Posted on 11/13/2004 11:12:00 AM PST by LouAvul
....snip......
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.
.......snip........
Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.
It's also a lie.
......snip.........
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.
......snip.........
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.
.....snip.........
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 ...
What a load of CRAP! Uncle Tom's Cabin was written with the melodrama calculated to get people up in arms. If you believe Uncle Tom's Cabin was the truth, then I have a bridge to sell you. If one looks at the situation logically, it wouldn't make any sense for someone to beat and injure the very people they are depending upon to bring in the crops or tend the household. Now there may have been few isloated incidents of abject cruelty, but normally the plantation slaves were treated with a degree of respect and affection. If that were not the case, then why did so many blacks choose to stay with their former masters after emancipation?
Go peddle your Yankee PC revisionist crap elsewhere, we ain't buying it here.
The "bug-eyed secessionists" to which I referred were represented by the fire-eaters (a term they, themselves, preferred). Today, that group is largely represented at FR by various droolers, cretins, and auto-eroticists. There are some who can discuss the ideas in a reasonable manner, eschewing the racist dynamic, but they are few and far between. Do not make the mistake of equating secessionists with southerners; as most southerners long ago renounced the racist secessionist political philosophy. Those at FR who embrace the racist secessionist philosophy are found all over the country; sadly, there are even a few Texans.
You forgot to add, "flat as a tortilla, " pequeño. Those who deny that secession was inexorably linked to the propagation and expansion of chattel slavery are akin to Holocaust deniers.
Well don't pull your punches now, Mac. Care to name a few names? Step right up. Give a detailed analysis of why each person you name is a drooler, a cretin, or an auto-eroticist.
Come on, you uttered the slurs, now back 'em up.
most southerners long ago renounced the racist secessionist political philosophy
1. Are you just equating secessionism with racism in order to call all secessionists racists? Or can you show that secessionists were somehow peculiarly racist in some hallmark, "hyper-racist" fashion not shared by Northern racists, including the really tall one from Springfield, Illinois, concerning whom you get really irritable about other people's bringing in his speeches to show that he was essentially racist, for modern political purposes, in a way that reflected people's common understanding in those days?
2. Have you some polling data that show that Southerners are neither secessionists nor racists? You made a generalization here, and I'd like to see the data you generalized from.
3. When are you going to stop applying to people who lived 150 years ago, the politically loaded yardsticks of modern, PC interracial attitudes (overlooking for a moment their diodic, or one-way, qualities), to which none of the people alive more than about 50 years ago can stand up without receiving a moral judgment which is your entire purpose in bringing the subject up?
Now that's an odd statement considering that the only known bona-fide racist to have regularly participated in discussions of this sort on FR is/was an avowed unionist, Lincoln-idolater, conversant of yours, and, as we learned, neo-nazi. His name was #3 something I think...
He won't name any names because (1) he's been busted before slandering people with false accusations of David Duke support and (2) he knows his own comraderie of Wlat Brigadeers include a racist neo-nazi among other lowlifes.
Good points. We just visited an old plantation now open to the public as part of the National Trust. The resident historian pointed out that if the slaves had been badly treated by the master, all they had to do to get even was set fire to one of the out buildings. If the master didn't get the message, then set another fire closer to the house. If that still didn't work, slip the master something in his tea.
It was in the master's best interest to treat slaves well.
"I have always wondered why Scarlett could walk away from a real man like Rhett to a girlie-man like Ashley."
ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH! I can't stand to hear Ashley put down, not as Leslie Howard played him. In the book I didn't "get it" I admit, but Howard makes that character live, as did Olivia DeHaviland, I think they both really make the movie, they make the plot work.
And let us never forget, Leslie Howard was a true war hero, who died for his country, and Western Civ.
I love him, and that's all there is to it.
But I also love Clark Gable, so unlike the perenially dissatisfied Scarlett, I could have gone either way. I've spent many a fruitless hour trying to convince my movie-loving, GWTW loving friend that Gable too is perfect. I forget who it is that she'd've preferred.
Also, catch Burt Lancaster in "the Leopard" a great historical romance. A little slow, but really a fabulous movie. Finally available on DVD.
Who's a Holocaust denier? Name names.
