Gone With the Wind
The false outrage over HBO Max ’s removal ofGone With the Windfrom its platform ignores how the movie has been grind to a halt in decades of controversy and critical conversations . As protest preserve to master America following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor , among many other Black individuals who suffered at the hands of systemic racialism and police ferociousness , many white-hot people have been forced to reckon with their own privilege and role in upholding white-hot supremacy .
While various facets of the amusement manufacture skin to propose their own faint platitudes of prise black lives , the public has proven to be far less patient with such hesitations . People want action at law and Hollywood , along with every other area of life sentence , has had to show their work . HBO Max , the recently launch cyclosis service from WarnerMedia , quiet made the decision to takeGone With the idle words , one of the most famous picture show in Hollywood history , off its program . This descend after writer - director John Ridley , who won an Oscar for the screenplay to12 Years a hard worker , called attention to the movie ’s near - legendary racism in an editorial forLA Times .
HBO Max andWarnerMedia confirmedGone With the confidential information ’s removal , say in a financial statement that the film ’s depictions do n’t align with the company ’s time value and when they eventually generate the movie to the platform , it will come with a " discussion of its historic context and a denunciation of those very depictions . " However , go away With the Windwon’t be altered in any fashion . While it ’s of import to maintain the film in its original condition and present it as a product of its sentence , all of this brush off thatGone With the Windhas always been problematic .
Gone With the Wind Was Always Problematic
To be clear : Gone With the Windhas always been a controversial moving-picture show . There is no compass point in the history of the film or the novel by Margaret Mitchell that it was adapted from where it has not been a lightning rod for contention and socio - political analysis . The NAACP even organized protests and pickets of the movie upon release ( viaJournal of Popular Film ) . When producer David O. Selznick acquired the rights to the Koran , which was something of a pop civilisation phenomenon at the time , he welcome uncounted letters from activists warning him thatGone With the Windwas not only full of harmful stereotypes of African Americans but that its softened limning of thraldom and livid mastery could take to major problems . One 1936 letter from Human Meyer ( viaHarry Ransom Center ) noted ofGone With the current of air :
" The mental picture is a Negro - bait photographic film that will only encourage such organizations as the Klu Klux Klan and the Black Legion to preserve their terrorism and their infringement of civic right . I find that such a film will sure enough not meet with the approval of the people but will be welcome by the Fascists and Nazis of this country . Again allow me inspire you not to produce this ' UnAmerican ' ( sp ? ) film . "
Selznick was not unaware of these problems either ; he even entered a letter of the alphabet balance with Walter White , then the head of the NAACP , who want Selznick to hire a Black adviser for the film to ensure a more accurate portrayal of the chronicle . Earl Morris , a writer forThe Pittsburgh Courier(viaNewsweek ) , launched a vituperative campaign against the movie and the book ’s function of the N - word , which Selznick ultimately choose to remove from the book . Even in the thirties , he roll in the hay that such slur would be a bad inclusion into his profoundly tough movie . Indeed , one wonders ifGone With the Windwould have last as it has with audiences had the N - Christian Bible been as prevalent in the moving-picture show as it is in Mitchell ’s novel .
This context is crucial because so many of the defective faith contention happening aroundGone With the Windnow are rooted in the off-key averment that people have only begin to plain about the movie ’s racial politics in recent times . In reality , this was an issue in the thirties to the gunpoint where the producer of the film even tried to lessen the seditious rhetoric of the source cloth in the promise of winning over mordant audiences . Gone With the Windmay be “ of its time ” in many elbow room , but that remain a weak exculpation for dismissing its built-in racism , especially since the movie was labeled racist back then just as obstreperously as it is now .
Gone With The Wind’s Problem With Civil War & Slavery
Carlton Moss , one of the pioneering figures in independent Black cinema in the former years of Hollywood , describedGone With the Windas a"nostalgic plea for understanding for a still living movement of Southern reaction"chock full of racist stereotype that acted as a"rear attack"on Black Americans in much the same way that D.W. Griffith’sThe Birth of a Nationwas a"frontal attack on American history and the Negro people,“as explained inFade In , intersection : A story of the Southern Cinema . He was one of many voices in the thirties calling outGone With the Wind ’s dear - propagandist take on slavery , the Civil War , and enslaved mass in the South .
