re: Griffith

I think it is exceptionally easy to take Griffith out of context, and therefore easily prove your case that he and many of his films were racist. However this was a man who had a fondness for black people, viewed Abraham Lincoln as the greatest American whoever lived, and just happened to be making movies in a very different social time. People shriek in horror at the actors in black face, but there were no real black actors to speak of, similar to men playing women's roles in Elizabethean theatre. His Trust is a prime example of this misrepresenting. No one would shriek in horror if a white man, or white servant no less gave a little girl a piggy back ride around the house, he would just be friendly to a little girl. However when the girl is white and the man is in blackface it suddenly has a much different connotation. The rest of the film goes to show this "servant" as a loyal and trustworthy to the family he serves, and makes no effort to villify him or demean him any more than a typical servant might be regardless of race. I also think that in the case of Birth of a Nation, Griffith was making a somewhat accurate depiction of the Reconstruction and the history of it was hardly pretty, and it is hard not to come off as racist if you don't whitewash history.