| Throughout the
movie, the film justified the need of the KKK in order to keep social harmony
among society after the Civil War. In the beginning, the Cameron family was
depicted as loving family and the slaves were depicted as sensible and content
beings during the slave period. The chaos and madness started after the civil
war during the Reconstruction period. Blacks were then portrayed as animalistic
savages that were oppressing the rights of the white people in the community and
threatened their livelihood. So, African Americans could only be placed into two
categories in this movie. They were either the faithful servant or the renegade
whose objective was to intimidate and terrorize white people. The black slaves
are shown as noble beings that defended their masters against other black
people. However, the black people in congress are shown as arrogant and ignorant
with no manners.
This sort of subtly suggest that blacks proper role is to
tend to the land and that they lack the sense and morals to be given them the
same equality as a white person. If blacks were on the same level as whites,
they would simply make a fool of themselves and at the same time cause harm to
white citizens
Another big theme in this film as is that there should be no
social or sexual integration between the white and black communities. This is
cleverly shown through the mulatto characters Lydia Brown and Silas Lynch. These
characters were stereotypically shown as being manipulative and corruptive when
given power. Lydia was the servant for the Stoneman family who was overtly
sexual in her scenes and was sneaky when Austin Stoneman comes out. Lynch
obtains political power and becomes the symbol of black leadership. Lynch in the
end of the film is corrupt and tries to force Austin Stoneman’s daughter to
marry him. During that scene he was drunk and sexually aggressive. One theme
that is derived from this is that mixing of races causes a degeneration of the
white race and that any mulatto will eventually regress to their black savage
instinct. The second theme that comes from these episodes is that blacks are not
capable of holding power in society without being corrupt. This places the
ideology of superiority and inferiority on the basis of race.
Griffith uses
the threats of rapes and depictions of sexuality of a black men towards white
women sort of as an added incentive of why the KKK was created and needed to
prevent miscegenation. They would be the protectors of white womanhood virtue
and to prevent the degeneration of the white race. Flora Cameron ends up
committing suicide in fear that Gus may try to rape her. She prefers death than
the thought of having Gus touch her. The construction of white womanhood plays a
big role as for something worth preserving and fighting.
Lastly, the KKK was
viewed as the heroes and saviors of the nation in the end. They manage to arrive
just in time to stop Lynch from marrying Stoneman’s daughter, to save the family
in the house from the renegades and to restore social order into the community.
In conclusion, the movie showed how society would immediately collapse into
anarchy if blacks were given power. Also, that all blacks (and mulattoes) are
dangerous, violent people with political agendas and that their proper place in
society is under whites.
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