The use of melodrama in Birth of a Nation included many larger-than-life stereotypical characters that would be used for years to come in literature and film. Many other works went on to appropriate figures such as the Chaste Southern Belle (Little Sister in Birth of a Nation) who was, as a result of reconstruction policies, endangered by the trope of the dangerous black male sexual body She was often child-like, innocent and observant of her place in society , in accordance with the cult of true womanhood. The Southern Gentleman (Little Colonel in Birth of a Nation) was portrayed as the saviour of the nation - north and south. He was the embodiment of honor, loyalty and decency. He also proved to be the masculine ideal of the south, protective of his property and family - especially the "inferior and defenseless" females. .
It is of no small importance that, to this point, the characters have not had definitive names but, rather, titular descriptions. Birth of a Nation, like the works that came after it, needed no name to convey the images and stereotypes that were necessary to the film. The character could remain nameless and faceless; it was the job of the surrounding text to impart the values and morals, or lack thereof, associated with the characters. The black characters, namely, Gus the rapist, the conniving mulatto GET NAME, and the "happy darky," constitute a particularly useful portrayal of the typical black person in the context of this work. With these tropes being thrust in ront of audiences and subsequently repeated in other, later works, audiences came to expect the black to be either a malcontent, dangerous individual or a loyally subservient "mammy" figure. At the same time, a white male was depicted as the noble southern gentlemen (white class tensions go unseen in Birth of a Nation) and the females were all virgin southern belles. It is no surprise, then, that this work acted as a recruitment device for the Ku Klux Klan and spurred its membership to more than a half million in the years after Birth's release.
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 I. THE EVOLUTION OF BLACK FILM 4 1.1. Blackfacing and Film Shorts 4 1.1.1. Early Vignettes 5 1.1.2. The Coon 6 1.1.3. The Tom 9 1.1.4. The Tragic Mulatto 10 1.1.5. The Mammy 11 1.1.6. The Reportorial Film 12 1.2. The Birth of a Nation 13 1.3. The Jeste...
