Huckleberry Finn, D.W. Griffith, and the Role of Racism in Art

18th September, 2009 12 Comments

Book lovers might remember a small news item in the late 90’s about an African American woman suing a high school for forcing her daughter to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The mother alleged that the repeated use of the word “nigger” in the book and her daughter’s refusal to read it created a racially charged environment that led to her daughter’s harassment. She didn’t seek to have the books banned, but she wanted the court to prevent schools from assigning it as mandatory reading. In a very interesting ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that while the court could not make the school take Huck Finn off the mandatory reading list (and thus scare schools into not assigning controversial material), schools could be held liable for failing to prevent racial harassment upon the book’s assignment.

I was in that classroom. I knew the actual girl in the case. I remember her well; she was incredibly intelligent and thoughtful, the kind of person you meet and treasure in the diverse world of college, not in a sweltering Arizona high school in the middle of Mormonland. I remember identifying with her, thinking back to a moment in elementary school when a dim-witted jock named Derek learned I was from Argentina and then promptly asked me if I was a wetback. At the time I had no idea what the word meant, so I ignored him. Looking back, I realize now how awful a question that was, especially when asked by a young boy (ironically Derek ended up marrying a black woman).

Later on while at film school at USC (btw, how about that Ohio State game? Epic!), we studied Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, much to the chagrin of many students (and TA’s, as it turned out). As we studied it I began to think about my past experiences with Huckleberry Finn and how similar the controversy over the two were. Both of these works are held as important works in their canons for the same reason–they almost single handedlyinvented the language of their craft. Hemingway once said that all American literature can be traced back to Huckleberry Finn. It was the first in a new breed of novel, a novel written in the common language and vernacular rather than one written in the stuffiest most literary English of the era. Twain was writing in response to authors like Dickens and Hawthorne, whose erudite overuse of language stifled their novels and made them less real. In doing so, Twain created a uniquely American writing style in line with American values–equality, democracy, and accessibility. Huck Finn was a working man’s novel, readable by the public no matter the education level, written in their language for them.

On the same page, Birth of a Nationis unquestionably a milestone in the craft of filmmaking–the concept of a long “feature film,” the invention of the closeup, the invention of intercuttingbetween two scenes to build tension, so many intrinsic elements of film language are on display for the very first time. Before Griffithfilms were short subjects featuring funny gags or melodramatic performances, shot mostly in wide angles as if the camera were recording a play. Griffith trained his own stable of actors to act for the camera, eschewing the melodramatic pantomime in favor of a more naturalistic style that used the camera to emphasize emotion and subtext. He invented the film language we continue to use today to tell our stories.

But here is where the similarities end. The film is worse than Twain’s book in its controversy; Twain used the word “nigger” as part of his attempt to write a vernacular novel, to be accurate to what the people of the day would talk like. His whole novel was about opening Huck’s eyes and equating physical and political freedom with intellectual freedom. Huck and Jim escape from their captors early on in the book, but it isn’t until their minds are opened to the world at large that they are truly free. You never once think Twain believes the things his characters do–he satirizes the South and its racist society. To appreciate it you merely have to separate the form and message of the book from the specific use of an extremely racially charged word. The book isn’t racist. It has racists in it and uses language racists continue to use today. The book is one man’s satire of the times he lived in.

Griffith’s film, on the other hand, is unabashedly racist. The heroes of the story are the Ku Klux Klan, charging in at the last minute to save white women from angry hordes of unpacifiable blacks. The film also features the lynching of an educated black man after he goes amok and chases a white woman into the woods. Some film schools refuse to discuss it because in retrospect it is so clearly awful in its message. To appreciate it, you have to completely separate the form of the film from the content. You have to analyze it coldly, as a technical exercise, notable only for its wizardry of craft. Even if you buy Griffith’s future attempts to right the wrongs of BoaN with his racially positive films Intolerance and Broken Blossoms,those corrective films and the accompanying literature about Griffith himself in that time show you more about the nature of racism in that era than any textbook could show. Griffith’s work has become an archaeological artifact of a time when even the most racially progressive people in the country were paternalistic towards minorities (Griffith famously defended his love for black people like his love for his own children). Like many films of the past, BoaN is a time capsule showing us our country at its ugliest. We are repelled by it because it reminds us of the failure of our democracy to truly protect all people from oppression. We ignore it because it’s easier to ignore it than to confront and understand it.

Huck Finn doesn’t give us that problem. Huck Finn is a book that advocates a freedom of mind and a level of understanding that directly counteracts the paternalistic views of the time. Huck begins the book as a student, whose teachers attempt to “sivilize” him. By the end of the book Twain’s message is clear–it is Huck and Jim who are truly civilized, while the world that prides itself on being of the highest class shows the most barbaric behavior of all.

But if we are to destroy racism, we need to understand it far beyond the cookie-cutter “back of the bus” racism just about everyone knows and hates. Just because we don’t have separate drinking fountains anymore doesn’t mean that racism isn’t real and alive in our society. When President Obama was elected many people believed a critical milestone had been passed in race relations, only to come to a rude awakening as the racial attacks on him have increased over the course of his first year in office. Our racism is a more challenging one, a racism of ingrained attitudes and generations of social instruction that these people belong here and those people belong there. Our racism is a lack of awareness about our past and just how ugly it was. Instead of keeping those doors closed because it’s safer to ignore the issue, we should open those doors and discuss the issues behind them in the proper context. We should know our shameful history, both from the men who strived to make it better and the men who never realized the truth about their own prejudices.

This is all separate from the original Huck Finn lawsuit, which acknowledged that the book’s use of “nigger” is not racist in and of itself. The lawsuit’s complaint was that even if the use of the word is merely a part of the accuracy of the setting, its repeated use lowers the self esteem of African American students, especially when there are no competing works depicting white people in similar ways. Moreover, the reading of the book (and its discussion of these racially charged themes) created a hostile environment where young students who are still not self-aware enough to know how they think weren’t able to process the heavy material. It’s a complex question that goes far beyond merely banning a book for being racist or for having bad words. It’s a dialogue about the nature of words, the real world consequences of words that hurt even when there’s no avoiding their existence. It’s also a balance between the importance of knowing all the parts of our shared history and the responsibility to make sure that it doesn’t repeat itself. It’s a balancing act between exposing young people to these hurtful words that cause them great pain and whitewashing the past to ignore any evidence of the dark stain on America’s soul. It’s about how the sins of the past are visited upon and paid for by the children of the future. And these questions aren’t going away anytime soon.

Doing the research about the lawsuit and going back into my memories about that class made me think about how far we as a society still have to go. Even though we’re as egalitarian as we have ever been in this country, there’s still this unspoken undercurrent, this dormant pain bubbling under the surface, and it only takes the right book, the right combination of words and ideas, to help it ignite and explode.

The second photo included in this post is a still of Mickey Rooney wearing blackface in his hugely popular 1939 musical Babes in Arms. The film’s finale features a huge group of teen actors (including Rooney and Judy Garland) and small children, all wearing wigs and blackface performing a minstrel show. Just a few years ago I mentioned this movie’s racism to a friend who squealed “I love that movie!” as if it were the latest harmless Disney cartoon (Disney has had racism claims in multiple movies). To the right is the original cover of Agatha Christie’s bestselling novel And Then There Were None, which is also the bestselling mystery novel of all time and the seventh most popular book ever. In it the murder mystery takes place on “Nigger Island” (later renamed “Indian Island” and now “Soldier Island”). Just two more examples of things in the past we take for granted, stained not only by their own racism, but by our willful ignorance of it.

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