Film School Removes ‘Birth of a Nation' Posters After Student Protests

It'll be interesting to see if, in a decade or so, "Gone With the Wind" becomes as taboo as "The Birth of a Nation," D.W. Griffith's towering but reactionary slab of racism. Film students and professors will, most likely, be the primary judges for Scarlett O'Hara's plight, much like what’s happening with “Birth of a Nation.”

While Wind’ did romanticize the old plantation lifestyle to some extent, it's hardly as deliriously racist as Griffith's ‘Nation,’ after all, that film's odious racism vilified black people and glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

With all that being said, Griffith’s silent-era masterwork is continuing its descent into cinematic infamy, especially in film schools nationwide where the film cannot even be screened anymore without some kind of protest arising against it. No wonder, then, that student protests erupted this past month at the faculty of Chapman University's film school. The controversy arose from two original posters hanging outside the hallways from the first floor of the school's production building in Orange, California. The posters had been donated by Chapman trustee and Cecil B. DeMille's granddaughter Cecilia DeMille Presley.

A student had started an online petition in 2018 to remove the posters, but the outrage went viral when a student tweeted a picture of several students of color in front of the posters on March 29. "Why does Dodge College, @THR's 6th best US film school, still condone the celebration of white supremacy? #takedownBOAN," she wrote.

The decision to take these posters down was announced in an email from dean Prof. Robert Bassett on Monday. "By vote of the faculty today Dodge College will be removing the two posters related to The Birth of a Nation (1915) and returning them to the donor," Bassett wrote. "However, the faculty will continue to screen the film in appropriate classes, as well as explore ways outside of class to discuss race and other related issues."

As mentioned, the film is incredibly racist, it even was credited as spurning the resurgence of the Klan in the late 1910s early 1920s. The group was on the outs in the early 20th century before the film romanticized them and sparked a reawakening of its racist values, not to mention the white robe garbs.