THE BIRTH OF A NATION C+
USA (120 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Nate Parker
The American soil is
full of the corpses of my ancestors, through four hundred years and at least
three wars... What one begs the American
people to do, for all our sakes, is simply to accept our history.
—James Baldwin on the 100th anniversary of the Thirteenth
Amendment that abolished slavery, 1965, in a debate at Cambridge University
with William F. Buckley, on the question: “Is the American Dream at the expense
of the American Negro?” Classics
of American Political and Constitutional Thought: ..., also on video, James
Baldwin Debates William F. Buckley (1965) - YouTube (58:57)
Indeed I tremble for
my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep
forever. —Thomas Jefferson, opening quote
Another Hollywood depiction of slavery supposedly “based on
a true story,” this time examining Nat Turner, an American revolutionary
figure, the leader of the most notorious slave rebellion in American history in
1831, and while there were hopes that an independent production might provide
more historical accuracy, where the black writer/director Nate Parker indicated
he was seeking “historical fidelity,” instead he resorts to the same trickery
of Hollywood fictionalized embellishments, turning this into an overblown
melodrama of the highest order, portraying Turner as a Christ figure, where the
finale borrows heavily from Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004), with
Gibson’s name listed in the final credits, working as an advisor on the script. While Turner may have been a religious
zealot, believing he was chosen by God to lead a revolt to eradicate slavery, which
he felt was morally wrong and violated the law of God, this film erroneously
portrays him as a man avenging his wife’s vicious gang rape at the hands of
slave patrollers, acting as her protector from an event that likely never
happened, where his conversion to an insurrectionist happens only when his wife
gives him permission to avenge her rape.
As a result, the film completely alters the justification for his
actions. When examining historical
events, motivations matter. In this
case, one can only speculate why Parker and his cowriter Jean Celestin decided
to add this false narrative. Curiously,
both Parker and Celestin were black roommates on the wrestling team in college
at Penn State University in 1999 with both charged with raping a fellow white student
while she was intoxicated and unconscious, where she also accused them of
harassing and shaming her on campus after she filed charges, including hiring a
private investigator to show pictures of her around campus, subjecting her to
ridicule, identifying her as the “white girl crying rape!,” causing her to drop
out of school, where she eventually committed suicide in 2012. Fiercely supported by Penn State alumni, the
same ones that wanted to excuse assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky when he
was found guilty on 45 counts of sexually molesting young men, and Joe Paterno,
the head football coach that turned a blind eye, Parker was found not guilty,
while Celestin was initially convicted and sentenced to two to four years in
prison, which was overturned in 2005 for having insufficient counsel and
charges were never refiled. According to
a September 29, 2016 Variety article
written by the victim’s sister Sharon Loeffler, "Nate
Parker's 'Birth of a Nation' Exploits My Sister All Over Again (Guest
Column)":
As her sister, the thing that pains
me most of all is that in retelling the story of the Nat Turner slave revolt,
they invented a rape scene. The rape of
Turner’s wife is used as a reason to justify Turner’s rebellion. This is fiction. I find it creepy and perverse that Parker and
Celestin would put a fictional rape at the center of their film, and that
Parker would portray himself as a hero avenging that rape. Given what happened to my sister, and how no
one was held accountable for it, I find this invention self-serving and
sinister, and I take it as a cruel insult to my sister’s memory.
Whether this alters one’s appreciation for the film is
undetermined, but the revelations of this past incident, along with Parker’s
refusal to show remorse for what happened, has certainly dampened the
enthusiasm of the film coming out of the Sundance Festival, with many declaring
an outright refusal to see it. Parker is
mostly known as an actor, starring in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s underrated Beyond
the Lights (2014) while also appearing in Denzel Washington’s THE GREAT
DEBATERS (2007). The film has two
distinct sections, one on becoming a man and another on being a man, opening in
a tribal ceremony in childhood where a birthmark traced back to his ancestors
leads elders to pronounce him a prophet, suggesting divine birth, which comes
from Turner’s own testimony about himself while being held in prison,
transcribed by Richard R. Gray in 1831, The
Confessions of Nat Turner. Without anointing him to an epic hero, as the
film does, it’s important to remember that Nat Turner is just an ordinary man
who was raised in the dehumanized conditions of slavery and made to witness the
atrocities that accompany slavery. The
choice that he made to revolt against the system of tyranny and oppression is a
startling one, where his insurrection led to savage results, as he and his
rebels killed at least ten men, fourteen women, and thirty-one children. That last figure is a particularly brutal
reality, as it reflects what happens when dehumanized people are stripped of
hope, as they are left with no other option but to behave in an equally
inhumane fashion, where violence breeds violence, similar to the black-on-black
violence that ravages today’s inner cities, where shootings and staggering
murder rates are a stark legacy of historical oppression. While the film may attempt to establish this
link to the present, it fails miserably, as the effort is undermined by
mythologizing Turner and forcing him into the role of a one-dimensional super
hero, literally valorizing black manhood, like SHAFT (1971) or Django
Unchained (2012), which plays into all the other white-washed Hollywood
versions of black history, even though in this case it’s written and told by a
black man. Or put differently, the road
to hell is paved by good intentions.
