Posted on 11/13/2004 11:12:00 AM PST by LouAvul
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Based on Margaret Mitchell's hugely popular novel, producer David O. Selznick's four-hour epic tale of the American South during slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction is the all-time box-office champion.
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Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.
It's also a lie.
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Along with D.W. Griffith's technically innovative but ethically reprehensible "The Birth of a Nation" (from 1915), which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, "GWTW" presents a picture of the pre-Civil War South in which slavery is a noble institution and slaves are content with their status.
Furthermore, it puts forth an image of Reconstruction as one in which freed blacks, the occupying Union army, Southern "scalawags" and Northern "carpetbaggers" inflict great harm on the defeated South, which is saved - along with the honor of Southern womanhood - by the bravery of KKK-like vigilantes.
To his credit, Selznick did eliminate some of the most egregious racism in Mitchell's novel, including the frequent use of the N-word, and downplayed the role of the KKK, compared with "Birth of a Nation," by showing no hooded vigilantes.
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One can say that "GWTW" was a product of its times, when racial segregation was still the law of the South and a common practice in the North, and shouldn't be judged by today's political and moral standards. And it's true that most historical scholarship prior to the 1950s, like the movie, also portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution and Reconstruction as unequivocally evil.
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Or as William L. Patterson of the Chicago Defender succinctly wrote: "('Gone With the Wind' is a) weapon of terror against black America."
(Excerpt) Read more at sacticket.com ...
Not to mention that the only decent, moral, and normal character in the entire movie is the white guy.
I thought it offset that other novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. What, one novel is OK, but the other isn't? Sheesh!
My wife's ancestors had title to 4 million acres. Between military conquest, treaty revisions, and getting screwed over "back taxes" they lost all but a very few thousand. (That was the entire tribe's land).
The slaves didn't have a pot to pi$$ in without their owners, unless they were given their freedom, as many were before the war on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
Not all were black, not all were owned by whites.
Why not tap the Arabs who sold them (instead of converting to Islam, what a joke!)
The owners who were forced to free their slaves lost their investment and recieved no compensation in return. What about their reparations?
There is no way to administer "reparations" fairly, so forget it.
Before you turn on the flames, keep this thought in mind. I hold no bias against anyone over any issues of color or race. It is just that this 'issue' is being used to continue to foment racial unrest by the socialist liberals with empty promises of money for nothing. D@mned few southern families have much (if anything) left of plantation estates, the Northern Carpetbaggers got what the Union Army left of those.
1. only about SIX PERCENT(6%) of southerners EVER owned a slave.
2. about the SAME number & percentage of yankee individuals & corporations owned slaves as southerners.(recently 2 Boston banks & a major railroad in NY paid reparations QUIETLY to the desendents of THEIR corporation's slaves!)
3. MANY NON-whites owned slaves (in point of fact, my people, the AmerIndians, kept slaves for over 20,000 YEARS!)
4.the lincoln coven of thugs planned to KEEP northern slaves & FREE southern slaves after the south was defeated. (THANKFULLY, this plan proved "politically impossible" after TWBTS.)
5.this author is a RACE-BAITER, who is just trying to "start something" in the wake of the DIMocRATS demise on 02NOV04.
6. do NOT be deceived, this is ONLY about POLITICS! pure & simple.
free dixie,sw
No less a source than Booker T. Washington condemned radical reconstruction for reasons not unlike those. He observed that the reconstruction policies of the north were often instituted out of vengeance and often put men of very poor moral character (i.e. the carpetbaggers who moved down south to take advantage of political opportunities and profit) into office. He also noted that it created unnecessary animosity between blacks and whites in the south.
And let me guess - you also believe that Lincoln would have won or even had the slightest impact on the election in any of those states had he been on the ballots there.
131 - Very interesting. In all these years I have never heard that 'Roots' was plaguerized and that Haley paid $650,000 to the author.
Boy, the leftist liberals media really cover things up well.
