The Birth Of A Nation And Within Our Gates: Film Analysis

Film not only gives audiences a chance to find the similar experience, but also gives a way to audiences to see how certain condition impacted the society. The films The Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates both incorporate controversial issues during that time; lynching, rape, discrimination, violence, education, and exploitation. By applying the film as social and political force, Griffith's The Birth of a Nation proposes a controversial for the negative depiction of African Americans and the positive portrayal of slavery and the Ku Klux Klan. Griffith noted that the black is the evil force, and Negroes usually behave poorly, takes off the shoes and eats chicken even in meeting. They are unable to integrate into the white society and get along well with the white people. The white people stand for the good, and the black people only representation of the bad. Because of the evil of the black people, the existence of the Ku Klux Klan is necessary and worthwhile. In the film, the Ku Klux Klan is …show more content…
In the most obvious degree, Sylvia's early experience, the extended flashback sequence, calls for audiences to look into the white’s violence and injustice in the country. While Micheaux never publicly commented on The Birth of a Nation, however, he applies evidently the similar format on structure and thematic parallels. In The Birth of a Nation it is a mob of black soldiers that threatens the white protagonists. In Within Our Gates, the lynching mobs are white people that scare the major black figures. Additionally, Micheaux shows his audience a slowly unfolding and unadorned portrait of terror and hatred through placing the both innocent and cruel experience that Landry family had. By telling the hardships of blacks, Micheaux claims that lynching is a profound expression of white racism, the ugly soul of the white American