A Cult Classic Born Again

Internationally renowned conceptual artist Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid brings his much acclaimed performance, Rebirth of a Nation, to its own birthing place, Sanders Theatre, today at 8 p.m.

Invited by Harvard Friends of Amnesty International (HFAI), and spearheaded by the efforts of Tina H. Rivers ’05 and the Office For the Arts at Harvard (OFA), Miller will perform this self-described “digital exorcism” in its Boston premiere for HFAI’s first annual “Jamnesty,” an event to raise awareness for the organization.

Miller’s performance presents an alternative perspective on D.W. Griffith’s controversial, Ku Klux Klan-praising 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. Projecting spliced images of digitally enhanced footage from Griffith’s film with new clips onto three big screens and mixing it live with blues and hip-hop music, Miller remixes, revisits, and condenses the silent three-hour epic into a 75-minute multimedia experience, in a process that subverts traditional musical accompaniment to silent films.

From the polemical 2000 election that sparked the idea of the remix to the subsequent national tour, Rebirth has taken a long journey to return to Harvard, since much of the initial research for the film was done at the on-campus Harvard Film Archive. That it’s appearing here at all is a testament to the allure of Miller’s endeavor, equal parts academic critique and sonic psychedelia, and to the energetic response it’s earning from critics and audiences throughout the country.

THE BIRTH OF ‘REBIRTH’

While The Birth of a Nation is truly a groundbreaking movie for its cinematographic technique (especially in its revolutionary use of parallel editing and dramatic pacing), the film is better known for its overt glorification of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and its degrading portrayal of blacks. Its re-interpretive historical plot paints the fall of antebellum Southern culture as a disgraceful tragedy perpetuated by lazy blacks’ conniving and power-hungry “mulattos” and their misguided or equally opportunistic Northern sympathizers.

A typical scene intercuts blacks fermenting restless mob violence against a frontier family, a biracial servant trying to rape his former mistress, and the Klu Klux Klan heroically riding to the rescue, clearly indicating the necessity of white racial supremacy.

In short, Griffith’s blacks are ruthless, uncouth, and almost certainly deserving of a good lynching. The Birth of a Nation praises the actions of the KKK and casts Klan members as heroes who are not only justified in their horrific deeds, but morally obligated to forcibly “defend” the white elite from the blacks.

Given the red-in-the-face visceral fury that the original film has incited since its release (see sidebar), Miller’s first reaction upon viewing The Birth of a Nation was surprising. At the time, he was a philosophy/French literature major studying at Bowdoin College, a D.C. expat fed on hardcore punk groups like Bad Brains and a style of ’70s horn-funk called “go-go.”

With a musical and artistic background distinctive for its sincerity, it’s easy to imagine Miller’s misgivings about the extravagant hysterics of Griffith’s film. Indeed, his initial response was “a wide sense of amusement. It was very difficult to take seriously. It was kind of overblown.”

Miller was first inspired to remix The Birth of a Nation several years later, after the controversial 2000 presidential election. He noticed that the red and blue states were split along lines, much in the way the Union and Confederate states divided during the Civil War.

The hotly contested outcome of the 2000 election (or in his words, “nonelection”) rested on the results of the Florida vote, but the validity of that state’s election was questioned, partly due to the alleged disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Miller is less unsure of the alleged fraud, describing it as “widely documented” and drawing a connection between the current underhanded tactics of party politics and the events in The Birth of a Nation.

“Griffith’s film also shows a deeply flawed election,” says Miller. “I just think of the film as a metaphor about these issues.”

But the election parallels are just one of many links from the present to the past that Miller plays up during each of his performances. Miller focuses on and exposes Griffith’s wildly inaccurate and offensive portrayal of blacks and women in The Birth of a Nation. As each show is remixed live, each performance is unique, and on any given night, he might emphasize one of several themes: the stereotyping of women and African-Americans, the disenfranchisement of black voters, or the film’s graphic violence.

“The film was something to set a tone, about how to portray all sorts of behavior in America,” Miller expounds. “What I’m thinking, you are confronted with people who still hold cliché ideas of women and people of color. The remix foregrounds these kinds of issues.”