While there’s something almost inadvertently admirable about this film, especially
its occasional artistic touches, it ultimately fails to make the case of
bringing the historical relevancy of the past into the present, connecting it
to the Black Lives Matter movement, for instance. This film will not change anyone’s minds, as
those who know it already know it, and those that don’t either won’t see the
film or won’t be persuaded by the content.
In the ensuing hysteria following the rebellion, fearful that other
slaves may revolt, states overreacted by passing laws making it illegal to
teach blacks how to read or write, creating an educational gap that societally
has never been bridged.
Surprisingly, what works best is everything that happens
prior to the insurrection, where it’s simply a portrayal of day-to-day life
under slavery. As a child, Nat is
skipping around and playing with his slave owner’s son Sam, where the two
become best friends, though each retreats into decidedly different households
come dinner time, Sam to the mansion and Nat to the slave quarters. This film inaccurately shows personal cabins
for slave families, something that was certainly not the case in Southampton,
Virginia where there were no private living quarters for slaves. Without explanation, we discover Nat has the
capacity to read as a small child, something noticed by Sam’s mother Elizabeth
(Penelope Ann Miller), bringing him to live inside the mansion where she teaches
him The Bible. Nat’s father is run off the plantation when
he is caught stealing food, forced to disappear into the night and never be
seen again. Jumping ahead to Nat (Nate
Parker) as a young man, we see that Sam (Armie Hammer) still considers him a
friend, believing him trustworthy, where Nat lives with his mother (Aunjanue
Ellis) and grandmother (Esther Scott), where they are portrayed as a loving
family. That, in itself, is a
revelation, as slaves are rarely depicted as capable of having intelligence and
human feelings. These bonds grow even
more intimate with the appearance of Cherry (Aja Naomi King), as Nat actually
persuades Sam to purchase her in a slave auction, with a young black boy
holding up a sign that reads “Slaves for Sale.”
She ends up as the personal property of one of Sam’s sisters, working
inside the mansion along with Esther (Gabrielle Union), a silent character who
never utters a word of dialogue throughout the entire film. In an op-ed
for The Los Angeles Times, Union, who
was raped at gunpoint at the age of 19, explained that in Esther’s silence “she
represents countless black women who have been and continue to be violated. Women without a voice, without power. Women in general. But black women in particular.” Nat has worked the cotton fields since
childhood days, making it difficult to find private moments alone with Cherry,
where the budding romance, eventual marriage, and having a daughter actually
has a degree of love and tender grace to it, offering a delicately humanized
alternative to the surrounding harshness.
But that soon changes, once Nat is called upon by neighboring
slaveholders to have Nat preach to their slaves, teaching them the sanctity of
“obedience.” The horrors that he
witnesses while performing this service are inhumanly grotesque, catalyzing his
growing awareness, as he notices that Biblical passages on obedience to false
prophets are followed by the wrath of an angry God, where he comes to believe
his own complicity in the slavery atrocities, delivering more rousing sermons
that suggest a deliverance from evil. One
of the most haunting images seen is a mirror image of Nat and Sam as young
boys, but here it is a young white girl skipping across the porch with a rope
connected to a young black girl following behind with a noose around her
neck. What’s so provocative is the utter
obliviousness on their innocent faces, while Nat is profoundly affected by the
implication. As these visits continue,
where Sam earns enough money to save his farm, Sam also grows more indifferent
to Nat, drinking heavily to vanquish the pain, increasingly treating Nat and
others like property, not only allowing, but insisting that Esther be raped by
another prominent slave-owner. The final
eruption of violence is as much about personal betrayal as it is about
slavery.