While Mitchell ’s book is quite a bit more racist than the film , that does not mean that the movie is devoid of serious issues in the way it address blackness and the Civil War . The striver - possess Southerners are depicted as the heroes , with Scarlett O’Hara ’s decision to adhere to ownership of her plantation show as a move ultimate heroism . The KKK are register as epic , even though they are not list explicitly in the flick , especially in the human face of leering sinister men who are seen as both stupid and severe . Mammy , played by Hattie McDaniel , was seen as the exemplification of the Mammy archetype , a stereotype of a homely pitch-dark woman who dote on her white boss / possessor . bondage as a whole is skim off over by the movie , with the Civil War seen as a battle over traditional note value rather than the right wing to literally own Black people , and the striver read on - screen mostly primed into the happy hard worker stereotype of sinister men and women who were delight by their circle in liveliness , see as too irresponsible to work and life detached of ownership .
Gone With The Wind’s Depiction Of Marital Rape
Gone With the Wind ’s problems extend beyond its racialism . In one of the movie ’s most infamous moments , Rhett forces himself sexually onto Scarlett , who repeatedly evidence him " no " . In the next prospect , he justify for his behaviour , which he blames on his drinking . This scene is clearly a moment of marital ravishment softened into something more palatable for audiences ( as well as the Hays Code , which forbade the explicit depictions of such on - screen . ) Spousal rape did not become illegal in all 50 states in America until 1993 , with a vulgar defense of the abuse being that many char on the Q.T. delight being force into sex . Gone With the Windcertainly depicts this import as something that Scarlett eventually relishes and is something Rhett " need " to give to her .
Gone With The Wind Is An Important Movie - But HBO Max’s Change Is Good
Gone With the Windwill forever remain a crucial part of Hollywood chronicle . Adjusted for inflation , it stay on by far the highest - grossing movie of all time and its legacy , both on and off the screen , is sure as shooting not up for argument . That will never go away and neither will the film , even though some critic ofHBO Max ’s decision seem to opine it is being altogether disappeared by the industry . Even if it were to be removed from the cyclosis service entirely , the film is still readily available to buy ( and continues to be a mega - money maker for the studio apartment all these decades by and by ) .
Given how much influenceGone With the Windcontinues to have over American pop civilization and history over 80 geezerhood after it secrete , it ’s certainly a film whose power postulate to be properly contextualized . A movie can be a major tool for good but , as with any heavy educational tool , you need the right materials to get those conversations expire . go With the Windis , of course , not the only flick to ever stamp bootleg people or romanticise slavery , or even deform slave - owners into submarine , but it is the one that continue to be beloved by audiences in the 21st century , shaping conversations about real account in a way that can be more enthralling to people than the the true . It only benefits HBO Max andGone With the Windto offer such a treatment , much in the same manner that oldLooney Tunesshorts are precede with a note about the offensiveness of some of their racial depiction .
Giving the film such linguistic context is also a far better option for HBO Max than sweeping it under the carpet , as Disney has famously done withSong of the South . Disney ’s controversial springy - action and animation mash - up , which was also hard protested when it premier in 1946 , isunavailable to buy or watchand the company address it as if it never existed , even as it strip the movie for part like the songs and character . you could not get a line from the past if you deny it ever pass .
What Movies To Watch Instead of Gone With The Wind
portrayal of slavery on - screen stay a contentious topic , especially as , even with the advance made in Hollywood , disastrous representation remains slight on the priming and often consigned to panoptic stereotype . Steve McQueen ’s Oscar - winner12 Years a Slavewas described by many critic as the antidote toGone With the Wind ; an unflinchingly brute depiction of slavery told from the point - of - perspective of the enslave and made by dim filmmakers .
The best way to battle the mightiness ofGone With the Wind , however , is to watch the stories of Black author and theater director that plow all corner of life in its magnificence and kind . imagine of Barry Jenkins’sMoonlight , a chef-d’oeuvre that tackle the carrefour of subspecies , sex , division , and class . Cheryl Dunye’sThe Watermelon Womanexamines how the Hollywood level of the past tense continue to vibrate , for skilful or worse , in the present day , as a homophile Black woman seek to chance out more about a mysterious pitch-dark actress from the early Clarence Day of film . boot Riley’sSorry to Bother Youis a vituperative indictment of capitalism that refuse to shy by from how inherently racist this exploitative system is . Spike Lee ’s filmography is load with unbelievable stories that center blackness at every play ( check out his virtuoso biopicMalcolm Xfor but one example of his skills ) . Even Ryan Coogler’sBlack Pantheris in its own way a rebuttal toGone With the hint , an Afrofuturist superhero epic that is easily the most political movie that Marvel Studios has ever made .
Gone With the Windis a part of American culture and history in a manner that can not and never will be erased . It should n’t be either . Rather , it should be fully reckon with , wart and all , and to do that , Hollywood and audience as a whole indigence to be ready to confront some ugly and oft - overlooked truths . HBO Max ’s determination feels like a whole step in the right direction . Here ’s hoping that a fate of films come in its footstep .
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