8/24/2023 0 Comments Scrawl a novel![]() They knew their place in society – one in which white people ruled as rightful masters – and were content to serve in their prescribed roles. As stomach turning as it is, they paint slaves as having been happy in their lives of servitude. When Lost Cause revisionists do address slavery, they present it as an institution of noble masters presiding over their slaves with love and stern discipline. The other main fallacy of the Lost Cause mythos – one that Gone with the Wind traffics in heavily – is the burnishing of the very institution of slavery. They prefer to talk vaguely about “States Rights,” while conveniently never mentioning the specific right that the Old South was trying to preserve. Today’s proponents of the Lost Cause ideology completely ignore the many, many references to this fact, which is listed as the primary reason for secession in the Confederate Constitution itself. Early in the film, as the men are discussing the gathering storm of conflict, one of them mentions the need to preserve the institution of slavery, with war, if need be. ![]() At the very least, Gone with the Wind is somewhat realistic about what caused the Civil War. That opening crawl, with its description of a genteel society, only remembered in books, “of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave… A Civilization gone with the wind…”, romanticizes something that never was. The concept, which started taking shape in the first few years after the war ended, positions the Confederacy – and the secession of its member states – as an attempt to preserve honorable and noble Southern culture from Northern interference. Right from the opening crawl, the movie aligns itself firmly within the mythos of the Lost Cause. O’Hara sees much suffering – some of which she brings on herself, due to her unrequited love for Southern gentleman Ashley Wilkes – as she tries to hold on to her beloved family plantation, Tara, during Reconstruction. But Gone with the Wind gave me the perspective in a visceral, emotional way, as all art tries to do.īased on the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara and her travails as a belle of Georgia during the American Civil War. I’ve understood, intellectually, the concept of the Lost Cause for some time. What was enlightening for me about the experience of watching Gone with the Wind was its embracing of the equally odious idea of the Lost Cause understanding of the Civil War. The offhanded way in which Rhett Butler, Scarlett’s on-again-off-again love interest, refers to Prissy as a “simple-minded darky” is odious, but not surprising. ![]() The character Prissy, the house slave of Scarlett O’Hara, the movie’s hero, becomes a stand-in for all black people as mentally inferior and buffoonish. The ways in which the 80-year-old film depicts its black characters – speaking in heavily stereotyped, broken English, for example – while disturbing, wasn’t anything I wasn’t expecting. Gone with the Wind is vile and insidious in how it depicts race, the Civil War, and slavery in the Old South. That’s what I want to do now, in the form of my reaction to watching Gone with the Wind for the first time, as part of my 100 Essential Films series. “I believe Hollywood’s history of racism should be openly discussed,” Longworth tweeted. Canceling the film completely would, as film critic Karina Longworth said about Disney’s racist out-of-circulation-for-decades film Song of the South, turn it into a fetish object. This will allow the film to remain accessible, but not irresponsibly so. The forthcoming introduction by Professor Stewart will, I’m sure, add rigorous critical and historical analysis – most importantly from a person of color. They haven’t announced yet when the movie will return to the service, but Jacqueline Stewart, an African American cinema and media studies professor and Turner Classic Movies host, will provide the introduction to place the film “in its multiple historical contexts.” HBO Max, the service that holds the streaming rights to the 1939 winner of ten Academy Awards, announced just a few weeks ago that it would be taking Gone with the Wind off of its service temporarily, so it can find a way to add context to the picture’s outdated and ugly depictions of race. I’m wrestling with Gone with the Wind as our culture wrestles with it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |