Making you watch it, eh?
Posted on 06/24/2020 2:59:55 PM PDT by EdnaMode
Gone With the Wind is no longer gone from HBO Max, having been restored to the streaming service’s library with a new prologue about the film’s problematic themes and depictionof the antebellum South.
Jacqueline Stewart, host of TCM’s “Silent Sunday Nights” and a professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago, leads the four-and-a-half minute intro, which starts off with a general cinematic lesson — recounting the eight Academy Awards (including for Best Picture) won in 1939 by the “highly anticipated” adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s novel, as well as its inflation-adjusted standing as the highest grossing movie of all time.
Then, Stewart acknowledges that the film “was not universally praised,” seeing as it “paints the picture of the antebellum South as a ‘romantic, idyllic setting that’s tragically been lost to the past.'”
Stewart notes how producer David O. Selznick assured the NAACP at the time that he was “sensitive to the feelings of minority peoples,” yet proceeded to deliver a film that depicts a “world of grace and beauty, without acknowledging the brutalities of the system of chattel slavery upon which this world is based.” Stewart says that “the treatment of this world through the lens of nostalgia denies the horrors of slavery as well its legacies of racial inequality.”
Stewart concedes that while watching Gone With the Wind “can be uncomfortable, even painful,” “it is important that classic Hollywood films are available to us in their original form” to “invite viewers to reflect on their own beliefs when watching them now.”
“Gone With the Wind, with its landmark production values, signature scenes and iconic characters has shaped the way generations have pictured slavery and the reconstruction period that followed,” she says in conclusion. “It is not only a major document of Hollywood’s racist practices of the past, but also an enduring work of popular culture that speaks directly to the racial inequalities that persist in media and society today.”
Is Stewart’s prologue fair, juxtaposing Gone With the Wind‘s strengths as a piece of cinema with its weaknesses as a portrayal of the antebellum South?
I wonder if they are going to say anything about the horrors of Chicago?
Horror is bad, isn't it?
Not my school or my business but I gave my last dollar some years ago, and for less reason than you have been confronted with.
I will no longer donate to the school or any other cause that threatens my nation or my own way of life.
EFF them to pieces is how I now see it.
They have not seen the film I have watched over and over through the years. I saw proud Black actors depicting the coping mechanisms and exigencies of surviving in an untenable situation. Hattie McDaniel deserved that Oscar for showing all of us the martialed grace required to live a life in servatitude. And then on top of that, to be so humble about receiving the recognition.
+1.
GOTW isn’t about slavery. It doesn’t really deny the horrors of slavery so much as it simply ignores them.
Making you watch it, eh?
There were many people in slavery, who lived a life similar to that which Hattie McDaniel portrayed. Andrew Jackson worked beside them in the field anytime he was home. Once he left a slave woman in charge of all his financial affairs and managing the Hermitage while he was gone… For six years. I have no doubt violent sociopaths advised their slaves beyond belief. But I think the majority were nowhere close to that.
No need for a warning before the movie. A movie portraying slavery is not considered authentic unless it consists of nonstop beatings.
Lol
He had some minor permanent eye damage due to that scene
Who could have seen that coming?
shouldnt they do a segment before each weinstein movie?
Fast Forward....
Please advise me when a disclaimer is put on “Mandingo”, which is more racist than GWTW ever thought about being.
James Mason on asked why he did that film said when one has ex-wives and alimony payments take the the job.
In my youth I wanted to BE Rhett Butler, and to be with Scarlett.
In my old age, I have come to realize that the only people in the movie that I would now chose to have as friends are Mammy, Pork, Uncle Peter and Big Sam.
Just buy your own copy, I did years ago.
She was added to TCM so she could go on and on about Blackface
Rhett said Mammy’s respect was something he coveted. Melanie never talked down to her. Big Sam was the man Scarlett trusted. GWTW is not the movie they’re attempting to make it.
Looking at those things I would have said "You aren't getting those near my eyes. Come up with something better.
Who could have seen that coming?
:)
Because all works of art, present, past and future, should revolve around the “horrors of slavery.”
I forgot the name of that actor but he was never really all there. I would never have done that.
You put your finger on something I have been thinking for awhile. I think the beatings have been deliberately exaggerated for emotional effect, but were likely quite rare.
This is what political activists do. George Floyd was *MURDERED*! Michael Brown was "Hands up, Don't shoot!"
And so forth. They don't tell the truth because they are deliberately trying to get people worked up, and the truth wouldn't do that.
They sensationalize everything because they are trying to strike nerves.
Olivia De Havilland
July 1, 1916 (age 103 years), Tokyo, Japan
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