Violence tends to take on a different air when associated with war; an “amoral” rather than immoral association. However, violence as retribution is skirting on the fine line between the two, and when war is added to the mix, it is even harder to claim it as justified or not. The 1915 silent epic The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, depicts violence during and after the American Civil War. In this film, two families from the north and south respectively are followed through the cruelties of war and reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan inflicts tragedies upon one family, and retribution results, yet happiness is not attained. We have come to justify violence as righteous retribution if it has an emotional attachment to someone. If motivations have a connection to someone we are personally invested in, such as a family member, or even a character in a film, the violent crime tends to become justified. In The Birth of a Nation, this is portrayed when Klansmen hunt down and lynch a man who caused the main character’s sister to leap to her death. This sympathy for the loss of his sister forces the audience to see the crime against the man as justified, even though the Ku Klux Klan is behind it. Violence itself is never amoral, but rather what it is associated with gives it a purpose that we are rooting for. Sympathetic emotions towards what violence is trying to achieve is what makes it and retribution seem justified and right.
Miranda Gontz, Tori Kause, Helen Lee, Sara Patterson
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