In 2017, we had a debate about Gone with the Wind and whether audiences were mature and educated enough to watch that film with an eye on what it really was, pro-Confederacy propaganda and racist. I admitted that I’ve seen the film many times and I can enjoy it for the good parts (including a great performance by Vivian Leigh) and reject the actual story and racist text. In 2017, the debate arose because a Memphis theater cancelled all of their screenings of GWTW in the wake of, you know, all of the neo-Nazis and such. And now HBO Max is taking GWTW out of its library.
HBO Max has pulled “Gone with the Wind” from its library of films. A spokesperson for HBO Max, which like CNN is owned by WarnerMedia, told CNN Business that “Gone with the Wind” is “a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that when the film returns to HBO Max, it “will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions,” and will be presented “as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history,” the spokesperson said.
The removal also comes after John Ridley, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “12 Years a Slave,” wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times this week asking HBO Max to take the film out of its rotation.
I’m all for removing the film right now, if just to save viewers from themselves. If left to their own devices, audiences have already shown that they’d rather watch The Help more than anything else (The Help was #1 on Netflix last week). As for a historical context… it reminds me of the way TCM and AMC used to operate, with commentators coming on at the beginning and end of old films to explain why this and this is problematic, or why this performance was noteworthy, etc. Will HBO do that? Will they make people watch a Racist History For Dummies special before they can watch GWTW?
Also cancelled: Cops. The show! Cops ran on Fox for 25 seasons, then it was picked up by Spike TV in 2013, and now Spike is Paramount Network and they don’t want any part of Cops. The network spokesperson said: “Cops is not on the Paramount Network and we don’t have any current or future plans for it to return.” Reruns still appear on a few cable channels, but at least one of those channels plans to drop the reruns this month. What else… A&E is trying to figure out if they should pull Live PD. Discovery ID might keep their show Body Cam off the schedule for a while too. Yay.
Poster & photo courtesy of ‘Gone with the Wind’.
I hope they cancel live PD too. my boss really enjoys watching both that and cops, and let me tell you he is woefully uneducated about police brutality and racism. I’m pretty sure watching those shows have confirmed the biases he already held.
I would prefer if they went the TCM route rather than just removing the film, but I understand the impulse.
So they finally cancelled Cops. Michael Moore was calling for this twenty years ago.
https://youtu.be/Nzhqec_bj-4
God, what a great clip.
From the thread on that video:
1. Get rid of qualified immunity for cops and prosecutors. Bad cops must face lawsuits for abusive policing and corrupt prosecutors must face lawsuits for corrupt behavior.
2. Require police accused of abuses or crimes to be investigated by an independent outside agency with the power to force them to comply with subpoenas.
3. Prosecute prosecutors who refuse to prosecute cops that target minorities, abuse them and/or violate citizen’s rights.
4. Fire cops that harass people without good cause and use excessive force or engage in unnecessary physical abuse of suspects.
5. Fire cops that provide cover for bad cops.
6. Fire cops that harass or threaten private citizens filming the police.
7. Require body cams on all cops and fire cops that turn off body cams during interactions with the public.
8. Require a mandatory 20 year prison sentence for any cop planting evidence or framing a citizen.
9. Do not allow cops facing criminal investigation or charges to be re-assigned, or retire. Fire and/or prosecute them instead.
10. Make it illegal to hire a cop that’s been fired from another law enforcement agency or who resigned while under investigation for any crime.
11. Put an end to police unions being able to shield bad cops from accountability.
12. Require all cops be tested once every two years to retain certification.
13. Demilitarize police. Ban chemical weapons, flash bang grenades, rubber bullets, etc.
14. Make it a felony for cops to physically attack peaceful demonstrators.
15. Make it a felony for police to threaten, harass or physically assault journalists and members of the media.
16. Train cops to serve and protect instead of training them to drive around trying to find an excuse to abuse and arrest people.
I’m BAME (French Caribbean) and I love Gone with the Wind.
I think it is important to educate viewers on the collective bias of this era. And such movies can serve as educational tools.
Removing them altogether goes against this purpose.
