Commentary: Truth blown away in sugarcoated 'Gone With the Wind'

sacbee ^ | 11-13-04

[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."

[lentulusgracchus]

Since the Union was all the states which composed it the Slavers tried to destroy it through insurrection.

False premise. The Southerners (you can stop calling them "slavers" now, unless you mean the planter class) didn't destroy the Union -- they just left it. Different concept entirely.

The American Colonies didn't destroy the British Empire by throwing off their allegiance to King George III, either. You're just trying to pretend the Southerners did something vicious and unconscionable to the other People in the Union. They didn't -- it's a false charge.

[lentulusgracchus]

....you and the other DSs ...

What do you mean by "DS"?

[lentulusgracchus]

they were willing to destroy the greatest nation in the history of mankind to preserve it.

Constant repetition of this canard doesn't make it true. It isn't, as I just pointed out to you. Again.

Now, stop it.

[lentulusgracchus]

Why would the "co-conspirators" care?

Fallacy, and unfair. You are tarring them just for agreeing with Taney.

Your snark doesn't address the merits.

[lentulusgracchus]

Is this your way of saying that you're glad all the white people were killed in Haiti?

Or is there some argument in there that refutes the historical fact, that the slaves killed every white person they got their hands on, without exception (save only one, who was sheltered by Toussaint L'Ouverture because she taught him to read)?

To redirect to my original point, which you are trying to lead us away from with relativistic waffling and snarking at the white slavocracy, white Southerners lived among black slaves in an environment unknown to the Abolitionists, in which the white population was always at risk of destruction by slave revolt. It wasn't an exercise in the abstractions of the abolition meeting for them. It was life-and-death. Henry Beecher and his sister never had that in the scales.

[lentulusgracchus]

[capitan_refugio, propounding a point on which he's been previously refuted, again] The power of Congress to regulate and make rules for territories was already established before the Constitution was proposed for ratification.

Utterly irrelevant. The Constitution was still the governing document, anything that had been previously enacted to the contrary absolutely notwithstanding.

Do you get it yet? No? Okay, here's another.

The British Government enacted a number of Ordinances in Council during the prerevolutionary period. Were they still valid? The English common law was.

The answer is, No. The United States of America, as the successor government, had the power to unmake those Ordinances, and the Constitution likewise unmade every law and article, including all the Articles of Confederation, that had gone before it and which contradicted the terms of the Constitution.

[lentulusgracchus]

I am saying that it is a Universal Right in a free nation, that innocent people have Rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. This supercedes whatever otherwise complex and well-supported edifice of competing rights may be built --below, upon, and above the 10th Amendment, etc.

I'm sorry, but this is just flatheadedly wrong. Read a book on the Constitution, okay?

You are free to call that "Declarationism." It is historical, ontological fact.

It is Straussian, Lincolnian buncombe and far from fact, much less ontological fact.

[lentulusgracchus]

Put another way, capitan, you made an ingnorant and arrogant proclamation. I corrected that act of ignorance by citing an irrefutable historical truth and yet you arrogantly persist in asserting your previous falsehood's validity at all cost and beyond.

Concurring bump. I'm getting tired of the obstinacy in the face of fact and reason.

Confute, refute, walk all over his argument in your spiked elenchus shoes -- and he just pops back up somewhere else and posts the exact same damned thing as if it had never come up before. That's just plain dishonest.

[capitan_refugio]

CR - "The power of Congress to regulate and make rules for territories was already established before the Constitution was proposed for ratification."

LG - "Utterly irrelevant. The Constitution was still the governing document, anything that had been previously enacted to the contrary absolutely notwithstanding."

Here are the two faces of confederate apologists. Pre-constitutional law is meaningless to them, unless it is used by the Chief Justice to condemn Lincoln. This then is compounded by the denial of original intent of the Framers.

Narrow interpretations. Narrow minds.

[agincourt1415]

Interestingly, a member of my family was a "Technical Advisor" for Roots (The Mini Series).

However he removed his support of the Movie when Alex Haley and the Producers manufactured harsh treatment of blacks for dramatic effect.

The Family name was removed in the Series because of that.

[lentulusgracchus]

Whatever the case, you've accomplished nothing beyond displaying your own intellectual deficiencies and your own inability to conduct yourself in a reasonable and truthful manner as you attempt to engage in conversations about historical matters of fact.

Actually, on second thought, I think he's already warned us what he intended to do. His comment about not making our case for us indicates that he intends to proceed like a lawyer or a pol: at the intellectual level of a seminar grad student and the moral level of a used-car salesman.

I think we err in engaging him in the first place, if he has told us he's just going to spew.

[lentulusgracchus]

This then is compounded by the denial of original intent of the Framers. [Emphasis added.]

Screw that, bub -- you mean, the original intent of some of the Framers.

You're just reading from one side of the page and expecting us to take it. I just explained to you that the Constitutional Convention wasn't just a Hamiltonian jerkle circus. Serious people changed the document and changed the deal.

Admit it or get lost.

[capitan_refugio]

"They gave a reason for independence, declared their independence, and set up an independent government."

Well, two out of three is not too bad, for you. It is clear the Virginians want local autonomy and chaffed under the British appointed governors and officials. With that said, there is no declaration of independence in the document. In fact, when they did declare their independence the next month, they did so as one of the "united colonies."

Sorry, you are over-reaching again.

[GOPcapitalist]

His comment about not making our case for us indicates that he intends to proceed like a lawyer or a pol: at the intellectual level of a seminar grad student and the moral level of a used-car salesman.

I concur with the latter but in the case of the former I think you give him two much credit...unless, of course, you are referring to the modern day seminar environment in which every single class has that one student who is both arrogant and ignorant. The type I refer to is normally an "affirmative action case," so to speak, more often than not female (no offense to women in general - just an observation), and tends to stick out in the class as the one person who simply doesn't belong in any college level educational environment much less at an advanced level but is nevertheless there. I remember those types well only a few years back and with the rise/return of affirmative action after O'Conner's Michigan case copout I can only suspect that it's worse now. They usually sit front and center in the class and end up consuming roughly a quarter of the lecture time by asking inane, stupid, completely unnecessary, and oftentimes combatively hostile questions that seldom have anything to do with the lecture material and almost always serve as a disguise for what is in reality an intellectually unsupported personal opinion drawn out over several qualifying paragraphs before being phrased in the form of a question. Assuming he was ever in college, I suspect that el capitan was his classroom's version of this type of individual in more cases than the average student.

[GOPcapitalist]

Well, two out of three is not too bad, for you. It is clear the Virginians want local autonomy and chaffed under the British appointed governors and officials. With that said, there is no declaration of independence in the document.

Exactly what is it about the phrase "TOTALLY DISSOLVED" that you do not understand, capitan?

As I said, you are simply being slothful and arrogant in defense of your ignorance out of a vain attempt to compensate for your inability to get it right the first time you posted. By persisting as you are now you only further prove my case.

[justshutupandtakeit]

The Colonies were formed at the behest of the Continental Congress and, thus, are subsequent to the Nation. That cannot be escaped and sinks any case of State Sovereignty before it leaves the dock.

[dalebert]

I thought GWTW was fiction.

[justshutupandtakeit]

He was a Titan second only to Washington as the greatest American president and, therefore, to all the world and patriots one of the greatest history shows us. Unsurpassed in wisdom, humanity and the ability to draw forth national greatness Lincoln's significance is what Hegel called the World Historic Individual who shapes history and therefore the destiny of the Ages.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Your experience has apparently left you on the verge much more and the men in the White coats will be at your door. Lay down and let the hate and bile subside and you might be ok.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Amend. Amen