Ugh. Really??? I read The Clansman back in college and found it to be rivaled only by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in terms of its repugnance. (I don't doubt that we could produce a long list of repugnant books/pamphlets, such as Mein Kampf. I'm just going by two that I happen to have read.)scotty2 wrote:Sure, Griffith and his inspiration, Thomas Dixon, weren't racist. They were, rather, white supremacists who viewed emancipation as premature and Reconstruction as a tragedy whites had to to overcome, not an era the ending of which was a tragedy for freed people or for American democracy. In this way, the white south lost the battle and won the war--placating the conservative south has been near the top of the nation's agenda ever since, even at the height of the civil rights movement.
The Clansman is certainly worth a read.
Griffith's film is morally offensive but aesthetically brilliant. As domino points out, Griffith's cutting techniques represent the height of cinematic form in its day. Dixon's screed, on the other hand, is both morally and aesthetically despicable. It reads quickly enough, but the way that the Congressional abolitionist is portrayed in the starkest possible terms indicates that Dixon's position ain't exactly nuanced (to the limited extent that a white supremacist/racist position could even be nuanced). Now, the modern novel had been around for a few centuries at that point, and had a more defined aesthetic(s), but it's not like The Clansman has anything interesting going for it in terms of form, either. At best, you might be able to read it as an example of how an infuriated racist saw the world back then, but if that's your motivation you can put it down after the first twenty or so pages and never look at it again.
And just to add to the earlier discussion about whether or not BoaN was racist by the standards of its day, let's recall that the resulting shitstorm of condemnation played a large role in Griffith's decision to make Intolerance.
