Could "Birth of a Nation" ever get remade?

[Little_Nemo]

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?

As any author would say upon seeing the film adaptation of his work, “Where the hell did my book go?” Thomas Dixon wrote The Clansman in 1905. I’m sure he thought D.W. Griffith changed it beyond all recognition when he made The Birth of a Nation in 1915 (although he got “points” from the movie and it made him a millionaire).

But you’ve still got a fundamental 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.

It’s not a problem that can’t be overcome by bald-faced lies. I already pointed out that The Patriot was willing to invent a plantation owner who didn’t own any slaves. And 300 was able to portray Sparta as a land of freedom. So just have a scene in our 2007 remake where Ben Cameron (played by Matt Damon) denounces the Klan as a bunch of terrorists who are giving real Southerners a bad name. And give him a older black man as a father figure (a good role for Morgan Freeman) who gives him advice. Sure, Al Sharpton and Spike Lee will denounce it but the audience will eat it up.

[Walloon]

@Little Nemo

I already pointed out that The Patriot was willing to invent a plantation owner who didn’t own any slaves.

There were plantations in the South that did not have slaves.

Carville Earle, “Beyond the Appalachians, 1850–1860”, in Thomas F. McIlwraith and Edward K. Muller (eds.), North America: The Historical Geography of a Changing Continent, 2nd ed., p. 182:

[P]lantations without slaves increased from 39 percent of all plantations in the cotton South in 1850 to 48 percent in 1860. Even in the highly productive Mississippi alluvial region, already legendary for its grand slave populations, the proportion of those without slaves rose from 20 to 36 percent in that same decade, and in the Cotton Belt of central Alabama, from 21 to 29 percent.

[Derleth]

There’s also the option nobody’s discussing: Make it straight and honest and realize you’re only going to sell it to the kind of nutjobs who keep White Power and Aryan Nation businesses alive. The fact there are White Power and Aryan Nation businesses tells you this could be a profitable enterprise if your remake is done cheaply enough.