@Mirage I totally agree with you. I think HBO or any other net streaming platform shouldn’t remove Gone with the Wind. As a matter of fact TCM should play Gone with the Wind in repeat because it is a teachable lesson on how the Confederacy inflicts the daily lives in the South. Whether the rights to be woman and her liberties to the unfortunate spoils of slavery. A film like this should a passing lesson to all generations especially mine. If it weren’t for the Gone with the Wind, I wouldn’t know about Alex Haley’s ‘Roots’ when I was 8 or 9 years old.
I remember watching Roots when I was about 8-10, it was brutal
People also need to remember that Gone With the Wind was a huge achievement for African Americans in film. Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Oscar for her performance and when the Academy was going to refuse to invite her to the ceremony, Clark Gable made it clear that he would boycott the ceremony if she wasn’t invited.
By censoring GWTW you are erasing black art.
And she still sat in the back where the staff was until her name was called.
Let’s not romanticize Hattie’s win and her career afterwards.
@Tiffany: Yes! I listened to a podcast series about her career and this era of Hollywood. You Must Remember This. Very well-done and fascinating. Highly recommended for Hollywood history enthusiasts.
yeah but the viewers who aren’t POC don’t see the bias. They just see the antebellum south they lost and want to return to. To them this is how it should be with white slave owners and those damn Yankees ruined it.
I’m white and I see the portrayal of an era, history. And unfortunately slavery existed. Unfortunately we can’t rewrite history but we can use it to point out what was wrong and should never be repeated again, the enslaving of people.
” To them this is how it should be with white slave owners and those damn Yankees ruined it.” – I’m sorry to disappoint you but not all white people think black people are inferior,not every white people think slavery should exist again.
I see many people fighting against discrimation and for black lives matter and they’re white, and they’re being true in their beliefs of condemning racism.
I agree with Goofpuff… Of course people *here* can contextualize the film, they’re here. They’re not Blake Lively having her wedding on a plantation. GWTW does not teach the vast majority of people anything about slavery, it helps keep the romanticization of abject brutality alive.
I’m not saying you need to burn all copies of the movie, but it doesn’t have to be on HBO. It’s not my place to take anything from Hattie McDaniel, but I wish as many people knew about Micheaux and other earlier Black producers and directors.
@desdemona – but it *doesn’t* show the era of slavery and Reconstruction as they existed, it depicts the post-war racist white’s retelling of history about that era. It took me a long time to understand that distinction, I’m sorry to say.
One of the scenes that I didn’t realize what exactly was going on when I first watched it was when they lynched the black guy who happened to say hi to Scarlett. They did not play that scene in that way at all, but instead turned it into a bunch of white guys who had to “protect their woman” and then Scarlett got blamed for this happening on top of that. Somehow the Union soldiers were the bad guys for looking to see who lynched the guy.
So racism and misogyny rolled into one.
I like the way Turner Classic approaches it and other problematic films: educational.
That said, whenever it gets to the part where Sherman shows up in the plot I yell, “Go get ’em, Sherman!” (Yeah, I’m sick, but I am Union all the way, even as a kid.)
So this is why GWTW was twitter trending yesterday. I was so busy I didn’t have time to figure that out. It’s true that burying this film is just a pretense, we can’t bury our history. I like the idea of including some education, and I’d do a deep delve into Margaret Mitchell’s beliefs as part of that.
I agree as well. We cannot not erase our nation’s history but we can examine it and learn from it and teach our children from it. I feel that it’s almost like people don’t want to accept that part of history, so let’s just do away with it. That will not help either.
I think it’s just that the film is too problematic to show in a vacuum, so until they figure out how to address it, it’s easiest and for the best to remove it. The movie plays dangerously into the “Magnolia Myth” that slaves were treated well and preferred slavery to freedom, not to mention all the stereotypes.
Margaret Mitchell was indeed racist and kept her ‘mammy’ (god that makes me sick to even type) well into adulthood like Scarlett. The good thing that came out of the success of GWTW is that she was approached by the president of Morehouse College and he asked her if she would use her money to help put black students through college. She did. However because of the times, the two never actually met and all the money she donated was donated privately and none of the students or faculty ever knew who the benefactor was. It’s not an excuse for the book or movie but it shows that she did try and change and do some good. Idk if that balances out the harm that her work did.
