Blackface, Disguise and Invisibility in the Reception of The Birth of a Nation

Abstract

This chapter explores a question of audience perception in the light of the divergence between interpretative accounts of films as texts and social histories of cinema as cultural institution and as experience. Focusing on one scene in The Birth of a Nation in which the disguise of blackface is incorporated into the film as a plot device, it examines the evidence of how the film’s contemporary audiences might have perceived its mode of Black representation.