
work is a weapon used to further oppress blacks, or is it an example of freedom
speech? Well, if you’ve believe one Amazon.com reviewer, then Griffith did it
for the money-making potential . If this was the
case, Griffith certainly hammered home the points made by the original book the
film was based on. Griffith specifically portrays crazed blacks that he
presents have been partially created due to carpetbaggers, or people moving
down from the North to the South in search of profit.
After all, this was
the first film ever screened at the White House. Woodrow Wilson specifically
brought it there while he was in the midst of creating the “League of Nations,”
which was the pre-cursor of the United Nations. Wilson was an educated
individual who had a PhD in History, if anybody knew what a distorted history
Griffith was presenting, it was Wilson. Still, as the film points out, Wilson
was the child of Confederate sympathizers, so the only explanation for the
screening was that he too wanted to use it as a weapon for his own means.
“Birth of a Nation”
held the record for highest grossing film of all time for 10 years until 1925 . The film made
$10,000,000 dollars in 1915, which is the equivalent in 2011 to $223,487,128.71 . Considering how
many tickets would have to be sold to reach that high of a number back then,
it’s safe to say that this film was seen by a lot of people in a lot of the
United States. If not told otherwise, a good number of people might actually
take this seriously.
“Birth of a Nation”
may be a landmark of cinema that catapulted its potential into the spotlight,
but its consequences outside of cinema were far too lasting and harmful, as it
contributed to the already heated fight over racism. This brings us to a
modern-day perspective of just how far we’ve come, and just how far we still
need to go, which “Bamboozled” touches upon.
Ultimately, “Bamboozled” is a satire where
Lee criticizes the modern “buffoons” by painting a story where the more
distinguishable wrong of Blackface comes to be accepted again in a modern
sense. In the film, the main character, Pierre Delacroix,
plays what is essentially a puppet to the TV network he works for. He tries to
sell his network a satire of racism, yet he does the exact opposite of what he
desires, which is feeding the idiot box because his network desires the racism.
They don’t see it as satire, but rather a potential to profit off the humor
deriving from these stereotypes. It’s not truly satire as network head, Thomas
Dunwitty sees it, but rather a comedic program that can be explained away by
satire.
The underlying problem for both “Birth of a Nation” and the minstrel show in “Bamboozled” is that both parties were not responsible in creating it. In the end, Pierre is just in it for the money and allows for the show to continue on even though it’s promoting the exact thing he once set out to destroy. Even though his assistant, Sloan Hopkins tries to explain to him the power of images, and the damage that these images can do, Pierre simply pushes it off. He uses blackface and racial stereotypes to his own end, much like “Birth of a Nation,” where they used it as a weapon against blacks. As Michael Epp argues in his article, “Raising Minstrelsy: Humour, Satire and the Stereotype in The Birth of a Nation and Bamboozled,” simply raising up these stereotypes gives them new life. Unless they’re told that the racial stereotypes are wrong, they will search for any type of approval for acceptance, and then accept it. In the film for example, when the TV show in “Bamboozled” is first presented, the audience members are clearly searching for an emotion to convey. Should they laugh? Protest? Then when the white members of the audience see the black members laughing, they see it as approval for them to laugh along.
All of this comes
at an interesting time as recently, Marvel Comics has recently announced in a
story in USA Today that a half-black, half-Hispanic person will be taking over
the role of Spider-Man. To put it lightly, the commenters on USA Today were not
kind or sensitive in the least bit to the issue of race saying things like, “Why
not make him a dyslexic homosexual too, and cover all the politically correct
bases, then we will really be ‘enlightened,’” or “That’s just dangerous.
With spider powers, just think how much stuff he could steal, if he was not so
lazy,” or for a more politically-tinged example, “baraks psycho-ops for
re-election is just starting, if a conservative wrote this he {or she } would
be labeled racist.” And those are the comments USA Today didn’t
delete for offensive content. They’ve received 734 comments, but only show 452,
which means they’ve had to delete some 282 comments .
