In Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks, Donald Bogle writes that The
Birth of a Nation offered a catalog to the different African-American types
appearing in contemporary popular culture: "This extraordinary, multidimensional
movie was also the first feature film to deal with a black theme and at the same
time to articulate fully the entire pantheon of black gods and
goddesses."(1)
As with any form of mythology, the evil characters are far more interesting and
crucial to the main narrative and so, as a result, they receive decidedly more
screentime.
Bogle identifies the threat to white America in the triad of the buck (a psychotic
sexual predator such as the film's Gus or the mulatto Silas Lynch), the brute (anonymous
blacks who abuse their powers such as the members of the Black Congress), and the sexual
mulatto female (as Senator Stoneman's mistress, Lydia, who might be understood in terms
of Deborah Gray White's Jezebel figure). One interesting aspect of these black characters
is what might be understood as their different degrees of "blackness." Richard Dyer
recognizes the confused nature of racial identity presented in the film's mulatto
characters when he writes:
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The narrative pivots on the notion of blurring categories through miscegenation....
The tensest narrative set pieces--Gus's pursuit of Flora, Silas's proposal to Elsie--
concern acts whose violence expresses the horror of the interracial mingling of
blood as much as of male domination of women. In the racialist imagination,
miscegenation is rape. However, the use of the mulatto as the key to
understanding the racial history of the South always courts two distinct problems.
First, miscegenation always implies--even while it seldom acknowledges--a
history of white as well as black sexuality. It takes two to miscegenate, and you
have to have one of each colour....Secondly, there is also something potentially
dangerous (to white identity) in the suggestion that mulattos are more dangerous
than pure black
people.(2)
Dyer reads the depiction of power-hungry mulattoes as indication that racial
identity in the South is already complicated (p. 167). The pursuit of the two
white women, Flora and Elsie, by a black man and a mulatto only complicate matters
more.
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With the understanding that miscegenation has occurred and it has damaged
society, the white families (and, by association, the audience) seek to keep things
in simple, black and white, terms. One prime example of this desire for clear figures
in the mythology appears in the contrast between Lydia, the scheming light-skinned
female, and the Cameron's mammy, who Donald Bogle describes as "representative of
the all-black woman, over-weight, middle-aged, and so dark, so thoroughly black,
that it is preposterous even to suggest that she be a sex object. Instead she was
desexed" (p. 14-15).
To borrow Snead's definitions, it seems the color of the mammy's skin (especially
when worn by a white actor in blackface as in this case) is as much of a marker as
the white clothes she wears to demonstrate her servility. This character's features
are so foreign to white aesthetics of beauty that she is not a potential temptation
to the white males of the film (as Lydia is to Senator Stoneman). Instead the mammy
is an asexual creature whose loyalty never needs to be questioned. This is demonstrated
in The Birth of a Nation when the Cameron's mammy encounters a black butler from
the North.
In this scene, the Stonemans leave their Northern home and arrive via carriage at the
Cameron's house. As Senator Stoneman and his hosts enter the front room and move
through the door to the right, the black butler follows with a two suitcases in hand.
When he sees the mammy, he tries to give her the bags. She steps back, puts her hands
on her hips, and then points to the room in the background. When he doesn't respond,
she points again and then clenches her hand in a fist. The intertitle reads:
The butler is heading for
the back room when the mammy kicks him in the pants and then pushes him farther
into the background. |
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After a series of exterior shots where the younger Cameron sister is introduced
to her brother's girlfriend, we return to the interior of the house where the
butler follows the elder Stoneman into the scene. The mammy follows them and when
the senator exits the frame, she bows in his direction. As she begins to speak to
him, the butler raises and lowers his eyebrows at her in a suggestive manner. After
looking to the camera, the mammy changes places with the butler as they both move
from one side of the frame to the other.
Mammy looks over her shoulder and the butler is again raising and lowering his
eyebrows at her. The mammy opens eyes wide and stares toward the camera. When
she looks at the butler again, he is walking away from her but still raising and
lowering his eyebrows. She faces the camera for one final moment with her mouth
wide open before the intertitle appears, reading:
These two exchanges between the butler and mammy are played for laughs but the
underlying messages reinforce common notions of loyalty and mythologies concerning
black sexuality. At first, the butler attempts to instill a sense of superiority
over the mammy as he tries to hand her the bags. She responds with a series of
threatening gestures and words that prove to him that even though he might be
from the North and possessed his freedom longer than her, he is still a servant.
As a temporary sense of equilibrium seems to set in, the mammy asserts her own
dominance by kicking and pushing him into the back room. Since the butler is
entering what is essentially the mammy's home (or domestic territory), it only
makes sense that he is the subordinate one. Her victory, however, is only temporary.
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When the camera returns to document their interaction--once again away from the
watchful eye of their masters--the butler turns the tables on the mammy by
asserting his sexual identity. The leering gestures he makes towards her are
surprising for two reasons: his assertion of sexual experience (if raising and
lowering of the eyebrows can allow for as much) and the absence of similar
feelings or interests in her response. Whether or not she recognizes the
gestures for what they are (it seems they are more for the audience's
understanding than hers) she fails to respond properly--either in accepting
or refuting the advances. As an asexual figure versed only in the demands of
the domestic, the mammy is quick to prevent any challenge to her authority in
the household. That is why she pushes and kicks the butler into the back room.
But when the butler begins making sexual overtures, she dismisses the actions
as that of Northern blacks who are free and somewhat crazy. |
In this sense, the butler can be understood as being similar to Gus, the black
Union soldier who chases Flora to her death. The insatiable sex drive of the
black male is an established cinematic trope that appears in servants and soldiers
alike. The mammy, however, fulfills the role of the sexually naive servant who lives
for her white masters. James Snead reinforces this sentiment when he notes the
marking involved in her costume which: "in her white apron and cap signifies the
message ‘here is a uniformed housekeeper,' but the underlying code is ‘blacks are
customary as servants; black is the natural color of servility" (p. 37-38). That
loyalty is made apparent to the audience when she and her male counterpart attempt
to save their master from the clutches of Union soldiers who arrested him for being
affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.