Thank you for this information. I did not know that.
Eheheh. As well, her estate had very strict rules for book publishers that the GWTW sequels could not (among other things) have interracial relationships in them.
I get it….but sigh, I really hope there is a middle ground to cancel culture. My BA is in American Studies….I studied GWTW in college and I do love huge parts of the movie. It represents a part of our culture that truly existed. We can’t overlook the bad parts of us. How else can we learn from them for our future? I love old classics like that. Are they troubled….absolutely….but why not keep the film in the library AND bring heightened awareness to it? Cancelling GWTW also cancels Hattie McDaniel who was the first African American woman to win an Oscar for this role, and sweeps a wonderful story of friendship between her and Clark Gabel under the rug. Their friendship endured during a time in our society when it should not have.
Um, it does not cancel Hattie McDaniel. And GWTW is not “cancelled”. It does need some education to go along with it. Stop pretending white women see any of the problems or even know it’s confederate poopaganda. Or know anything about Mitchell’s beliefs.
What?
Um, I’m white and have always known how problematic the movie and Mitchell are. I remember my mom talking about it the first time I watched the movie at about age 8. I couldn’t believe that slavery was real and that but happened in America. My mom told me it absolutely did happen and how we must never forget or it could happen again. We also watched Roots together as a family when it first aired.
For the record, I am fine with HBO ditching it. It’s a great movie but it is super pro Confederacy and lacks empathy for the slavery and racism it depicts.
There is a huge difference between watching it to critically study it and watching it because you like seeing Scarlett and Rhett battle it out.
It’s also not erasure just to not have it streaming until a solution is reached.
Maybe that’s someone’s kink. Why are you kinkshaming???
Yes, well said Jen!
I studied film in school and GWTW was also a cinematic masterpiece, a total game changer. It’s a shame that level of artistry was used to soften the Confederacy.
I think this is a good call by HBO Max. I “appreciate” GWTW in that it is an epic movie, with gorgeous scenery and sets, gorgeous costumes, vivien leigh is wonderful in it – but it is definitely racist pro confederacy propaganda.
But people really don’t get it. I used to post a lot on a message board that was predominantly white women, and someone commented once about how surprised they were to read a criticism of GWTW as being racist, so I asked “I kind of thought that was common knowledge?” And maybe 1/4 agreed with me and the rest were kind of like “welllllll Scarlett slaps the girl at the one point and that wasn’t good but…..”
I can’t speak to all white women, but my grandma gave it to me when I was a teenager and for a long time I *didn’t* think critically about it, I didn’t know about the history of how white women, specifically Daughters of the Confederacy, almost single handedly created the southern myths of the Civil War. I didn’t consume it thoughtlessly, but I definitely didn’t do a deep dive into it.
(And I should state that my grandmother was fairly anti-racist for her age. She had just enjoyed the monstrously popular book, when she was a teen and thought I would too).
I liked it when I was younger too. I grew up in the 80’s, and we didn’t have those conversations. All I got from it was scarlett was a strong (and crazy) woman
I did not know that history and will actually do some researching today so thank you for your comment!
@manda – you bet! All those confederate (aka racist traitor) monuments? Pretty much all were erected at the behest of the Daughters of Confederacy. Which is still a thing, fwiw. White women (I’m going to assume largely southern) dress up in 1860s regalia. Historical re-enactment is a thing, but sheesh. That one leaves me baffled.
The first time I read GWTW I was completely oblivious. I was 15 growing up in small town mid-west and I think I just glossed over all the problematic parts and focused on Rhett and Scarlett. I remember finding a sentence or two disquieting, but also thought it was a great book. I bought it on kindle about ten years ago and couldn’t believe how racist and pro klan it was. I didn’t finish it then and was amazed at what I didn’t catch the first time.
I’d like to make excuses for myself that I was too young to get it, but I think 15 is plenty old enough. In my city, 17 year olds are organizing some of the protests. I thinking adding context to the movie/book would be a great thing for all the people like 15 year old me who just wanted to see pretty dresses and the romance without having to think.
