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 ...
Someone is finally attacking Gone With the Wind for its portrayal of happy slaves and noble Klansmen? Hard to believe.
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.
This is perfectly reasonable, as the novel (though in the third person) is written from the perspective of antebellum southerners, who no doubt believed these things.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr. Spell check zapped me. Somehow it managed to change the work 'benevolent' (which I had misspelled) to 'novelty'...and it posted when I went to change it back. I hate it when that happens. So when reading the above post, replace 'novelty' with 'benevolent'.
Yes, I know this quite well...
This 'modernistic' revisionist & social engineering mindset is also behind factions such as the NOW radicals and thier crusade to save women of the world from marital oppresion, monagamy, heterosexuality & child bearing to name a few...
The village idiots have congregated and formed 'elite' morally corrupt institutions & vile villages...
Lincoln got zero popular votes in the South (excluding that part of Virginia that became West Virginia), not electoral votes mind you -- but popular votes. That should tell you something.
Given the reaction of the blue staters to Bush's election and even talk of secession, can you imagine how they would have reacted if Bush were elected with no popular votes at all from a large contiguous portion of the US? I can at least understand Southerners hostility to the Lincoln administration after he was elected.
But those texts you praise were also written by "revisionists" who strove to make slavery look like less of a problem than it was taken to be by the Civil War generation. It shouldn't be assumed that early 20th century Southern historians gave a true, "unrevised" view of slavery or that distortion or bias only came later.
--and it is my cynical opinion, after seeing several Civil War battlefields and memorials a year ago, that the politically correct types won't be satisfied until we posit that the war was won by the slaves with their hammers and sickles , rather than blue coated soldiers with musket and cannon---
Alcorn State University was founded on the site originally occupied by Oakland College, a school for whites established by the Presbyterian Church.
Oakland College closed its doors at the beginning of the Civil War so that its students could answer the call to arms. Upon failing to reopen at the end of the war, the property was sold to the state of Mississippi and renamed Alcorn University in honor of James L. Alcorn in 1871, then governor of the state of Mississippi.
James Lusk Alcorn (November 4, 1816 - December 19, 1894) was a prominent political figure in Mississippi during the 19th century. He served in the state house of representatives and senate during the 1840's and 1850's. During the American Civil War, he rose to the rank of general in the Confederate Army by war's end. He later served as Republican Governor from 1870-1871, resigned to become U.S. Senator (1871-1877).
No kidding. I never read GWTW for it's historical perspective. I read it for the character sketches.
I think everybody in this thread is missing the point of this subject coming up right now...
It's a slap at the "southern red states". Expect more of the same as the Dems try to rationalize their assumed superiority in all things cultural.
Maybe the revisions have been revised again and again. But this is a particularly thorny issue for me, since my family -- and others -- came to the New world in 1621 as indentured servants, before the slaves arrived and did the worst of the heavy lifting. A fact that has been totally revised out of history.
Yes, Eumaeus. Much obliged. I need to get out for a walk.
Exactly. Who is the more trusted authority on life in the antebellum South: a native Southerner or some editorial writer in California?
Note, on the other hand, that liberals tell us that we cannot pass judgment on 21st century Islamic jihadists (since we don't understand their culture).
I always think these arguments are so silly. Gone with the Wind is not a poltical novel, the movie is not a documentary.
There are good, strong black characters and weak and venal white characters, and vice versa. Scarlett is a "bitch heroine" in the mode of Becky Sharpe, THAT is a modern aspect and I'd think feminists everywhere would applaud Scarlett as a strong, if often ruthless woman. But it really is just a story for diversion, I'd be surprised if Mrs. Mitchel had more than that in mind. If she did, I'm afraid her work disappoints.
It is an historical romance, no more. I think it is a good novel and a great movie, but it is not a work of scholarship or history. Sincerely, only a moron would think that it is.
Give a liberal a pen and you'll soon have a written lie. It is despicable the way Southerners have been portrayed as ignorant, slave-whipping toads. D'nesh D'souza (sp) in his book "The End of Racism" came to the conclusion that slaves in the pre-war South had a higher standard of living than most of the rest of the world at the time.
The notion that Southerners were the slavery bad guys is another that has been fed to us. Give me a break! No one was worse than the Northern traders and shippers.
And finally, when tribal kings rounded up and captured black Africans for sale to the merchant ships who is to say that if black Africans had been more powerful and advanced at the time that they would not have been rounding up white Europeans for bondage? Of course they would.
But "OLD YELLER" is still true, right?
OMG, no! It's all too painful! How I would HATE for my great grandchildren to judge this era from its movies.
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.