SOURCE: "The Great Mother Domesticated: Sexual Difference and Sexual Indifference in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance," in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 15, No. 3, Spring, 1989, pp. 511-54.

In the following essay, Rogin analyzes the sexual undercurrents of Intolerance.

A giant statue of the mother goddess, Ishtar, presides over Intolerance (1916), the movie D. W. Griffith made after his triumph with The Birth of a Nation (1915). Ishtar sits above Babylon's royal, interior court, but the court itself is constructed on so gigantic a scale that it diminishes the size of the goddess. Perhaps to establish Ishtar's larger-than-life proportions, Griffith posed himself alongside her in a production still from the movie. The director is the same size as the sculpted grown man who sucks at Ishtar's breast; both males are dwarfed by the goddess' dimensions.

Ishtar connects Griffith to the concern with originary female power current at the turn of the twentieth century. The appearance...