Why was this movie “The Birth of a Nation”, the first blockbuster?, According to pbslearningmedia.org, “The film is considered the greatest blockbuster of the silent film era. Thomas Dixon, who wrote the book The Clansman, on which The Birth of a Nation was based, reveled in its success. ‘The real purpose of my film was to revolutionize Northern audiences that would transform every man into a Southern partisan for life.'”  According to Wikipedia, this movie was “…a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith…” According to Wikipedia, “Popular among white audiences nationwide upon its release, the film’s success was both a consequence of and a contributor to racial segregation throughout the U.S. In response to the film’s depictions of black people and Civil War history, African Americans across the U.S. organized and protested.” The author of the book The Clansman (the book the movie is based on), Thomas Dixon, wrote: “My object is to teach the North, the young North, what it has never known—the awful suffering of the white man during the dreadful Reconstruction period. I believe that Almighty God anointed the white men of the South by their suffering during that time . . . to demonstrate to the world that the white man must and shall be supreme.”

A blockbuster is a really big and good movie. According to Oxford Reference, “A film with an extremely high *production and *marketing budget that attains considerable commercial success. The term ‘blockbuster’ derives from the word used to describe large-scale bombs used in World War II.” In the silent  film era, this movie was said to be the greatest blockbuster. Many people loved it and this is why it is a blockbuster. Well, the white people liked it. The movie angered the African-Americans because of how they were portrayed in the movie. They have even tried to have the movie banned, but that didn’t work out well. Woodrow Wilson made it the first movie to ever be shown at the White House. 

So the movie was a good blockbuster, but a terrible movie. I do think that the African-Americans were portrayed badly, but don’t think that the movie should be banned.