Birth of an Audience

Important. Powerful. Heartbreaking. Compassionate. Upsetting. Beautiful. Satisfying. Imperfect. Complex. Riveting. Different. New. Old. Relevant. Accurate. Sparing. Respectful. Gabrielle Union. Worth Seeing. Subtle. Light. Dark. Bewildering. Artistic. Necessary. Straightforward. Silent.

I would love to expand on the above and go into just why I think The Birth of a Nation was one of the best films of 2016, but it’s hard to talk about the film itself without first justifying having seen it despite the controversy surrounding its director.

This is what I knew back when the film was in theaters: In 1999, a student at Penn State alleged that Nate Parker and Jean Celestin had raped her. The two young men were arrested and tried in 2001 – Parker was found not guilty, Celestin was found guilty, and then that conviction was later overturned due to the fact that a judge determined he’d had poor legal representation. In 2012, the alleged victim committed suicide. In 2016, The Birth of a Nation (written/directed by its star, Parker, and attributing a story credit to Celestin) was greeted with high praise and Oscar buzz at the Sundance Film Festival. Every black woman I knew was brimming with excitement. And then the story of Parker’s trial struck Twitter, struck the movie reviews, struck the box office, struck me and my friends. We were called on to boycott the movie out of solidarity to Parker’s victim, and to all victims of sexual assault. So we did.

The fact that both Parker and Celestin had been cleared of all charges did not matter. Strung together, the facts conjured too familiar an image of men getting away with sexual assault, of Hollywood (and the entire entertainment industry) prioritizing art over human decency, over female bodies.

Woody Allen. Roman Polanski. Harvey Weinstein. R. Kelly. Kobe Bryant. Bryan Singer. Sean Penn. More Presidents than I feel like naming. Basically every actor and director in “The Golden Age” of Hollywood. Kesha’s producer, whatshisname. Seemingly every man who’s ever worked at FOX. Michael Fassbender. Josh Brolin. You get the picture.

Over the past several months since the film’s release, I found myself bringing up The Birth of a Nation over and over again. The sting of what had been done to that poor, nameless girl whose face I did not know, whose truth I’d been speaking for, had begun to fade. The story which had been woven around the film, which had morally barred me from seeing it, seemed like a hastily stitched patchwork quilt of speculation and bias. And I learned something new about the case in 1999 – the alleged victim was white.

Immediately, this was no longer solely a case rooted in a deep and disturbing history of courts dismissing women’s testimony, but also a case rooted in the deep and disturbing history of white Americans accusing innocent black men of raping their women.

Scottsboro Boys. Central Park Five. Emmett Till. Numerous black men lynched in the streets, thrown in prison, presumed guilty based on the color of their skin.

This duality allowed me to think a little differently about the case and how I, a member of society, wanted to treat Parker. I wanted to believe the woman, but at the same time, as someone who believes in due process, I thought it important to remember that Parker was innocent until proven guilty, and that he shouldn’t be punished for the rest of his life for a crime he’s found not guilty of.

At the end of the day, I would rather a guilty man walk free than an innocent man be persecuted.

Additionally, even if I wanted to stand in solidarity with survivors of sexual assault by boycotting a film directed by an alleged rapist, I also wanted to stand in solidarity with one of the actresses, Gabrielle Union, who is a survivor herself and has been a constant advocate for survivors of sexual assault. My desire to see the film was finally justified when Union published an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times, and engaged in a follow-up interview with Essence Magazine.

In the former, Union starts by introducing her harrowing story of being raped at gunpoint, of what attracted her to the script in the first place which was portraying the oppressive silence survivors are forced to bear, of the gut churning confusion she felt at hearing these allegations against her director, and concludes with her hope that the film will shed a spotlight on the rape-centric culture in America, and provoke the necessary and painful conversations society needs to have. In the latter, Union stands in solidarity with anyone who does not go see her film, asserting that their triggers mean more to her than the success or failure of the film:

“As a rape survivor and as an advocate, I cannot shy away from this responsibility because the conversation got difficult. I don’t want to put myself above anyone’s pain or triggers. Every victim or survivor, I believe you. I support you. I support you if you don’t want to see the film. I absolutely understand and respect that. I can’t sell the film.”

That (unfortunately rare) compassion for her audience made me okay with finally watching.

~Amanda Jerido-Katz