It only took 84 years but someone involved with distributing Gone With the Wind has finally acknowledged that its idealisation of the antebellum south is antiblack and that it perhaps should not be distribute to audiences without some kind of word of advice .
WhileDisney was ready to put disclaimerson some of its more offensive content when it launch Disney+ last yr , Warner Media set up Gone With the Wind as a jewel in its news HBO Max cyclosis service . The motion-picture show was play up on the front pageboy and leave pride of place when you navigate to the section containing “ definitive films . ” As with the variant of the moving-picture show trade digitally by Apple , Amazon , and other retailer , there was no disclaimer calling out the film ’s virulent racism .
And make no mistake , the film is infuse in a deep nostalgia for the pre - Civil War in the south with an opening Australian crawl , pulled straight from Margaret Mitchell ’s 1936 novel , that fondly recalls : “ There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South … Here in this pretty world , Gallantry shoot its last curtain call . Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair , of Masters and of Slave . Look for it only in books , for it is no more than a dream remembered . ”
Image: TCM
Folks wish to say Gone With the Wind was , too , made in a bypast era , and that the racism found in its idealization of slavery and the antebellum south , and its reliance on profoundly damaging racist stock characters like Mammy , Prissy , Big Sam , and the guy cable astounded by the brief post - Civil War hope of “ 40 acres and a mule ” for former slaves , are simply Cartesian product of the clock time . folk like to hint that the discussions around the racism in the film ( and the book ) are new things .
But Gone With the Wind , which was originally screened for all - lily-white audiences in 1939 , has faced its fair share of criticism that predate its arrival on HBO Max in May 2020 . In 1936 , Walter White , then secretary of the NAACP , save to the producer of the film , David O. Selznick , imploring him to hire contraband predisposition reader to avoid idealization of slavery .
Selznick declined , and instead , allot to Karina Longworthin the podcast , You Must Remember This , take a white charwoman who was charged with teach the dim thespian “ historically and geographically specific idiom ” .
He was also very intelligibly aware of the original novel ’s racism and seditious guinea pig issue . As historianLongworth notes , Selznick actually thought he was spend a penny a progressive film because he excised scenes from the book that featured a heroic Klu Klux Klan and changed dim villain from the novel into white scoundrel in the pic .
The pic present protests and critique for its implicit racialism while being made , with actress Hattie McDaniel have the brunt of the vitriol . Earl Morris , of the Pittsburgh Courier , wrote at the time “ We feel lofty over the fact that Hattie McDaniel succeed the in demand part of Mammy … It means about $ 2,000 for Miss McDaniel in item-by-item accomplishment … [and ] nothing in racial procession . ”
In 1939 , McDaniel would famously not be permitted into the premiere of the motion picture because the theater elect to premiere one of the large and most expensive films ever made forbid Black people . She ’d win an Oscar for the role .
None of this was new selective information back in May when HBO Max launch . hearing have wrestled with the film ’s dogmatism since before it was even cast . But in May , the conversation about racialism in this country , and our hundred and fifty class - plus refusal to plow the stigma of slavery , finally take a turning point . George Floyd was murdered on camera and many of those who had ignored or somehow been illiterate of the systemic racism and brutality Black people face began to recognize their own complicity and reckon with our res publica ’s past .
And with that recognition came a demand for corporation to compensate lip help . Because that ’s exactly what WarnerMedia did . After see it needed a flamboyant way of point “ it cares ” it pulled Gone With the steer from its service with a promise to return it with a disavowal .
But abruptly pull contentedness from a Robert William Service in an effort to censor it seldom has the intended consequence . Downloads and sale of Gone With the Wind went up on the myriad of services that still tender it . AsLongworth noted on Twitterat the time , “ when the industry tries to obliterate that story by First State - pass around the products , they become fetish objects . ”
Longworth specifically referred to Song of the South , a 1946 live - action and enliven film based on the Briar Rabbit folk tale , which were themselves cobble together out of racist caricature . Walt Disney knew that Song of the South , which sport a genial former Black slave mirthfully order stories to a wealthy blanched boy , was racist when he made it . He hire blackened performer Clarence Muse to consult on the film , and Muse then quit when Disney and co. ignored his suggestion to make the Black case more “ dignified . ” Walter White of the NAACP requested to see treatments of the flick , which Disney denied .
The film did n’t even do well on sack , and only grew popular after repetition re - dismissal and the maturation of the Splash Mountain ride for Disney Land and Disney World . Song of the South then only really accede its current fad condition after Disney yank it back into the vault . It left up Splash Mountain , and I guarantee most of you may thrum a few Browning automatic rifle of “ Zip - a - Dee - Doo - Dah ” . So Song of the South remains a part of the cultural landscape . ( Though Disneydid announce todaythat the Splash Mountain rideswould both be droppingthe Song of the South theme and become Princess Tiana ride instead . Tiana is notably the first Black Disney princess and appeared in the 2009 picture , The Princess and the Frog . She pass most of the running metre as a batrachian . )
Gone With the Wind was a monstrously Brobdingnagian book , and the film persist in to be one of the most successful of all clock time . Its encroachment on American polish is pervasive , and yank it for a few twenty-four hours only made it more beguiling . While Warner Media may have intended to tighten the film ’s encroachment on our collective cognisance it or else conk out full Streisand effect and just swot up publicity for its 2d release while turn the film into a cause célèbre for materialistic pundits .
The hopeful side of this massive cock - up is that the new disclaimer is excellent and should be a modelling for every studio ( including Disney ) going onwards . In the 4 - hour and 26 - sec video , Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart ( who wasTCM ’s first African American host when she was hired in 2019 ) draft both the ethnic importance of the celluloid and its foresightful and well known anti-Semite chronicle . You ca n’t bound off the video if you desire to look on the movie . It ’s require , but Warner tell Gizmodo it was created only for HBO Max . This means that the helpful context wo n’t be find on digital copies purchased elsewhere . But it should be required go forward , not just for Gone With the flatus , but for yard of other one-time films making their way to cyclosis services ( though Warner says it has still yet to determine what , if any other plastic film , will get a exchangeable disclaimer . )
As the stream services become studio fiefdoms and begin rolling out more and more classic films to bulge up their catalogs , we ’re doom to find ourselves in a repeat of this situation . Here ’s hoping other streaming services take short letter , and instead of hiding their uncomfortable history in the promise we all forget about it , take time to educate and illuminate that history instead .
HBO MaxStreaming
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
tidings from the hereafter , have to your present .
You May Also Like
