Rebirth of a Nation

D.W. Griffith gets remixed.

Comments

[Anonymous]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/31/arts/31NATI.html

http://pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/califone/deceleration-two.shtml

[Millie Meter 16]

Historical revisionism, in whatever form, is still spinning events to one's own point of view -- regardless of whether one does it in college textbooks, on television, or in film (a-la "Columbus'1492" in 1992.)

[Amr]

I've listened to DJ Spooky a lot, and I have no idea if this will be any good. His music is always way too pretensious, but about half the stuff can be really good, especially if he's playing his heavily affected Bass Guitar, as in his remix of Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (which was rather reverent, and not, as I feared ironic).

But never, ever, ever, read the liner notes of his albums or listen to him speak. I spent more than a year of my life believing that he had something to say and that if I just paid enough attention, I would figure it out. But, no, it's impenetrable postmodern intelligentsian drivel.

[joe]

Millie,

So what? When the common version of history is misleading, it needs to be revised. "Revisionism" only became a dirty word when the origins of the power elite's position began to be questioned - pretty good evidence that the revisionists were onto something.

[Joe L.]

Joe,
Nice Post-Modernist/Foucault move there. "Revisionism" has, really become, Marxist drekh PRTETENDING to be intellectual fare. Also, it is fodder for the Publish or Perish universe of academicians. Revisionism gives us grad students jobs, but it really isn't necessarily a great thing.
So, I'm standing with Millie Meter. "Revisionism is merely spinning. REVISING or re-examing, in light of new evidence or sources is NOT spinning, or not spinning nearly so much. But that school of academe made popular in the 1960's by folks like Gar Alperovitz really in just spinning old information into a new Marxist garment.
I don't see it questioning the elite. It IS designed to subvert the elite and impose a new elite. Mind you not a better informed new elite, just a new elite, a more Marxist elite. Colour me jaundiced, but that's what years in the Grove of Academe have revealed to me.

[Croesus]

Millie Meter,

So, if new evidence comes to light, and it revises our perceptions of the past, it must be ignored? Imagine what your doctrine would do to the field of say, physics.

Ex.: Since the 1950s, there has been a significant revision in the way that American slavery has been described; based on solid evidence arising out of the written as well as physical record. In other words, the "moonlight and magnolias" school that so dominated the study of this field was successfully overturned by historians who used the historical record to do so. In fact, if anything, it was the "moonlight and magnolia" which ignored or otherwise hid from view the length and breadth of the historical record, and "spun" it to their particular racist ideological agenda.

Joe L.,

You really don't know much about the field of history if you think that it's dominated by Marxists, as you appear to imply. In British and French studies (see for example the historiography of the English Civil War and the French Revolution), Marxists were successfully routed in the 1960s and 1970s and are at best a minor and dieing voice in these fields (if you'd like a reading list I can provide it to you). Now maybe in literary criticism (English graduate departments in other words) there are a lot of Marxists, but that's not my experience with the several graduate history departments I've worked in. I think someone needs to stop watching The O'Reilly Factor so much.

[Anonymous]

for those of you who don't want to register with a newspaper to read a story -- here's the article:

New York -- In 1915, Birth of a Nation changed the art of filmmaking. It also celebrated the Ku Klux Klan as heroes of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Now the movie itself is under reconstruction.

The artist and musician DJ Spooky is treating the seminal but racist film like a piece of music * he's doing a remix. Spooky's work-in-progress, titled Rebirth of a Nation, was shown at the American Museum of the Moving Image this week.

Spooky chose D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation precisely because it deals with issues of race. By manipulating it, and showing how it can be changed, he hopes to show how images and ideas about race are mutable as well.

"In one era, race is one thing. In another ... it changes," the DJ said. "There's never one final answer for any of this, it's always a remix."

Carl Goodman, curator of digital media at the museum, called it "sampling cinema."

"By allowing people to play with and remix and reconfigure the media of the past, it becomes a powerful form of commentating," Goodman said.

On Thursday night, Spooky projected the film onto a large screen, adding layers of visual effects. An image of a fully robed Klansman underlay the scene depicting the South's surrender at the end of the war. An image of a young Southern woman looking at cotton cloth for a dress was followed by an image of slaves picking the cotton.

Spooky also added material, such as images of a dance performance inspired by Southern history. And the soundtrack was of course his creation, a mix that ranged from a rendition of "Dixieland" to the type of beat-driven music one would hear in a club.

Spooky, born Paul Miller, has recorded with musicians ranging from Yoko One to Wu-Tang Clan's Killa Priest. His artwork has appeared in the Whitney Biennial, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, and the Andy Warhol Museum, among others.

Spooky said he planned to travel with the project and was working out arrangements to show it internationally. His ultimate goal is to show it on three screens at a time, accompanied by an orchestra.

Birth of a Nation is a milestone in American screen history, an epic production that changed how movies were filmed and edited with its use of massive numbers of extras, on-location shoots and camera close-ups.

It also outraged many people with its stereotypical, racist portrayals of black people and its embrace of the Klan.

Timothy Shary, an assistant professor of screen studies at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., said Griffith made a movie that was admirable for its artistic innovations, but not much else.

"You have to wonder what Griffith was thinking," he said.

Shary was curious at the idea of a film being remixed, but expressed a cautionary note as well.