Yeah, me too, but I will say there was a LOT less conversation and far, far fewer resources than are available now.
Exactly! It’s easy to consume it (the book and the movie) just for being what they are – a good book, a really stunning movie – and to not think about it critically. And I do kind of think at 15 that’s more natural than at 30 or 35. My issue isn’t people who were oblivious to it at a young age, its people who are still oblivious to it now.
And to point out HBO isn’t pulling it completely and saying no one should watch it. They are saying it should be watched with appropriate context and awareness of its issues.
I thought the movie made the racism pretty obvious, especially how Scarlett treated her slaves. There was also a ton of misogyny too and the supposedly big romantic scene always bothered me on some level. I don’t think they intended it to look sexist or racist though but that movie hadn’t aged well by the time I saw it in the late 80s.
The book wasn’t as obvious although to be frank I skimmed through a lot of the parts that weren’t relating to the Scarlett and Rhett storyline so I missed a lot of the propaganda.
I even read the sequel which really didn’t make much sense either.
We don’t need less art, we need better education. GWTW can be a valuable teaching tool as a starting point to discussing the actual historical time, but also to discussing the era in which it was made. That will take some extra work but it should happen. How and why these films were made as they were is also part of understanding, well, all of this!
I get why this film needed to be pulled right now, but at the same time, as others have said, it’s very dangerous to bury these types of films and books and pretend they didn’t exist.
It’s double relevant to something like GWTW as it not only represents the racism and white supremacy of the confederate era, but also how society in the 1930’s viewed those issues and chose to represent them in film and literature.
If we can’t understand how and how much progress was made then how do we teach future generations? Obviously history books can still teach this, but seeing it on film is an invaluable resource. Like watching To Kill and Mockingbird now vs when it was first released.
They’re not burying it. they’re just pulling it until they can add some context and education to it.
great so now GWTW will be like pop-up video?
From the post, they’re not pulling GWTW permanently:
The spokesperson added that when the film returns to HBO Max, it “will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions,” and will be presented “as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history,” the spokesperson said.
FYI: WB usually does a pretty good job on the disclaimers:
“Tom and Jerry shorts may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society,” the disclaimer reads. “Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.”
The DVD box set went one step further, and included an introduction from Whoopi Goldberg about why producers decided to leave the scene in when the episodes were re-released on video.
“The Tom and Jerry episodes included in this collection comes to us from a time when racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in the name of entertainment,” Goldberg says in the introduction. “These prejudices were wrong then and they’re wrong today.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963014/disney-plus-racism-cultural-disclaimer-dumbo-song-of-the-south-warner-bros-tom-jerry
Thank you. The article clearly states that the film will return to HBO max once they are able to add some commentary, explaining the historical context. It seems like some people are so itching to complain about “cancel culture” that they didn’t even bother to read the article.
I don’t click through to every article; I count on the writers here to convey it accurately.
“I don’t click through to every article; I count on the writers here to convey it accurately.”
It was in Kaiser’s post. And people are still skipping over it.
I believe that Disney has done the same with some of their product; that is, put a disclaimer of sorts before the film/cartoon acknowledging the problematic parts.
we watched Peter Pan the other day (or part of it, at least) and HOLY SH*TBALLS is that bad. the depiction of the “Indian Chief”?…oy.
Thanks for making a point of this; no one is “erasing” this movie from history.
A few years ago Yale held a Confederate southern ball; one of the attendees wrote n***** on a library wall. (This was discussed by the absolutely awesome Jonathan Hollaway on his yale.edu platform: if anyone hasn’t seen his online African-American history series, *watch it*. It is brilliant.) I think a significant number of people urgently need to understand, via an appropriate mouthpiece, that GWTW is Margaret Mitchell’s desperate attempt to depict an ideal society rather than a dying one. She yearned for the trappings and caste system of the Old South: she could never accept that it was dead, and should stay dead.
Thank you for pointing this out. The book is basically propaganda designed to justify and perpetuate Jim Crow. And it’s been very successful at that. I think once you know that, it isn’t enjoyable as entertainment. We don’t watch Al Jolson movies anymore. We also don’t watch Birth of a Nation, unless it’s in a film history class. GWTW isn’t redeemable, in my opinion.
