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 ...
Greek and Roman mining slaves had an expected lifespan of about two years. Most were captured soldiers who would have enslaved the Romans had they won instead. At least this is what the tour guides in Italy claimed.
After the War a Reign of Terror was unleashed upon the slaves by the DemocRATS in the South which resulted in the killing of thousands of blacks. It's aim was to break the political will of the newly freed slaves and allow the RATS to regain political and economic control of them. It got so bad that Congress had to pass anti-lynching legislation to protect the ex-slaves from their loving and kindly masters. Just because you refuse facts and prefer myths doesn't make them true.
That "respect and affection" by the Slavers was combined with a strict police control over the slaves complete with the hiring of scumbags to retrieve runaways. Chains, the Lash and the Whip were there to make sure that "affection" for Massa stayed strong. Slavery was a regime of Terror. Slaves lived in terror over what might come of them or their families and Masters lived in terror over what their property might do to them.
Uncles Tom's Cabin was fiction but sometimes fiction is truer than true because its art can lay bare the humanity behind events. Nor does it claim that all or even most slavers treated their property badly but that is what they were for far too many mere property. This was a retrograd socio-economic structure with no Good to outweigh the massive Evil which it supported.
There is nothing PC about the truth in fact the former prevents the latter from being stated.
When you stick your oar in at least know what lake you are rowing. I was responded to another poster attempting to downgrade the evil tyranny of slavery by claiming his ancestor had it worse as an indentured servant.
If you insist on misunderstanding everything discussion is difficult.
What I was referring to was the nature of slavery in ancient times not the work that was done. In those days there was no hereditary slavery based upon race as in the American South. When cities were taken in war often the inhabitants were enslaved which, as I mentioned, frequently led to slaves more educated than their masters. Aesop, for example, was such. Greek slaves were often the teachers of Roman youth. This was totally different than the degraded condition Southern slaves were kept in partially through laws which made teaching them to read a crime. Does this mean there weren't gulag-like conditions in the mines? No, of course not but it also did not prevent you from trying to exculpate the Slavers from their guilt.
Besides you wouldn't recognize ignorance if it bit you in the ass.
i hope they LAUGH you off the forum.
may i also point out that Robert Barret Browning said, "arrogant IGNORANCE is NOT innocence, but rather SIN."
free dixie,sw
you're on a roll. rave on!
btw, are you taking "heyworth the hateful"'s part????
free dixie,sw
he was #3FAN AND a damnyankee/neo-nazi to boot, as well as one of FR's unionist lunatics.
the damnyanke coven on FR would like everyone to forget that they SUPPORTED his HATEFILLED LIES & propaganda right up till the time that he was BANNED for his RACIST beliefs.
free dixie,sw
aren't you SMARTER than that????
free diixe,sw
aren't you SMARTER than that????
free dixie,sw
aren't you tired of being laughed AT????
free diixe,sw
aren't you tired of being laughed AT????
free dixie,sw
rave on! you are HELPING the PRO-dixie movement.
free dixie,sw
Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving in November, thinking of Massachusetts pilgrims rather than those Jamestown VA settler who held the first American thanksgiving feast a decade earlier? Because -- the winners write the history books. Ms. Mitchell was attempting to get around that sad fact of life by encoding her history into the form of a novel.
That's a keeper! You've a true Irish wit.
and oddly enough for the SAME REASON: that BOTH the local Indians & Spaniards had nearly starved to death the previous winter & they had finally "gotten in a crop" that would carry them through the NEXT winter.
they had TURKEY,QUAIL,SQUIRRELS,tortillas,fresh fruit, CORN pudding, FISH, VENISON (among other dishes) & SWEETCAKES on the menu.
free dixie,sw
"I thank Allah every day that my grandfather got on that boat." (Muhammed Ali / Cassius Clay)
Beg to differ. Indentured servants did the heavy lifting in many places because they were there BEFORE slaves were imported. Also, many of the first blacks to arrive came as indentured servants, not "slaves." They worked off their contracts and were let go. I'm talking about pre-1700, when a lot of the heavy lifting was done--swamp clearing, stump pulling, tree felling, etc.
My own Welsh ancestor sailed from Bristol, England in 1620 to a Nevis plantation as an indentured servant. Then moved to Maryland in 1626 after he'd paid off his passage. Slaves arrived on Nevis ten years later. There were few if any blacks in Maryland in 1626. The heavy lifting, clearing, pulling, felling was done by Welsh and England colonists. But no one wants to give us any credit whatsoever for it.
My ancestor was a brave teenage lad, orphaned, alone, undoubtedly illiterate, impoverished to the point that he didn't even have a last name, but took the name of the nearby castle in Wales. When he got to Maryland in 1626, the population of the entire state would fit into a 2004 baseball stadium, virtually all were white, few were landowners. most died before age 35 from malaria and other dreadful things. But somehow, plantations began and flourished, the economy grew even without those hard-working slaves.
I don't begrudge blacks credit for their heavy lifting and I don't promote the institution of slavery. It was dreadful. But they weren't the backbone of America. A little perspective please.
I am well aware of the history of indentured servitude and do not deny many did very hard work but there is a huge psychological burder they were spared which slaves had to face every moment. The former knew they would one day be free while the slaves realized freedom was for the vast majority an empty dream. Crushing the human spirit makes even light tasks seem onerous.
During the period of indentured servitude the colonies were still along the coast and none of the lands of the Cotton states were even in American control. Indentured servants did not face the conditions of the field hands there. Nor did they face the labor conditions the slaves had in the cotton fields. But it is true that the slavers would not use their slaves to do the most dangerous work such as clearing swamps for that Irishmen were hired.
Interesting about the cotton states. Maryland grew tobacco, a crop that depleted soil so rapidly that new fields had to be plowed all the time. They were always starting over, in a sense, draining more swamps, pulling more stumps. Yes, with great hope.
Today, as Condi Rice is announced as Secretary of State, my cousin is retiring as supreme court justice in a western state. Black and white, we all got to this day with impossible hardships, dreadful setbacks, chrushed dreams, broken hearts, lost loved ones, inhuman labor. Slavery was unbearable. So was trudging after wagons along rutted trails, burying your young-uns on prairies you'd never see again.
Story of America, my friend. Aren't we great!
Yeah, and it did so after the people of Mesilla and Tuscon convened secession conventions on their own and asked the confederacy to admit them. The Baylor expedition arrived after a dispatch from Mesilla asking for relief from a yankee incampment. The FORMAL confederate claim on the territory was established at the 34th parallel, representing the regions of Tuscon in the west and Mesilla in the east. Attempts at territorial expansion beyond that parallel were effectively restricted to pushing north to Santa Fe within New Mexico itself. Excursions beyond that were military and aimed at disrupting the yankee supply depot at Fort Union.
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