Film Studies Daily Log

Friday, September 26

We reviewed briefly the characters we met on Thursday -- the Stonemans and the Camerons -- and concentrated especially on Lydia, Congressman Stoneman's mulatto mistress, pausing to discuss the why mulattos are the most villainous characters in Griffith's film. The evil of race mixing as portrayed in Birth is connected with the decline of mulattoes as a category in the U.S. and the legislation of the "one drop rule."

HW due Monday:
Read carefully the short handout distributed in class today (with further information about the contemporary reception of Birth of a Nation) and prepare to ask and answer questions about it in class Monday.