I agree With the educational value of this film, but as someone who grew up in the south and was forced to watch this film at sleepovers and other places I would be fine never seeing it again. I hated this film. I was also considered a rebel for refusing to participate in an annual festival where “white daughters” dressed up as southern bells and gave garden tours. That practice still happens today….still glorifying the south during a time when a lot of people were slaves.
If we could also withdraw the book also from the booksellers and of the library. And beyond pro-confederative propaganda and racist, the film itself is bad, the character of Scarlett is purely detestable and I have never seen the under saying the romance between the characters of Rhett and Scarlett.Personally, the first time I saw the film was when I was in high school into my the cinema club and we have could analyze everything that was wrong with this film. whether on the technical term (editing, staging …) but also the whole pro-confederative propaganda aspect by also relying on the book.I think that’s the only way to see this kind of film.
What I really liked from our teacher was; at the benning of the lessons
he have asked who saw the film and who had loved it. The most of the people who loved it were mainly white girls and at the end of studying the film they understood what was wrong with this film.Because before the analyse they had see into the movie only the romance and wardrobe of Scarlett.
Yeah… few are learning about the horrors of slavery from GWTW. What has come of this “education” tool? Let’s see;
Plantation weddings
Romanticism of the Antebellum era
Shitty lifestyle brands
Pretending like Scarlett O’Hara is a “bad bitch” instead of a Karen prototype.
Did I mention, Plantation Weddings???
This film is not going to disappear into the night. It’s the Breakfast at Tiffany’s of the south. But let’s not kid ourselves about the film being an education tool for the masses. It’s a mint julep wrapped in a confederate flag – the worst of Antebellum propaganda.
Oooh, Scarlett is the original Karen!
Absolutely, but we can’t just completely dismiss it. It is still (adjusted for inflation) the highest-grossing movie in America, and that in and of itself is gross. If it is to be played anywhere, it should be used as an educational tool with some kind of panel discussion afterward or some kind of short film to run before the movie to explain what is so problematic in the movie (many of the things you just mentioned) so that we can fully learn from the past instead of trying to bury it.
I once had a conversation with another adult human being about GWTW where her take on it was how lazy Prissy was for not helping Scarlet deliver Melanie’s baby.
I’ve long since given up on the use of Southern Heritage Propaganda as a teaching tool. People learn all the wrong lessons.
It’s why torture sites are so popular as wedding venues. Look past all the racism because the big house is so pretty!
@Lanie, YES! Plantation weddings fuck me up! Like… How? and WHY? “This is where people were beaten, raped, and murdered… but the grounds are gorgeous, so let’s get some photos over here” It’s so horrible! I mean no disrespect whatsoever to anyone who is southern, but I won’t lie like I’m not completely baffled by how much covert (or not so covert) racism gets passed off as “southern pride.” There are people who get completely rabid once you start even talking about the confederate flag or monuments. They belong in museums, not your town square. One of my best friends lives in Fredericksburg, VA and last week they removed a slave auction block from the middle of their downtown… WTF! Plantations should be museums dedicated to educating people about slavery, not wedding venues. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that.
There are yelp reviews of plantation tours that complain that it was “too educational” and basically a bummer. All they wanted was to take pretty pictures on the verandah, not have to see the slave cabins.
Those are the people who think it’s an appropriate wedding venue. Along with Paula Deen, Blake Lively, and those other THOTs. It’s disgusting. Paula Deen made her fortune on black southern cooking! She’s the worst of them all.
@Anilehcim: I remember back in the eighties I went to Charleston, South Carolina to visit my BFF whose husband (he’s black, she’s white) was stationed there with the military. She took me to a plantation and when we got to the slave quarters I burst into tears. I’m a bit of an “empath” and have always felt energy around me, good and bad, and man, the energy I felt there was heart-wrenching. My friend had to take me home because I felt like I was going to vomit. Same thing happened when I visited Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. I burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably for an hour.
