Oscar Micheaux and Black American Cinema

In aboriginal Ameri rout out get, blackeneds were portrayed in a precise loathly and racist way. An example of this is in D.W. Griffiths 1915 adopt, The stand of a Nation. This word picture is what helped spark the graduation exercise of Black American Cinema. An African-American director named Oscar Micheaux responded to Griffiths direct and created many films portraying African-Americans as world perfectly rule and realistic. This paper will address how Micheaux changed the way African-Americans were portrayed in cinema and how he helped conk out Black American Cinema. This can be seen by study some of Micheauxs soonest films including: The Homesteader (1919), Within Our render (1920), and Veiled Aristocrats (1932).\nD.W. Griffiths 1915 film, The have a bun in the oven of a Nation was very controversial because of the way black manpower were portrayed. There is a burst in which a black man attempts to mishandle a white woman. This scene tries to make black c ustody seem evil and dangerous. withal all of the black hands in the film atomic number 18 shown to be very unintelligent. Mainstream film companies portrayed black men largely as mirthful objects dim witted, slow moving, ambitionless caricatures who would not threaten mainstream audiences (Butters 5). some(prenominal) of the actors were not even black. A lot of the actors were white men dressed in blackface. This film likewise shows the Ku Klux Klan as being the good guys of the story and also being heroic. A late racist film glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation was bitingly attacked on its release by the National Association for the progression of Colored People (NAACP) and its ally (Stokes 20). This film caused many African-Americans to quetch the film. There were race riots and protests in many urban cities. The film was very controversial which caused it to be recut and censored. Repeatedly recut by censors who deemed the torturous sequences of lynchin g and attempted encroachment too incendiary in the wake of the Chic...