Essential BECAUSE it's such bigoted trash

Rating: 3/10 (5 October 2010)

I resolved to watch "The Birth of a Nation" because of its contribution to cinema, but by the time I finished this three-hour epic, it was the last thing on my mind. I think people should watch this film, but not for that reason. After all, I could say that "Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge" (1888) is a must-see for its contribution to cinema as the first real moving picture, but nobody's going to watch it.
No, what makes this film imperative is the thing that everyone remembers it for: its vile racism and bigotry. This is not your average Hollywood racism. This is not the black guy being the first to die in the horror movie, or the poor urban boy talking ebonics, or the trigger-happy man who's always armed. This is a blatant sermon against a class of people. This is an indictment of an entire race. This is D.W. Griffith saying: "These people are animals. They are controlled by their base instincts and are incapable of governing themselves or treating others with respect."
His claim: that the "radical negro minority" (a direct quote) is trying to usurp the white man's power and crush him under heel. The last half of the film is dedicated to showing how insidiously the black men try to wrest control from the oh-so-beleaguered white men. They are shifty-eyed and animalistic. The only black people portrayed in a good light are the very few former slaves that stay in league with their masters and refuse to vote for supporters of their own, and they are beaten up for it. But in the end the "glorious" Ku Klux Klan comes in and saves the day. One of the last shots in the movie shows the men in their full klan regalia on horses, lining up in front of the black peoples' houses on election day to discourage them from going to the polls. The black men, seeing this, go back inside and don't vote. And this is supposed to be part of the happy-ending epilogue!
I have never been so furious while watching a movie. I am not black. But I am gay, and the rhetoric leveled against the African Americans in this movie was SO similar to the rhetoric currently leveled against the LGBT community that it was actually scary. They both stir up a fear against the minority with claims that this "radical" and "militant" group of people is trying to take away the rights of the majority. They both present their minority in question as carnal beings devoid of conscience. Hell, "Birth of a Nation" even appeals to the Bible at the beginning. This is bigotry, pure and simple.
And that is why everyone should watch this movie, or at least know exactly what is has to say against black people. It is for this reason I give this movie a 10/10. Were this movie made today, I would give it a 1. As things stand, though, this kind of intolerance against black people in no longer accepted (though racism is far from dead; we still have a long way to go and a lot to answer for). But this kind of the intolerance still exists--against gays, against Muslims, and others. That is why we need to watch "Birth of a Nation"--to see the bold face of this intolerance and feel the brutal injustice of it all.