Among other examples, Miller pointedly cites University President Lawrence H. Summers’ controversial statements about women in science as a living demonstration of the persistence of this “incredibly false version of America” set forth in Griffith’s film.

Miller explains this connection between The Birth of a Nation and Summers’ infamous statements about the “innate differences” between the sexes: “[I]t’s about clichéd perceptions of people. A lot of us operate under assumptions—about behavior, intelligence, etc., etc.—the culture of the cliché.”

But the themes that Miller grapples with in Rebirth extend beyond the pinpointing of unchanged cultural trends. For Miller, his Rebirth of a Nation is also a reevaluation of Griffith’s film, as well as a reassessment of American history.

“A lot of [The Birth of a Nation’s] main element, because it’s a silent film, is hyperbolic; the reality, of course, is much more complex,” says Miller. “I am intrigued how cinema is used to reduce complex issues into cliché soundbites, how it acts as propaganda for a very simple vision of America.”

According to Miller, this reexamination of The Birth of a Nation is important because “Film is our global vocabulary. And it’s a language that cuts across all cultures…America is a culture of amnesia, and to me, a lot of issues pop up precisely because of that; the more we forget history, the more it seems to come back and haunt us.”

A HARVARD CONNECTION

In preparation for Rebirth, Miller conducted much of his research at the Harvard Film Archive (HFA). The HFA has a history of assisting scholars, filmmakers, and other artists, by providing access to over 8,000 films in their collection, stored in humidity-controlled vaults.

One of these vaults contains the cleanest prints of The Birth of a Nation. Because the HFA has a policy of not allowing film prints to be copied or loaned, Miller had to work on site.

Former Cavell Curator of the HFA Bruce Jenkins recalls Miller approaching the archive for assistance when Rebirth was still in its conceptual state. Intrigued by Miller’s plans, the HFA worked to help develop a project in which Miller would DJ to the film in Sanders Theatre. However, the HFA was unsuccessful in gaining institutional support to co-sponsor the event, and what would have been the world premiere of Rebirth failed to materialize.

Though nothing recently has resembed the early 20th century lynching riots connected with the debut of The Birth of a Nation, the HFA has had its own dealings with angry viewers reacting to the controversial film.

“The HFA has long held a print of the film, and in one of the more celebrated episodes in the Archive’s history, the founding curator Vlada Petric had to defend the projection booth against a group of offended audience members who wanted to terminate a screening of [The] Birth of a Nation,” Jenkins writes in an e-mail.

In light of the controversy occasioned by previous showings, Jenkins wanted to have on-campus support for the project which, unfortunately, never came through. It was not until over two years later that Jenkins saw Miller’s vision realized at a performance of Rebirth at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

In retrospect, Jenkins adds, “That experience of having the HFA support the project at a very early stage was important in persuading Paul to move forward with the work.”

Now, Miller will finally get to perform Rebirth at Sanders Theatre, and for him, touring at Harvard is like “coming back full circle.”

Miller can thank the collaborative efforts of Rivers and the OFA for his long overdue Boston debut. Rivers, co-coordinator of HFAI and a longtime fan of Miller’s, saw Rebirth at Lincoln Center in New York City this past summer. “[A]s soon as Rebirth was over, I knew I wanted him to come and do it at Harvard,” Rivers writes in an email, and she subsequently approached and received support from the OFA to bring Miller to campus.

“My response to the performance when I saw it was that, regardless of how he may or may not change your perception of the original film…he does a great job of providing a model for how we can intelligently review cultural objects,” she says.

Rivers also invokes the awareness that the project can raise in regards to human rights abuses. She says that Rebirth, “could be inspiring to all the artists, activists, and artists-cum-activists in the audience to see how effective avant-garde art and music can be as a political tool.”

Thomas Lee, program manager for the OFA’s Learning from Performers series, agrees, and encourages students to see Rebirth for both aesthetic and political reasons. He says, “Harvard students should be exposed to all different kinds of art—art that is thought-provoking, challenging, maybe life-changing.”

Paul Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid will be performing Rebirth of a Nation at Sanders Theatre tonight at 8 p.m. Tickets are available now through the Harvard Box Office.

—Staff writer Emily G.W. Chau can be reached at egchau@fas.harvard.edu.