The Birth of a Nation: WTF?

The Birth of a Nation was a epic film done by D.W Griffith in 1914. It employed several ground breaking techniques, that we take for granted today, made a massive amount of money, and was perhaps the most racist film of all time. The Ku Klux Klan being the protaganists, and every freed black man being presented as murderous, invading barbarian hordes, attacking the Antebellum South and it's noble ideals. An incredibly racially prejudiced production, the film plays heroic music as a mob of Klansmen lynch a free black man guilty of the horrendous crime of asking a white woman to marry him*sarcasm off* In 1992, the film was deemed 'culturally significant' (!) and selected for the preservation in the National Film Registry. How on earth can a film so obviously and massively racist be deemed 'culturally significant'?! It was also voted 44 on the top 100 films of all time, despite the fact that it remains one the most racist films in human history.

Klansman were in part for this, obviously.

same way we don't delete all the NAZI documentaries, because they are significant fro history. Whether good or bad, it had an impact. I believe W.Wilson, US president, watched it and said sometin to the effect: too bad this all is true.

It was the first epic film, thats why.

The film was the first real epic, but as for content...
During a media studies class I saw some of the film on a documentary. Some parts are good, but when its gets to the shady side, with the Ku Klux being the good guys, and the black people being monsters...
Sure, black people could be the antagonists in a movie, IF they were attacking helpless children. They were fighting MURDEROUS SLAVE HOLDING KLANSMEN! Its fine to show things from the view of a Nazi soldier or KKK member, but to make a film that glorifies it is something else.

It is culturally significant, even if it shows a bad side of part of a culture.

Does the fact that is racist make it culturaly insignificant?

Maybe not, but too vote an unbelievably prejudiced film #44 on the top 100 films of all time? That seems just a little silly to me, actually silly doesn't describe it, it seems a bit disturbing to me.

The Birth of a Nation use a lot superior technique at that time, but it's theme and plots too much relate to recism.

Not because it's the first epic film, it's also the first film who gained great commercial success over two millions in the nation...from my Film Apreciation Course^^

It's "culturally significant" because it shows just how sick and demented Southern culture was back then. One of my class-mates is doing his master's thesis on Southern newspapers in the 1930's. There was some sort of insecure, perverse sexuality ingrained in that culture. If a white woman suggested that a black man (or boy) had so much as whistled at her, the rednecks and hoopleheads wouldn't hesitate to form a lynch mob. I cannot think of a culture that was more bigoted and malicious for such a long period of time, except perhaps for apartheid South Africa or China during the Cultural Revolution.

Of course it's culturaly significant.
Just like Triumph of the Will is significant to the German culture.

Birth of A Nation was and still is a hugely significant film. It is the earliest movie that a viewer today would recognize as a movie as opposed to a videotaped play. Griffith set nearly every movie makng convention, from how he cut the action, did transitions, close ups, panning, everything. He preseted his film as a novel, able to present a sweeping story, with complicated emotional elements told not just through acting as in a play but also with how the camera was used.

A great movie is not only about the plot, it is the methods he uses to present the story. Following that logic we understand why it is so highly rates.

Again, it is a movie I have wanted to see for a long time and have yet to make the time.

While it may be a fiercely-bigoted work, to deny its cultural significance would be to deny the truth.