[ID: a comment left by tumblr user msexcelfractal, which reads “Cool post OP, now do Birth of a Nation. End ID.]
Content warning: antiblackness, antisemitism, sinophobia, general discussion of bigotry and oppression
You really want to try and go there as if that’s some kind of gotcha on the subject of dark fiction? Fine. Let’s go there. I’ve got sources and free time.
Birth of a Nation is a horrific hate crime of a film. It is flagrantly racist and was connected to a surge in KKK membership. Nobody should watch that film for enjoyment. It’s horrific. Nobody should be forced to watch it, either. You don’t have to watch the film, and I don’t recommend you do, unless you’re actively involved in studying it for whatever reason. It’s a bad, hateful movie.
I have not watched it in its entirety and I don’t really ever intend to. There are Black scholars who have already broken it down and discussed it at length, and I don’t feel I’m going to get anything out of the film that they haven’t already covered. If I need to study Birth of a Nation in more depth for whatever reason, I’m going to defer to Black scholarship on the subject.
But if you tried to ban the film altogether? If you tried to erase it from existence? I would ask what the fuck is wrong with you. Banning Birth of a Nation does absolutely nothing to combat the racism that created it. It wouldn’t stop racists from making racist art. It wouldn’t erase the damage done by the film. It wouldn’t go back in time and make it retroactively never made.
You know what banning it would do, though? It would strip film scholars of the ability to discuss it. It would prohibit people from talking about exactly why it was bad. It would inhibit honest conversations about what the film was and who it affected.
You know what you do with horrific bigoted art like Birth of a Nation? You have content warnings, like the one I put at the beginning of this reply. You don’t spring it on people who don’t want to discuss it. You don’t put it on for people to watch without warning. You don’t tell everyone you know to go and watch it and give it money.
You do things like what Warner Brothers did with their Tom and Jerry disclaimer:
“These animated shorts are products of their time. Some of them may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Bros. view of today’s society, these animated shorts are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed.”
You damn sure don’t erase it from history and pretend that ignoring it will solve bigotry. Censorship is not the answer, because censorship is always enforced harder on marginalized artists. You ban racism in film, you ban films by Black artists who are exploring the topic from their own perspective.
When the Hays Code banned “offense to other nations,” you know what happened? It didn’t stop racism in film, that’s for damn sure. It instead gave bigoted censors a perfectly legal and easy way to shut down art by marginalized people, which they did gladly.
The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany resulted in the Reichsfilmkammer demanding the removal of all Jewish workers from Hollywood’s European locations. American films began receiving heavy censorship and bans in Germany, and so American studios complied with the Reichsfilmkammer’s demands in order to avoid legal trouble in Germany.
Despite the Nazi party’s outright hostility toward Hollywood, the MPPDA office discouraged any negative depiction of Germany or the Nazi party. Germany had been such a huge market for American cinema that the Reichsfilmkammer’s censorship codes for German films began impacting American-made cinema. Jewish representation in cinema all but disappeared overnight. Joseph Breen, the head of the censor board, was an open antisemite, going on open tirades against Jewish people. His censorship policies were flagrantly bigoted and only served to reinforce that bigotry on a systemic level.
In 1933, Herman J. Mankiewicz and Sam Jaffe tried and failed to make an anti-Hitler film titled “The Mad Dog of Europe.” The Hays Code was used to deny the film’s production. On July 17, 1933, Will Hays himself ordered the filmmakers to cease and desist, all in the name of “not offending Germany.”
Said Joseph Breen, “It is to be remembered that there is strong pro-German and anti-Semitic feeling in this country, and, while those who are likely to approve of an anti-Hitler picture may think well of such an enterprise, they should keep in mind that millions of Americans might think otherwise.”
Variety said about the subject, “American attitude on the matter is that American companies cannot afford to lose the German market no matter what the inconvenience of personnel shifts.”
Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American actress, lost out on a leading role in the film “The Good Earth,” due to the Code’s explicit ban on interracial relationships. The leading man had already been cast with a white man wearing yellowface, meaning that Wong was unable to be cast as the leading lady and love interest, even though the characters were supposed to both be Chinese. The role instead went to a German-American actress wearing yellowface, who went on to win an Oscar for the role.
Censorship doesn’t help anyone. Censorship does not protect anyone. Censorship does not prevent bigotry, and in fact only serves to reinforce it.
Anyone who read this far and learned something: being an independent media censorship researcher doesn’t exactly pay the bills, so check out my Ko-Fi or Patreon if you learned something and feel generous.
My main sources for this post are:
Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934, by Thomas Doherty
The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code, by Leonard J. Leff and Jerold L. Simmons
The Encyclopedia of Censorship, by Jonathon Green & Nicholas J. Karolides
Morality and Entertainment: The Origins of the Motion Picture Production Code - Stephen Vaughn
Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood, by Mark A. Vieira
Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934), When Sin Ruled the Movies, by Mark A. Vieira
Hollywood’s Censor: Joseph I. Breen & the Production Code Administration, by Thomas Doherty
And since you made me talk about Birth of a fucking Nation, here are some additional resources for people who are actually interested in Black media history:
Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation, by Nicholas Sammond
Archival Rediscovery and the Production of History: Solving the Mystery of Something Good - Negro Kiss (1898), by Allyson Nadia Field
Humor and Ethnic Stereotypes in Vaudeville and Burlesque, by Lawrence E. Mintz
The Original Blues: The Emergence of the blues in African American Vaudeville, by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff
Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era, by Brenda Dixon Gottschild
Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop, by Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen
Love & Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, by Eric Lott
The Prettiest Girl on Stage is a Man: Race and Gender Benders in American Vaudeville, by Prof. Kathleen B. Casey
Dancing Down the Barricades: Sammy Davis, Jr. And the Long Civil Rights Era, by Matthew Frye Jacobson
Blackface, Whiteface, Insult and Imitation in American Popular Culture, by John Strausbaugh
A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary, by Geoffrey Jacques
Hollywood Black: The Stars, The Films, The Filmmakers by Donald Bogle
The Blackface Minstrel Show in Mass Media: 20th Century Performances on Radio, Records, Film, and Television, by Tim Brooks
Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era, by Pearl Bowser, Jane Gaines, and Charles Musser
America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies, by Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin
White: Essays on Race and culture, by Richard Dyer
Black American Cinema, edited by Manthia Diawara
Colorization: One Hundred Years of Black Films in a White World, by Wil Haygood
Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film, by Ed Guerrero
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, by Donald Bogle
White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood From the Dark Side, by James Snead
Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism, by Nancy Wang Yuen
The Hollywood Jim Crow: the Racial Politics of the Movie Industry, by Maryann Erigha
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