Chapter 1 “To misrepresent a Helpless Race” by Jacqueline Najuma Stewart discusses the negative image of blacks portrayed in the early age of filmmaking and their efforts to “reconstruct” the black image. Although blacks had long been victims of inaccurate,racially fueled stereotypes in print such as books and newspapers, the rise of the cinema became a new medium. The moving picture was a whole new platform for racists to display their propaganda, cementing it into the minds of American’s on a mass scale. Black stereotypes which had long circulated in white American intellect were integrated into moving picture by white filmmakers. The release of Birth of A Nation is an early example of this misrepresentation on an large platform, making waves in both white and black communities.<\/p>\n
Institutionalized racism however did not allow blacks to accurately defend themselves against their racist white counterparts. They were left voiceless, calling upon black activists and leaders to defend the black image. Ida B. Wells like many other activist and leaders in the black community, almost always found hardships in reconstructing the black image. Blacks worked tirelessly to restore the inaccurate image represented in the media. \u00a0Although Ida Wells resented the attack\u00a0 “black integrity”\u00a0 in the Birth\u00a0 she did not discredit or write off the work of filmmaker Griffin.<\/p>\n
Jacqueline Najuma Stewart described the rise of the cinema as a new arena of damaging black representation. Prompting her to divide the filmmaking into the “Pre-Classical Cinema”, which was early cinema from the beginning of motion picture to 1907. She describes this era as film that goes beyond stereotyping with a “range of stylistic models and formal structures, in its efforts to represent and manage anxieties about racial difference. ” Transitional from 1907 to midteens. As the film industry continued to grow into a booming industry she details the history of black representation throughout the early years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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