The Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) as the Birth of a White Imperial America
0
조회
0
다운로드
2
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
Building on the previous works of African American historians, political scientists, literary theorists and critics, film historians and critics, this paper argues that The Birth of a Nation is not only a propagandistic epic presenting the vision of a new modern nation built on the destruction of black bodies, but also of a great empire to be born through the ideology of white supremacy in the context of the contemporary political milieu of Wilsonian democracy. I elucidate the interconnectedness between domestic racial dominance and violence within the US based on the ideology of white supremacy, and the expansion of the US as an imperial power in the intertextual relationship among Griffith’s film and the writings of Thomas Dixon Jr. and Woodrow Wilson. An era eerily reminiscent of the present period in American history, the idea of ‘American democracy’ in the formulation of Wilsonian democracy propagating the fantasy of America as a land of freedom gave legitimacy to US’s emergence as an imperial power. The mobilization of the idea of American democracy has always gone hand in hand with its segregationist and/or racist domestic policies, and I demonstrate that this idea of American democracy has served well to posit a white, imperial democracy outside the US while depriving the rights of non-white bodies by dehumanizing them within the US, as manifested in The Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) announcing the birth of a white, imperial America.
Abstract
Building on the previous works of African American historians, political scientists, literary theorists and critics, film historians and critics, this paper argues that The Birth of a Nation is not only a propagandistic epic presenting the vision of a new modern nation built on the destruction of black bodies, but also of a great empire to be born through the ideology of white supremacy in the context of the contemporary political milieu of Wilsonian democracy. I elucidate the interconnectedness between domestic racial dominance and violence within the US based on the ideology of white supremacy, and the expansion of the US as an imperial power in the intertextual relationship among Griffith’s film and the writings of Thomas Dixon Jr. and Woodrow Wilson. An era eerily reminiscent of the present period in American history, the idea of ‘American democracy’ in the formulation of Wilsonian democracy propagating the fantasy of America as a land of freedom gave legitimacy to US’s emergence as an imperial power. The mobilization of the idea of American democracy has always gone hand in hand with its segregationist and/or racist domestic policies, and I demonstrate that this idea of American democracy has served well to posit a white, imperial democracy outside the US while depriving the rights of non-white bodies by dehumanizing them within the US, as manifested in The Birth of a Nation (The Clansman) announcing the birth of a white, imperial America.
참고문헌 (45)
- Benn Michaels, Walter, "Our America: Nativism, Modernism, and Pluralism" (1995), Duke UP
- Blumenthal, Henry, "Woodrow Wilson and the Race Question", The Journal of Negro History, 48(1), pp.1~21 (1963)
- Bogue, Anthony, "Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire and Freedom" (2010), Dartmouth College P
- "Brown, Vincent"[URL]
- Dennis, Michael, "Race and the Southern Imagination: Woodrow Wilson Reconsidered", Canadian Review of American Studies, 29(3), pp.109~131 (1999)
- Dixon Jr., Thomas, "The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan" (1970), The UP of Kentucky
- Dixon Jr., Thomas, "The Leopard’s Spots: A Romance of the White Man’s Burden 1865-1900" (2017)
- Dixon Jr., Thomas, "Dixon’s Sermons: Delivered in the Grand Opera House, New York, 1898-1899" (1899), F.L. Bussey
- Du Bois, W.E.B, "Black Reconstruction in America" (1998), The Free Press
- Du Bois, W.E.B., "The Souls of Black Folk" (1994), Dover
- Feimster, Crystal, "Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching" (2009), Harvard UP
- Foner, Eric, "A Short History of Reconstruction" (1990), Harper Perennial
- Frederickson, George, "White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South Africa", pp.188~191 (1981), Oxford UP
- Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, "Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920" (1996), U of North Carolina P
- Glick, Josh, "Mixed Messages: D.W. Griffith and the Black Press, 1916-1931", Film History, 23, pp.174~195 (2011)
- Goldsby, Jacqueline, "The Spectacular Secret: Lynching in American Life and Literature" (2006), U of Chicago P
- Gunning, Tom, "A Little Light on a Dark Subject", Critical Quarterly, 45(4), pp.50~69 (2003)
- Haley, Sarah, "No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity" (2016), U of North Carolina P
- "Ignatieff, Michael"[URL]
- Kaplan, Amy, "The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of US Culture" (2005), Harvard UP
- Kaplan, Amy, "Cultures of US Imperialism" (1993), Duke UP
- Kramer, Paul, "The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines" (2006), U of North Carolina P
- Lenning, Arthur, "Myth and fact: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation", Film History, 16, pp.177~141 (2004)
- "Lehr, Dick"[URL]
- Love, Eric T.L., "Race over Empire: Racism and US Imperialism, 1865-1900" (2004), U of North Carolina P
- McEwan, Paul, "Racist Film: Teaching “The Birth of a Nation”", Cinema Journal, 47(1), pp.98~101 (2007)
- O’Reilly, Kenneth, "The Jim Crow Policies of Woodrow Wilson", The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 17, pp.117~121 (1997)
- Park, You-me, "Extending American Hegemony", Interventions, 7(2), pp.153~161 (2006)
- Pfeifer, Michael James, "Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947" (2004), University of Illinois
- Rable, George C., "But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction" (1984), U of Georgia P
- Rogin, Michael, "“Sword Became a Flashing Vision”: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation", Representations, 9, pp.150~195 (1985)
- Rosen, Hannah, "Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Postemancipation South" (2009), University of North Carolina P
- Scott, David, "Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment" (2004), Duke UP
- Sosna, Morton, "The South in the Saddle: Racial Politics during the Wilson Years", The Wisconsin Magazine of History, 54(1), pp.30~49 (1970)
- Skowronek, Stephen, "The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes: Racism, Liberalism, and the American Political Tradition", The American Political Science Review, 100(3), pp.385~401 (2006)
- Stoddard, T. Lothrop, "The Rising Tide of Color: Against White World-Supremacy" (2003), UP of the Pacific
- Stokes, Melvyn. D.W., "Grif ith’s The Birth of a Nation: A History of “The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time" (2007), Oxford UP
- Stokes, Melvyn. D.W., "Race, Politics, and Censorship: D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in France, 1916-1923", Cinema Journal, 50(1), pp.19~38 (2010)
- D.W. Griffith, "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), Epoch Producing Company
- Trelease, Allen W., "White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction" (1971), Harper and Row
- Trumbold, John, "Neo-Roosevelt, or, Why Post-Colonialism is Premature", Intervention, 7(2), pp.199~215 (2005)
- Wells, Jeremy, "Romances of the White Man’s Burden" (2011), Vanderbilt UP
- Wallace, Michele Faith, "The Good Lynching and “The Birth of a Nation”:Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow", Cinema Journal, 43(1), pp.85~104 (2003)
- White, Frank, "Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889-1918" (1919), Negro UP
- Wilson, Woodrow, "A History of the American People" (1901), Reproduction by Permmission of the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Buffalo