Then, support your equation of "[t]hose who deny that secession was inexorably linked to the propagation and expansion of chattel slavery" with real Holocaust deniers.
Tell me who has denied the link, and show how their skepticism is flatly wrong and morally loaded, despite the fact that States leaving the Union implicitly gave up their claims in the Territories, and thereby abandoned all efforts on behalf of their citizens to prove that Southerners had the right to migrate to the Territories with their slaves.
The South gave up on the Territories and the subject of the expansion of slavery, by seceding. Secession is negatively tied to "the expansion of slavery", if secession guaranteed that there would be no expansion.
You made a foolish statement, just to halfway support calling people who disagree with you "Holocaust deniers". But it seems to me that the vilification of competing opinion and the expression of satisfaction with Civil War violence and "puttings down" is a lot better cultural index of who is infected with the spirit you ascribe to others.
Life for an indentured servant was a picnic compared to that of a free Irish miner in 1890 or a free Slovenian open-hearth mill worker in 1910.
There are bad jobs, and there are worse jobs. Bondmen get worse jobs, but sometimes free men take them, too.
What's your point? Spit it out.
True enough,most Black writers of today would drag their biases into the picture and produce a distortion of what really happened.That would be just as invalid as someone from the plantation aristocracy presenting their world view as the ultimate truth.
I think reading some of the slave narratives of the time are very enlightening.What struck me was that not only did the slaves and the Freedmen rail against slavery but they didn't seem to think too much of their fellow blacks,whom they referred to in terms of the "N" word.I was also taken aback by how common it was for slave women to give birth to their master's kids.It seemed to be de riguer for the times.As well as the strage affection many slaves felt for their masters.
It seems like a very paradoxical society that everyone from the most fervent white supremist to the most militant black could find some comfort in.
I don't think any historians of any race deny this fact.Even black nationalist icon John Henrik Clarke derides these African Chiefs as "collaborators on par with those of Vichy France"and Henry Louis Gates interviewed some modern African tribal leaders who are still performing "rites of atonement"to purge them of the sins of their ancestors.They believe the reason Africa is catching hell today is due to their participation in the slave trade.Kind of a Karmic payback.
Dix, they will try to ban GWTW. It's only a matter of time.
They still don't get it. The blue-staters and their "secession talk" is just that: talk. They'll never admit that south'ner is the "father of our country." They'll never admit that the author of the Declaration of Independence was a Virginian. They'll never admit their greatness, and they'll never respect us.
I may not be a descendent of Washington or Jefferson, but at least I'm smart enough, like them, to know I love to live in God's country!
Why do you insist on putting your ignorance on display?
Agricultural, quarry, and mining slaves have always been very badly treated, whether Roman villani or the poor Greek slaves in the silver-mines of Naxos, I think it was, who extended their deep shafts too far and had the Mediterranean Sea break in on them. A recent article in Archaeology about the silver-mines of the Laurion Peninsula showed how narrow those ancient adits were -- a person couldn't stand up in them, nor turn around. Even with the advantages of battery-powered fluorescent lighting and flashlights, the archaeologists who investigate those old mines today assure us it's still a very creepy environment, not at all for the faint of heart. What it must have been like to hear the roar of seawater breaking into shafts that were above and behind you must have been just unimaginable.
The Romans kept their villani in tiger cages and worked them like road gangs. Men who weren't savages when they went into the fields, became savages -- hence the stock medieval morality-play character, the villain. It was slaves like these that Spartacus raised during the Servile War in 71 B.C.
Some people will use any vehicle to cause division and to use GWTW is a real stretch. North-South-black-white.
The movie is one of my all time favorites. To me it's about a very young woman learning to cope with unbelievable reversals in her life, a survivor growing up to finally realize who she really loves only to lose him.
I think the movie was an epic work for its time and deserves the place it has earned. The late Ms. Mitchell still deserves accolades for her novel.
Let me enlighten you...there are a LOT of Texans that believe in the right of secession, but not racism.
The two are NOT linked, no matter what you may think!
Oh Yea?
Well people that believe the two issues are linked are low-life, moronic idiots. If the shoe fits........
Why do we waste our time on Anti-Southron Trash?
We must be junkies for propoganda....:)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.