“Plantations should be museums dedicated to educating people about slavery, not wedding venues. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that.” I totally agree.
What about the rape scene when Scarlett wakes up the next morning completely in love with Rhett, implying that she really needed it. Such misogyny.
That scene bothered me so much, especially the way it was played in the movie.
Education not eradication. We don’t need public book burnings and empty store shelves across the nation because of some great purge. History disposal is the exact opposite of what is needed. We need history taught and learned. In all its harrowing ugliness, our past is extremely important. It must be preserved at all costs, without any slants, from all perspectives. Without history, we’re nothing. Dogs chasing tails. That being said, companies have every right to make their own business decisions. Besides, whenever I’m wanting to watch a particular video, it’s never readily available lol. It could’ve been on their list for months when I could’ve watched with ease, but no. I have to go on a hunt lol.
Btw, GWTW has always given me tics. My mom loved it. But the characters needed heavy-handed smacks throughout.
That was an excellent comment.
I think it’s good that they pulled it temporarily in order to add context, like other people said. Maybe they can replace it with Blackkklansman, which shows a scene from it anyway. But there’s going to be a spree of people buying DVDs/streaming of GWTW now, isn’t there?
Good. After listening to the podcast on Cops and how it’s made (as well as Live PD) the fact that the show was still on the air was appalling. Cops is nothing but a staged reality show. They set people up, planted evidence on people. It’s literally an ode to corruption. Now hopefully Live PD (also a cesspool of corruption) will be next
Frankly… I don’t give a damn.
Maybe we’ll think about it tomorrow. After all, ……..
Top comment, right here
I wonder sometimes if films like that could be utilized by adding informative context to it and acknowledging the problems inherent to the portrayal, but I otherwise have no real issue with this. You can still get the film elsewhere – you just can’t get it *there* where it’s easily accessible without information attached to it.
As for Cops…I was shocked it was still on, honestly. I remember watching it as a kid, but as an adult I viewed it more critically as propaganda. It probably should have gone off the air years ago. LOL @ them trying to front like it’s a coincidental move away from reality television rater than a common sense response to cultural atmosphere, though.
A few years ago old children’s books in Germany were cleaned up, so to speak. The language was, in parts, racist. That, to me, was not the solution. Pretending these authors didn’t use that language doesn’t help. Parents need to talk to their kids about the books, movies, etc. they consume and us adults need to start looking into what we’re consuming as well. If nothing else, Wikipedia is a start. After a while, it becomes easier to read subtext and stereotypes, harmful imagery and language and also see what is not there. At some point it punches you in the face.
Definitely. The solution is to educate people not to pretend history didn’t exist.
I’m seeing that HBO is keeping GWTW on their streaming service but are going to be adding something about the historical context??
Removing the film from catalogues just mythologized it for the wrong reasons even further. They should do what Disney+ did and add a disclaimer at the beginning, and maybe a link to their website to learn more about the impact of DoC and racism in film.
We do not learn from history if we aren’t exposed to it. Being uncomfortable is part of the process.
That is what they are doing. They are removing it temporarily to add the disclaimers.
GWTW should be like Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda for Hitler: beautiful, but not something you watch for fun.
I grew up in Atlanta, where GWTW was continuously played at the CNN Center. I watched it as a child and saw it as the story of Atlanta personified in Scarlett: beauty and grandeur destroyed but never beaten. As I learned more about Georgia and Southern history and later saw the movie in a college class with many Northern students, I saw the movie differently and realized the issues. I do think the film can be a tool for discussing the (very) complicated issue of race relations, especially in the American South. But it has to be done in a very deliberate and intelligent way. I think TCM has done this well and I hope HBO will as well. So I am okay with the movie being removed from HBO Max for a while, but I hope it will be brought back with the appropriate commentary for context.
Seeing it as a child and then as an adult is very eye opening. There are plenty of social issues and even historical aspects (ex., when the doctor amputates the soldier’s leg) that can be taught once you get past its romanticism. That’s complete nonsence and hugely inaccurate.
