The Birth of a Nation/YMMV


 * Designated Hero: Ben and the rest of the Ku Klux Klan.
 * Family Unfriendly Aesop: No kidding.
 * Historical Hero Upgrade: The Ku Klux Klan, and how.
 * Historical Villain Upgrade: Needless to say, Thaddeus Stevens and Lydia Hamilton Smith were not the mustache-twirling villains they're portrayed as.
 * Purity Sue: Elsie Stoneman, Flora Cameron (Marion Lenoir in the book), and Margaret Cameron.
 * True Art Is Ancient: Subverted. You'll be struggling hard to find someone who praises the movie without adding a lengthy disclaimer that they don't agree with its message.
 * Uncanny Valley: Some of the "black" characters in the second part of the film almost fall into this territory due to the extensive use of Blackface. The eyes and eyebrows on some performers in particular look disturbingly out of place.
 * Unfortunate Implications: Oh boy...
 * Unintentionally Sympathetic: We're supposed to take it for granted that Gus is trying to rape Flora (he was stalking her, though), but all we actually see him doing is asking her to marry him, after which she promptly jumps off a cliff. This makes it hard not to feel sorry for him, Scary Black Man or not, especially given his punishment.
 * YMMV on this one, as he later kills several people.
 * Values Dissonance: Though not to the degree one would expect, since both the film and the book it was based on were denounced as racist even at the time