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 ...
It's much better than you say. The cast is terrific. Especially Leslie Howard. and Olivia DeHaviland makes Melanie come to life, in the book we are just told she is good, DeHaviland acts her good, too good to be true in the book, as seen through Scarlett's eyes, but just really a wonderful person in the movie.
And yes, I am a chick!
Never pretend otherwise.
In a world where slavery was the norm it isn't inconceivable that blacks would have enslaved whites if they had the power. Hell every nation practiced slavery at the time. It was good ol' boy dead white males that ended the practice in Europe and America.
Perhaps you ought to see it as an adult.
as to the author's assertion about the movie, he missed the most important aspect.....that in reality few white Southerners had slaves period....most people were poor and couldn't afford them so in that respect GWTW was truly just pulp....
It wasn't THAT long ago, or THAT far away...
I don't dispute that at all. Sometimes I suspect all the attitude white boys get is thinly masked resentment that you turned things 'upside-down' in the last 300 years and they're projecting it on you.
I believe she did mean to evoke the image of a (mostly) benevolent aristocracy overseeing a culture that she -- and many others -- saw as not utterly demeaning in every aspect. That is, she and her surrogate Scarlett, realized the culture was caught in a supply and demand circumstance, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
Those who truly study Southern history, both Antebellum and Reconstruction, know that freedom was eventually the only humane course to pursue. But the cold turkey method foisted on owners and slaves with no transition to independence for either, was brutal for both.
I believe Mitchell wanted that story told and she succeeded brilliantly, through enduring characters against the backdrop of a bloody four-year war that found no real winners.
. My grandmother knew Margaret Mitchell. My grandmother also had a working black maid. My grandfather knew a black man that he took with him hunting and fishing for years in the 1940's to 1960's. My grandfather told my mother that that black man was his best friend. Even so, the black man addressed my grandfather as "mister".
One day my uncle and grandfather were out in the car and came upon the black man on the side of the road. He was dressed in a coat and tie. My uncle and grandfather stopped to see what was wrong. It turned out that he had a flat tire and had donned a coat and tie in the inevitable event that the flat tire would land him in jail. He didn't want to go to jail undressed.
The movie was more a chick-flick about a strong-willed (bitchy) woman who has enouth strentgh of character not to just roll over and die. The men are really two-dimensional characters with no real development. So what? There's not much commentary about slavery either way.
I rather like the original better. How can a computer commit a Freudian slip? The Id in the Machine?
What's this about -- the DVD coming out or slow news day? This is still one of my all time favorite movies. Watch it at least once a year and still cry.
1939 was still probably the best year for movies.
31 - "Re: "Roots". That piece of fiction (which claimed to be fact) has also done a lot of damage to people's historical understanding of slavery. In "Roots" a raiding party comes ashore and kidnaps Kunta Kinte from a peaceful life. In reality that would never happen. In reality a slave ship would put ashore and negotiate to purchase slave cargo from the local king."
Almost correct, but the slaves would have been purchased from the local, coastal, Muslim slave trader.
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