Genre Analysis

In this essay I will be focused on the film “The Birth of a Nation” as well as the text by Yale “Film Studies Web Guide”. And I will be referencing to WEB DuBois as well.

I will be uploading in PDF because I will be writing on Google Docs.

Scheduled WebEx meeting for April 22, 2020 at 11:30 am.

1. The name if the newspaper is The Guardian. The organization started is the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
2. The segregation enforced locally with the Jim Crow Laws
3. The difference in approaches made my DuBois and Trotter were that DuBois was more focused on the audience understanding him and being with him on his side in a gentle way, compared to Trotter who was more aggressive.
4. The methods used to disrupt the screening of the film were the critics saying that it was a racist film and some even said that it “revived” the KKK.
5. Punishments on black Americans include torching, hanging, stoning.

1. The actor playing Gus is costumed as a bum, in dirty looking clothing. What this is made to make us feel about Gus is that he is a bad guy, a villain.
2. The actor playing Flora is costumed in a very nice gown. What this is made to make us feel about her is that she is higher class and a good person.
3. The lighting is used to make Gus seem menacing, meaning it is to portray that he is bad.
4. The lightening on Flora seem innocent because it is nice and light, kinda brings warmth, opposite of Gus.
5. The way that the actor walk when he follows Flora is predator like, stalker, sneaky. You just get the predator vibe from him, not a good feeling.
6. The actions of Flora that show us that she is “child-like” are that she seems to be in that child “day dreaming” phase where she is just staring off kind of rocking. She is also easily entertained.
7. The difference in the music choice when it comes to Gus and Flora is that: the music goes deep and dark for Gus, but happy and light for Flora.
8. In the chase with Ben, Flora’s older brother, the cross-cut demonstrates that she is in danger because it’s showing both sides of the situation and Ben being worried and concerned.
9. I think that this film builds on to the thought of the certain communities “racists” that black people are evil, predators.

Group naming of the gap: the interbreeding of the races isn’t a huge problem but the babies are “flawed”

• Claim: Race Amalgamation is leading to destruction and an obliteration of a healthy civilization.
• Evidence: he uses the information that is related to his benefit of argument and can now be seen as biased.
• Warrant: Hoffman is a white supremacist, naturalist, he wants to be trusted just because he is foreign.
• Counterargument: People should stay within their own race to keep a healthy civilization.
• Reason: Law of similarity

Swales says that speech communities are centripetal, those who are a part of those groups are usually drawn by connection creates a sense of community meaning “us”. A discourse community send a sense of difference, “them” like outsiders. The goal is to create a sense of distinguishment, you must be recruited into this community.

1. A discourse community is described as one that has a set of common goals
2. Mechanisms of intercommunication between the members
3. They use mechanisms of involvement to get information and feedback
4. Posses more than one genre to further their aim
5. Acquires lexis
6. Members are masters or have knowledge of content

What Swales points out as a problem in a discourse community is that it is all contradiction.

• Stein is not portraying himself as a friendly writer “In The Defense of…”. I believe that his reasoning behind that is to show that there could be many ways that his argument was to be perceived.
• Stein believes that the typical american roots for the underdog, which he doesn’t think is right, therefor, what I believe Stein would see as a gap is the audiences understanding of the importance of the problems, the wars as the example the hidden agenda behind the american spirit for something to be great.
• How I see this information filling the gap is by showing the things that people will believe are true just because they feel passionate about it. This also gives authors like him an advantage to take a comical approach to these events.
• Stein uses sarcasm
• The danger of an essay like this is some people don’t think about the deeper meaning of the message and take the sarcasm or the comical message as a reliable source. It is easy to misinterpret an article like this.

There are multiple ways that I believe that the discourse communities of law and science shaped the multi-literacies, thinking, and imaginations of audiences when it came to the Birth of a Nation. The first being most important, in the Wikipedia article it was stated, ” the film portrayed African-Americans as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women and presented Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force”. It was mentioned that the African-Americans were played by white actor who wore “blackface”. The prejudices of the black race of the time made the representation of their race as a whole appear as bums and stupid.

• Crosscutting (Parallel Editing): alternative shots of two different people at the same time, split screen to show similar occurrences or similar time frame.
• Iris: “moving mask” to show emphasis to something or to start or end the scene.
• Typage: facial and body features that aid the truth of the character that it is being played.

47:00 – 48:50 What does Griffith want a viewer to feel about the woman and her family, therefor the South?

• What Griffith wants a viewer to feel about the woman and her family is that they are in danger, he shows how scared that they are, the mother holding her children tight far away from the destruction. They look very poor based on the costume choice. The appearance of fear with the family makes the viewer concerned for them and what is about to happen. Griffith wants the South to appear dangerous and very aggressive (not a save place).

19:00 – 21:42 & 1:32:19 – 1:37:00

• What I believe that Griffith wants a viewer to think about characters Silas Lynch and Lydia, biracial Americans as a whole, he sees them as less than equal. I’m having a hard time with this one because it’s really hard to tell. By the costumes and the direction of the camera I would presume that he wants the audience or the viewer to see that he is well with the other race.