Of course, in real life, they came in squads and platoons, following sergeants and officers, and anyone who resisted was killed out of hand. They stole everything they could carry off, and burned or slaughtered the rest.
Only "unnecessary" if you lived there.
If you were a Black Republican of the stripe of Ben Butler or Thaddeus Stevens, it was essential to your long-range vision and purpose.
And what does "pro-slavery" have to do with our little exchange?
Oh, wait -- how clever! You're reintroducing the discredited "it was all about slavery" canard, concerning which you've already been confuted, pounded into oatmeal, stomped into the ground, and had your @ss handed to you for a hat.
Very fetching, I might add -- you'll go far in business, dressing for the job you want, et cetera. Like they say, "it's a look".
Because Ashley Wilkes was of "good family"; he had background, money, and breeding. He'd been to a saber academy most likely (most Southern men of his class had been to military schools of some kind, like The Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute), and he was the sort of man that a society girl would want to snag.
Rhett Butler, OTOH, was a raffish sort, the kind who'd maybe be invited in for drinks when his ship came in, so to speak, and it was time for his business associates to exchange congratulations all around -- but he'd never be invited to stay for dinner in the better houses.
So the choice between Ashley and Rhett is a contest between Southern ideals of society and Yankee values that are frankly Darwinian: I use bad language and I keep bad company and I tend to smuggle a lot because I have venal drivers -- but I'm hairy and testosterone-soaked and hung like Dick Cheney, baby, and I've got just what you need, if you can step up and stand up to it. (Oh, mah, ah think ah'm goin' to have the vapuhs! <faints>)
It's a North-South thing: Rhett is a Southerner, but he's actually culturally a Yankee -- oh, excuse me, make that "practical man of the world who knows what's what and doesn't put up with all that flummery and Southern cultural baggage".
So, capitan, what proportion of secessionists were bug-eyed? Does bug-eyed mean "insane"? Raving, perhaps? Mentally defective, like some Hitchcockian scarecrow caricature?
Tell us what you really think of Southerners. Don't hold back.
Paternalism bump.
I read the book this summer and can unequivocably say it is the best piece of trash I have ever read. Shows the southern ruling class to be either outright idiots or incapable of connecting with modern times (Ashley.)
Maudlin, silly and trivial and a complete lie historically but still fun to read. There are some here who still use its absurd arguments trying to justify the Slaverocracy and its insanity.
You must be kidding it is complete propaganda to justify the Slavers.
Circulate it as you will but you cannot understand what it says without some analysis. There is nothing there which can contradict the FACT that slaves were kept in a state of terror and watched at all times for fear they would escape North. Yes, escape to that hell hole your quote describes. Now why would that be the greatest threat to the Slavers if they treated their chattel so well? Surely they wouldn't leave such a paradise.
Southern society was geared to control of the slaves and to that end it repressed the slave's ability to educate himself and become a full man. This was a TOTALLY different form of slavery than that described earlier in ancient Greece and Rome where the slave was often more educated than the master.
Uncles Tom's Cabin brought the reality of slavery home to millions in the North but was too explosive for the Southern states to allow it to circulate freely. While the character of Simon Legree may not have been an accurate representation of overseers even GWTW has characters like him in it.
This was a degenerate economic system which created a social and cultural anchor on the USA and was in complete contradiction to the meaning of America. Had it not been destroyed the Nation would have been.
They would have been just as opposed to Stephen Douglas since he was not fanatically pro-slavery enough for the Slavers. In fact, the reason Lincoln won (38% of the pv) was because the aristocratic southern lunatics refused to support Douglas and split the RAT party into three parts each with its own candidate. True lunacy if there ever was such.
What crap. Indentured servants in NO way did the most of the "heavy lifting" anywhere. They had contracts and once fulfilled were freed. Prior to the cotton kingdom slavery was much more benign and even required great skill in the tobacco industry not the huge gangs of labor required after 1793.
Life for an indentured servant was a picnic compared to the field hands in Alabama in the 1840s.
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