"If you take a lot of scenes out of that film out of context, they do play very violently and they generate a lot of vehement reactions," he said, adding it could create misinterpretations of the originator's intent.

However, Shary said, "if you are very thoughtful about it, you will extract even more meaning from it."

[23 Skidoo]

Actually, what's being revised here is art, not history. Art *about* history, sure, but it still isn't the same thing.

[Gilbert Martin]

"Please do respond; I enjoy watching you undermine your credibility. :)"

No one has appointed YOU the judge of credibility, boy.

You have no more of it than anyone else who's still got a pulse.

[Croesus]

Gilbert Martin,

I certainly am the judge of Joe L's credibility as far as his discussion with me. If you don't happen to like that fact, there is very little I can do for you. BTW, dead people also can have credibility; for example, are the writings of Tacitus credible? 🙂

[Gilbert Martin]

"I certainly am the judge of Joe L's credibility as far as his discussion with me."

No more so than he or anyone else reading any of this stuff is a judge of YOUR credibility.

"If you don't happen to like that fact, there is very little I can do for you."

There's very little you can do to make something "a fact" that is actually nothing more than your personal opinion.

[Millie Meter]

"Imagine what your doctrine would do to the field of say, physics."

Well, Croesus, first of all, my comment is not a "doctrine"; it is simply an observation.

Secondly, don't run with that observation and attempt to extrapolate it to other disciplines.

In the realm of the hard sciences, one can and should obviously make corrections based on new empirical evidence.

However, when it comes to soft-core fields like "History", "Psychology", or "Sociology" there is much that remains open to speculation and to one's individual INTERPRETATION -- which necessarily entails biases.

Hence, Joe L.'s observation of such biases (especially political biases) is correct.

[Croesus]

Millie Meter,

"However, when it comes to soft-core fields like "History", "Psychology", or "Sociology" there is much that remains open to speculation and to one's individual INTERPRETATION -- which necessarily entails biases."

I hate to break it to you nitwit, but the same also remains true for the hard sciences, which you would know if you had actually ever worked in a field of science. Yours is the "brain in the vat" notion of scientific endeavour. Scientists, like philosophers, etc. all individually interpret data and the like (that's why the put their names onto the papers they submit to scientific journals). Which is of course why we have such divergent views today in the field of physics concerning the nature of the expansion of the universe. Individual interpretation is as valuable and important in the field of history as it is in physics, biology, etc. These people aren't the automatons you make them out to be; and to be frank, historians and the like are not the loathesome creatures you appear to want to paint them as either. Your hokey positivist non-sense makes me ill.

"Hence, Joe L.'s observation of such biases (especially political biases) is correct."

Joe L didn't make any substantial observations about bias; he did make a rather dimwitted claim that I easily refuted (SEE ABOVE). I do appreciate that you've got these pre-suppositions that appear to suffuse your mind; too bad they are incorrect.

[Joe L.]

Croesus, OK, no name calling. It wasn't dim-witted and no you didn't refute... One SMALL area of History may be not Marxist, that is NOT the whole of the soft sciences, by any stretch. Can the "dim-witted" stuff, trust me I doubt you're Ms. Marilyn Vos Savant, yourself...

[Croesus]

Joe L.,

One small area? Early modern Europe (of which the English Civil War and Stuart Britain in general is a sub-field, a fairly massive sub-field which can be evidence by the number of journals and monographs devoted to the subject) and French Revolution studies are hardly "small areas" of work. If you'd actually done work in the field of history at a university you'd know this. Soon, I'm sure, you'll claim that the work done on the US Civil War is a "small field;" or historians working on WWII. *chuckle*

BTW, which your nitwit friend Millie seemed to forget, the field we are dealing here with is history, an art I might add, not a science (no matter how found you might be of cliometrics), not psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.

I'd like you to provide me a list of historians that are active today which are Marxists. The only Marxist historian I've ever met, and I've met hundreds of historians, was Eugene Genovese, and his ideology certainly hasn't been a burden on his work. Of course to ham-handed thinkers like yourself, apparently Genovese, because he is a Marxist, can't be an honest historian. Which of course really is no more than an ad hominem attack on his person, as a means to avoid the arguments he makes (specifically his arguments about the nature of slavery in the US).

Please do respond; I enjoy watching you undermine your credibility. 🙂

[Millie Meter]

Croesus, you must be enjoying all this attention, hmm? And since you've opened the door to name-calling, such a craving is surely an indication of a true "nitwit." Small minds usually seek lots of attention and tend to expound ultracrepidarian inanities.

But, OK, I'll indulge your smellfungus mind just one more time:

You propound, "if you had actually ever worked in a field of science ..."

I happen to be currently so employed.

You?

I doubt it. When you state, (1) "Scientists ... all individually interpret data," you fail to mention the necessary 2nd part of such a statement ... (2) "as they attempt to DUPLICATE what other scientists have observed."

Please do yourself a favor and look up the definition of the term "science."

Scientific experiments, inasmuch as they may be individually interpreted, must also undergo a rigorous reiteration process, from one scientist to the next. Each scientist must, in turn, be able to successfully duplicate certain observations in order for the experiment to be valid.

Can you say as much for the subjective interpretation of "History," "Psychology," "Sociology," and the like?