Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
In 1915, Epoch Producing Co. released what is widely considered to be the first epic film, though there is some pushback against that, Birth of a Nation. In the film, after chronicling the Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln – in a way that made it clear there were very fine people on both sides – the film depicts the war’s aftermath as black men, played by white actors covered head-to-toe in shoe polish, descending upon the South as a swarm of amorous locusts to sake their uncontrollable lust by raping every white woman they could get their hands on. The only thing standing in their way are the women’s white saviors, the knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
The film pushed a version of history that was demonstrably untrue, even within living memory at the time, but a version that made white men more comfortable than to grapple honestly with the racism at the heart of the Civil War, or the film’s own making for that matter. This new version of history was so popular that the Klan, which had essentially fallen apart by the 1870s, was refounded in 1915 because of Birth of a Nation’s popularity and how romantically it portrayed the organization.
Super Bowl weekend is always bad news for the box office, but this was one of the worst weekends in history, with movies only making $73.4 million total, with no individual film making even as much as $10 million. Glass earned its third box office crown by default with $9.5 million, and The Upside hung around for its third second-place finish with $8.7 million. Newcomer Miss Bala failed to really get off the ground, earning just $6.7 million for third place. Christmas week superhero releases Aquaman and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse continued to swim or swing around in fourth and fifth place with $4.9 million and $4.5 million, respectively- 
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