The 1939 American classic “Gone With the Wind” has been temporarily pulled from HBO Max until further notice. All this after the streaming company got some major flack due to an op-ed by “12 Years A Slave” screenwriter John Ridley which was published in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. The gist of the op-ed has to do with Ridley calling on HBO Max to "consider removing" “Gone With the Wind” from its platform as the film has its "own unique problem." "You see, Ridley writes, the civil war epic, and winner of the 1939 Best Picture Oscar, doesn’t just “fall short” with regard to representation, it’s also a film that ignores the horrors of slavery and “perpetuates some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color."
Ridley added: "It is a film that, as part of the narrative of the “Lost Cause,” romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the “right” to own, sell and buy human beings."
This move to remove “Gone With the Wind” comes after nationwide protests in the U.S. over police brutality and systemic racism after the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by Minnesota police.
Will this controversy lead to heated debate? It won't, because you can't have a debate with people who think their moral and political certitude justifies destroying and debasing cultural artifacts and institutions. It would be like trying to explain to the true believers in the Khmer Rouge why shutting down schools and libraries and forcing people to live on collective farms was a bad idea. If you think the backlash to this kind of sanctimonious posturing is bad now, you ain't seen nothing yet.
I haven't watched “Gone With the Wind” for a long time, but, if I remember correctly, the film is not at all “wildly racist”. The main storyline revolves around relationships rather than praising the South, the Confederacy, and slavery. Those themes come up in the background of the story, but it's nowhere near the main theme at all. It has nothing to do with the glorification of the antebellum plantation society, but instead deals with universal themes of love and betrayal. The setting could have been in any other era or even without any historical context and it would still be the same story. The film is true to the era when a person wouldn't frown upon slavery and would support the South, but I don't remember there being any politically motivated messages, such as how the South was right, how the North was wrong, or how slavery was justified.
It'll be interesting to see if, in a decade or so, "Gone With the Wind" becomes as taboo as "The Birth of a Nation," D.W. Griffith's towering but reactionary slab of racism, with film students surely being the primary judges for Scarlett O'Hara's plight in the years to come. God help us all. I say, reluctantly, no, because while the film does romanticize the old plantation lifestyle to some extent, it's hardly as deliriously racist as Griffith's ‘Nation,’ after all, the film's odious racism vilified black people and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. There's also the case for Gone With the Wind actress Hattie McDaniel who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, becoming the first African-American to ever win an Oscar.