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Battle Scenes depicted in moving pictures before CGI

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Re: Battle Scenes depicted in moving pictures before CGI

#3

[flagged]

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?

Re: Battle Scenes depicted in moving pictures before CGI

#6

[flagged]

>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)

Re: Battle Scenes depicted in moving pictures before CGI

#9

[flagged]

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?

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.

Re: Battle Scenes depicted in moving pictures before CGI

#10

[flagged]

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.

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