By which I mean, could a movie set during Reconstruction and portraying southern whites as victimized by the venal, avaricious North be made today? With the anti-black stereotypes toned way down of course.
I suppose it could be done. There’s always a market for films showing the common people standing up to an oppressive big government and you could revise history to make it fit. As you pointed out, you’d have to lose the anti-black and pro-Klan themes.
You could just remake the second half: friends who end up on different sides of the battlefield. Despite the racism there’s a strong anti-war message hidden in there.
I seriously doubt it. The movie was based on a book that was itself a defense of the Klan, and which venerated them as the SAviors of the South (the book was called The Klansman, in fact). You’d have a movie defending not merely a racist institution, but probably the pre-eminent racist institution in US history. Even if you so profoundly changed things around so that it wasn’t about the Klan (which is pretty pointless when the book and movie were completely about the Klan – it’s like remaking Gone with the Wind so it’s not about the Civil War. Or King Kong so it’s not about a giant gorilla), once word got out that your movie was based on Borth of a Nation, you’d have people condemning and boycotting your film. And it wouldn’t be in that “any publicity is good publicity” way – it’d sink your picture. And word would get out.
No.
If you want to make a movie about the South during Reconstruction, you’d be better off making an entirely different movie.
Does the very divided Missouri count? Clint Eastwood in the revisionist western The Outlaw Josey Wales.
The Patriot was a popular movie whose protagonist was an 18th century South Carolina plantation owner - if they managed to avoid any racial implications in that movie they can do it anywhere.
I haven’t seen The Patriot, but from what I recall, it’s about Gibsion’s character joining the American Revolution and his relations with his sons and their feelings. You can easily do that without referring to slavery at all. But “Birth of a Nation” is about the institution of the Klan and why it was needed to put down them uppity blacks who were ruining the South. You can’t remake Birth of a Nation unless you have a substitute villain. Like maybe Reconstruction let those Leprechauns, Smurfs, and Umpa Lumpas ruin the South by voting for too many candies and cereals, so the Klan has to enforce strict dietary standards and a program of tooth brushing.
Have you seen The Birth of a Nation? It’s less about “uppity blacks” than about radical Republicans, carpetbaggers, and the dangers of miscegenation (the one black villain is actually biracial, and lusts after a white woman). The few actual black characters in the movie are played for comedy.
I’ve seen it, and have it on DVD. Have you seen it? It has scenes of idle blacks in the State Legislature, voting themselves benefits while lounging in the seats and generally disrespecting the institution, besides the lascivious half-breed lusting after the heroine. The scenes may be played comedically, but they’re precisely what the KKK was fighting – blacks being given political power.
But the blacks were portrayed as pawns who were being misled by the evil white carpet-baggers. The southerners couldn’t admit that the blacks were a real adversary - doing so would mean they’d have to acknowledge their potential equality. All you’d need to do would be to revise history and use the postwar southern point of view. Pretend that the blacks had been content before the war and were as unhappy as the Southern whites were. Show the northerners as invaders who were illegally occupying the south and denying everyone their rights (ignoring the fact that black people also had rights). Have the southerners band together and rise up against their northern oppressors - just leave out the white sheets they wore when they did it.
Yer missin’ the point – The movie glorifies the Klan. Against that signal fact you cannot do anything. Independent of what they’re portrayed doing in the film, people KNOW what the Klan did, and stood for. And your movie would be dead, even if the Klan persecuted Leprchauns, as I suggested above.
Besides which, IIRC the movie never shows the Klan acting against them scalawags and carpetbaggers – the whole point was to terrorize the blacks. The film explicitly shows the Klan choosing their characteristic costume because it makes them ignorant blacks think that they’re ghosts. NOT any Evil Whites who may be manipulating them.
And it didn’t show any Evil White carpetbaggers in the legislature scene. And it was a half-black, not a white carpetbagger who was being shown as lusting after the white woman.
As BoaN was made, the Klan was acting directly on the blacks, who were shown bringing down the South by their actions.
I guess we disagree about which points made in the movie were fundamental and which points were superfluous. It’s like comparing The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. If you feel the fundamental story in The Magnificent Seven was a small group of disparate individuals banding together to defend a community, then it’s a remake of The Seven Samurai. But if you feel the fundamental story in The Magnificent Seven was a metaphor for Mexican-American relations then it had nothing in common with The Seven Samurai.
I think that the fundamental point in The Birth of a Nation was white Southerners banding together to resist postwar Northern occupation - that’s a theme that can be portrayed with or without the Klan and freed slaves. But you feel the fundamental point of the movie was the formation of the Klan and its role in keeping down the South’s black population - and such a story can’t be told without balck and Klansmen characters.
It’s kinda like the debates about the Civil War itself, when you put it that way.
Shoulda known the question was fraught with spines from the start. I can agree to disagree on that aspect.
But you’ve still got a gfundamental problem with the Klan – even if you don’t actually mention the Klan in the film, if word gets out that your fuilm is based on a book and a film glorifying the Klan – and it will, I guarantee – you’re going to be torpedoed by the backlash, and your film will die in the theaters.
I hope not, since it would fly in the face of decades of modern scholarship. The principle “victimizing” of Southern whites was that they weren’t allowed to continue barring black people from voting, serving on juries, holding office, owning firearms, or owning and renting land.
I guess we disagree about which points made in the movie were fundamental and which points were superfluous. It’s like comparing The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. If you feel the fundamental story in The Magnificent Seven was a small group of disparate individuals banding together to defend a community, then it’s a remake of The Seven Samurai. But if you feel the fundamental story in The Magnificent Seven was a metaphor for Mexican-American relations then it had nothing in common with The Seven Samurai.
Birth of a Caliphate - The Al Qaeda Story
Sure! Just stick an unlikely pairing in it and make it a cop-buddy flick. “One’s a carpetbagger. The other committed atrocities at Andersonville. They’re detectives.”
Not only have I seen it twice and read two books about it, I knew one of the producers, Roy Aitken, in his elderly years.
Does intent mean anything?
As Cal M pointed out the film is based on “The Clansman” by Thomas Dixon.
That is the second book in a KKK trilogy which includes “The Lepard’s Spots” in front and “The Traitor” at the end.
Through his characters Dixon repeatedly preaches on the threat to white civilization and the need for racial purity. He supported white supremacy and the social subjugation of the African American population.
You might be able to remake “Birth of a Nation” as a film, but you’d need to base it on some other book from some other author, okay?
I can see it now.