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Comment by daseiner1 | Hacker News Reader

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>The film was controversial even before its release and it has remained so ever since; it has been called "the most controversial film ever made in the United States" and "the most reprehensibly racist film in Hollywood history." The film has been denounced for its racist depiction of African Americans. The film portrays its black characters (many of whom are played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive toward white women. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a white supremacist far-right hate group, is portrayed as a heroic force that protects white women and maintains white supremacy.

(from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation)

The quotes in the Wiki page are modern, not from the time of the release. It was controversial at release, but not so much that there wasn't a White House screening.

It was the first motion picture to be screened inside the White House, viewed there by President Woodrow Wilson, his family, and members of his cabinet.

I'm not sure the fact that his film glorifying the Ku Kux Klan was watched by a president also noted for being racist even by the standards of his time (who later condemned the film and claimed to have been unaware of its contents) somehow innoculates it against charges of racism

The movie's title cards include pro-Klan statements from Woodrow Wilson.

He wasn't just a product of his time. He was so racist his works were controversial when released. Is a single sentence about that really too much?

He was a mainstream Hollywood director, working with the biggest stars of the day, and co-founded the studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. The film was some controversial, but much less than you would hope. Most of the controversy is retrospective.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/02/05/arts/05FRIDAYFILE...

IMO, not a good choice by the writer to not make clear (especially to non americans) how incredibly racist the film was, even being released at the most racist time since slavery, and instead say it about the director.

Would you object as strongly if it had said that he was a really nice guy?

Would it be more or less honest a retelling of history if this was ignored or left out?

TFA is clearly not discounting the work because of it, and probably nobody would good-faith argue that personality was always decoupled from work? In which case how much you care is just a POV?

I would. I'm not advocating white-washing here. My point is that this piece is not about artist biographies. For this sort of piece, I don't care if he was a serial adulterer, a volunteer fireman, or a local hero, and think that inserting those details is an unnecessary thumb on the scale.

I'm not sure why you think your personal opinions about mentioning that a well-known racist was in fact a well-known racist matter, and why you think you have some sort of say in another person's blog post. This "scale" that you think the author is putting their thumb on does not exist. They are writing on their own personal website.

This is a discussion site, which has a comment section. My initial comment, which I think was quite even-handed, has generated discussion. My personal opinions matter just as much as yours or any other user on this site, which in the grand scheme of things is "not at all". I have just as much of a right to comment on this post. Ignore me if you'd like.

But fine, I'll bite.

To temporarily eschew the equanimity that I think I've thus far demonstrated, I'm not at all surprised to find that you have chosen the "shut the fuck up" response to commentary you find distasteful. Folks of your temperament, left/right/& center, invariably land there when one of their sacred cows is held up for examination.

Surely you have to draw a line somewhere, though?

Adolf Hitler was a painter and Kim Il-Jong directed movies. Neither of them was any good, but if they had been, would it really make sense to judge their art in isolation, without the slightest mention of the authors’ tyranny and mass murder?

Griffith made movies that he fully intended as Ku Klux Klan propaganda. That is not in doubt. At the same time these movies are also important technical achievements and milestones of cinema. It’s not “loathsome and cowardly” to point out his racist message.

A similar problem exists with Leni Riefenstahl, the photographer and director who exulted Hitler, as well as many 1960s European leftist directors who uncritically worshipped Mao. They all should be seen and criticized in context.

Well, an obvious line is that the political views of political figures are more relevant than their hobbies.

The director in question was using his profession to peddle racist ideology. I don't think you're being consistent here.

As a joke I'll sometimes show images of Hitler's art to people. They're always received with high praise, and rarely is the praise retracted when they learn who the artist was. It's usually "oh that's funny, well he was pretty good. Wow. Didn't know that."

Yeah I think art and artist can be evaluated on separate criteria.

Nobody thinks Hitler’s art is museum-quality or art historically important in the same way that Griffith’s and Riefenstahl’s movies are.

And even if Hitler’s paintings really had been particularly good, I still don’t think museums in Germany and elsewhere would exhibit them. Enough people feel that would be highly disrespectful of the victims of the Holocaust (probably most museum curators would think that). You can of course believe this kind of red line shouldn’t exist in society, but it’s there.

Your question was does it make sense to judge their art in isolation from the artist. I'm saying you can in fact do that and as an exercise in proving this fact I front load the art and follow with the artist and the net effect is positivity rather than hostility. But even if you were to present a monster's art in tandem with the fact that the artist was a monster I would go even further to bet that most people would judge the art on its own merits and find its origin trivial, even ironically humorous. I've known very few people who pearl clutch in life the way they do on the internet.

My grandfather was a slave in Hitler's work camps. His parents and brothers perished in Hitler's death camps. And the story of his wife's family, my grandmother, would leave you shivering.

I would most certainly visit a museum exhibit of Hitler's paintings.

I came to the comments just to post this. Ironic coming from film buff, the idea that we should judge historical figures through a modern lens.

... but D.W. Griffith was considered racist by his contemporaries, and Birth of a Nation was controversial from the moment it was released.

If anything, leaving this information out would flatten the complexities to an even greater degree. Understanding and sharing a well-rounded perspective of a person (e.g. that this person held objectively incorrect beliefs that were despised among his contemporaries) is quite literally why people study history.

  > objectively incorrect beliefs

Do you honestly not see the irony in declaring your own culture "objectively correct"? Do you eat meat? Burn carbon? These are things that conceivably may one day be considered even worse than we consider racism today. Don't be so quick to judge the past by today's values.

You're bringing up subjective beliefs as a straw man. The idea that it's morally wrong to eat meat or burn carbon are subjective. I specifically said objectively incorrect beliefs. The idea that there exist races of humans who are uniquely "superior" or "inferior" is an objectively incorrect belief. It is not true now, and it has never been true.

The idea that there exist species who are uniquely "superior" or "inferior" is an objectively incorrect belief. It is not true now, and it has never been true. Every species on Earth fulfills a purpose, and humans have no right to farm any of them. It is objectively better for humans to return to pre-agricultural levels of population and eat only what we catch with our bare hands.

Of course, I don't believe that statement. But it is as "objectively true" as yours. I just don't want to dispute yours, because I personally agree with it. But I can not call it an objectively better statement.

Can you take your very thinly-veiled racism apology elsewhere?

I am not being racist. I am demonstrating that our values are not "objectively correct".

Maybe someday a society that celebrates diversity in physical attributes will have preferred professions for those from races recognized to run faster, or jump higher, or father, or swim, even for individuals that do not particularly excel. And they might think us barbarians for ignoring all this beautiful diversity in human form and ability.

Except you once again substituted race, the topic of conversation, with something else. We're not discussing the differences between species. We're discussing racist beliefs which are testable, falsifiable, and have been proven incorrect. The mental gymnastics you're performing to claim a relativist position about RACISIM is very telling.

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