Analysis of the Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates

Analysis of the Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates
Student's Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course
Professor's Name
Date of Submission
Analysis of the Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates
The movie Birth of a Nation by David Griffith is based on Nat Turner, a literate slave and preacher in the antebellum South who led a rebellion. Nat Turner accepts an offer from his financially stressed master, Samuel Turner, to use Nat's preaching to calm rebellious slaves. As he travels to other regions to preach, he observes other slaves and realizes that things are even worse than he imagined. There was much prejudice in this film, but some sequences were horrific and frightening about how African Americans were treated. The extent to which they were discriminated against is outrageous.
On the other hand, in 1920, Oscar Micheaux created, wrote, and directed the silent film "Within Our Gates," which was released by Micheaux Book & Film Company and depicted the lives and suffering of African Americans throughout the ages of slavery. Micheaux centered his writing on portraying the life of African Americans in regards to the hardships faced by people of color during the Jim Crow era. The struggle and false promises made by African Americans to gain freedom and end slavery, the hard work and commitment by some African Americans to civilize their communities and emancipate them from segregation, and the beginning of the "New Negro." This article discusses the central argument from these films and their relation, historical significance brought by the movie. Secondly, it will examine the technical innovation of the film and how they have contributed to the development of the film language. Finally, it will discuss the role of cinema in influencing the social-political context.
Central Argument of the Films and Their Relation
The film Birth of a Nation is a representation of racism, "Boyd explains." It is the cradle of what would later become Hollywood. The movie is based on the idea that African-Americans are less human, and the characters' behaviors are portrayed as criminal and uncivilized. The Ku Klux Klan members are the heroic and honest heroes in the film who put a stop to the tyranny and activities of African Americans (Mintz et al., 2016). In this regard, the movie conveys how it intends to depict the two races: one is wicked, while the other is benevolent. The portrayal of races and commercialized racism in The Birth of a Nation must be examined. The American theater criticized films like The Birth of a Nation for being racist.
Similarly, Within Our Gates movies discusses racism. The movie begins with the subject of betrayal among African Americans living in the South. The film depicts the current race condition in the United States in the early twenty-first century. The movie was labeled as a racial drama. Race film was a genre of cinema made between the 1910s and the 1940s that included black performers and producers and targeted black audiences(Mintz et al., 2016). The American theater criticized films like The Birth of a Nation for being racist. The film had a predominantly black cast portraying individuals reacting to the harsh stereotypes of black Americans depicted in the previous film, The Birth ...