HBO is a private corporation offering a product. It, like any other corporation, gets to decide what it’s inventory is. There are plenty of other films, HBO Streaming doesn’t offer. It will return GWTW with commentary explaining what is wrong with it. (Most troubling to me were the reconstruction scenes where it portrays the former slaves as lamenting that they no longer have the easy life they had back on Scarlett’s plantation – just no.) Meanwhile, anyone who really needs to see it can continue to do so by getting it at most public libraries.
Can we remove all of the cinema that depict Italians as sleazy criminals or dim-witted meatheads too?
Yeah the Godfathet and the Green Book won Academy Awards but issue is Italians continue to be stereotyped and it needs to stop.
I guessing you’re not from Jersey?
For everyone saying it can be educational: sure. But what tends to happen at least in my experience is that a history teacher plays it for you in high school and you don’t really discuss the problematic parts of the story. In order for it to be ‘teachable’ you have to pole-vault over all of the glamorization and whitewashing. This isn’t ‘history’ as such, because it’s only one side of the story. The white Southern side. The Confederate traitor side. And it’s heavily stylized and glamorized; its bias is clear. There are better, more nuanced examinations of plantation slavery in the South or the Civil War. Perhaps GWTW could be used in a comparative way alongside these other texts. But our country has LONG had a problem adequately addressing the causes of the Civil War. In many Southern states, children are taught that the war was over “states’ rights” instead of slavery–those are the state history standards. I’m sorry but I don’t think GWTW dismantles that false belief. If anything it strengthens it.
The movie obviously has cultural and historical significance for a host of reasons. So does Birth Of A Nation–a movie with a terrible message that nevertheless created innovative narrative techniques that permanently influenced the young medium of film (it gives me no gratification to point that out and DW Griffith was an appalling man). I think the only people who really *need* to see either film are people studying film or cinematography, where GWTW’s technical achievements (the stunning crane shot as Scarlet searches through rows of dying soldiers, for instance) can be studied and viewed in the proper context. GWTW is exactly what its title implies: an artifact of a time that no longer exists. We shouldn’t use it to educate schoolchildren about the antebellum south.
Well , I suppose it depends on the teacher. I’m a language teacher and I use movies very often. Two I’ve played for highschool students were “The Imitation Game” when I teach about technology – and always discuss the discrimination against gay people and women.
The other movie is “Rwanda Hotel” when I teach about Human Rights.. One of the things I always explain my students is that WE Europeans divided the African territories without taking into consideration the cultural differences between the different african tribes, and this still causes problems and civil wars all over Africa. I explain that many civil wars across Africa were Europe’s fault. I also teach my students that the fact that Belgium favoured the Tutsis over the Hutus lead to some extent to the hatred Hutus had against the Tutsis and to the genocide. I never emblish things…
Seraphone -Totally agree with you.I first saw this movie as a child and it’s not that hard to figure out who the bad guys are .The Confederates are not shown in a good light (the scene where war is announced they look positively silly and inglorious when they straggle home from the War )nor the Union.Much of the movie is about the destruction ,division and sadness that this War brought to the US.A middle ground and critical eye are important in evaluating history .A good example of this is a biography I read that alternates the lives of Grant and Robert E.Lee -neither is a saint not wholly the devil .
I did an independent study on GWTW in college, book & movie, and recently re-watched it for the first time in about ten years. Fully agree that it’s hugely significant as a work of art and for Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar win, but it absolutely does glorify the Confederacy and slavery. Mammy is probably the smartest character, but besides her, slaves are depicted as childlike or lazy, and the opening crawl explicitly says the confederacy was the last stand of gallant knights and their ladies fair.
Don’t know if it was meant by the filmmakers to be deliberately hyperbolic or facetious, but that “gallant knights and lady fair’ line always made me laugh
To continue, this seems like a good time to pull the movie, and I agree with the suggestion of watching it with commentary.
I’m surprised that HBO Max/Warner Bros. didn’t anticipate the racially sensitive nature of GWTW and include some kind of disclaimer at the beginning of the movie from the get-go. That’s what they do on Disney+ films with themes that haven’t aged well.
I rewatched the movie today and the 3rd part of the movie, when Scarlett and Rhett are married is boring as hell. Not to mention the allusion to a marital rape, not a good look.