Gone With The Wind- What do you think of it?

[Kegg]

Sidebar:
Probably my favourite American classic (in the sense of hugely popular work of media) about the antebellum South has gotta be Roots. I mean, come on. It has LeVar Burton in it.

I really don't see how you can say a hypothetical Gone With the Nazi Wind would not problematic. I mean, even if its racist ideas were not to gain traction in the German public, the ideological content of such a film would still be just as morally objectionable.

Actually my point was it would likely not be intentionally racist. Any modern German film dealing with Nazi guards in relationships in Auschwitz would be aware of and repeatedly acknowledge that Auschwitz was terrible and that these two hypothetical Nazi lovers are morally compromised people. Perhaps a relevant example familiar to many non-Germans would be Das Boot, which even as it sympathies with the struggles of its U-Boat crew it is downright hostile to Adolf Hitler and the purpose of the war in general.

And certainly the failure of Nazi Germany would not be treated with quite the same rosy regard as Rhett Butler throwing in his lot with the cause he doesn't believe in but it's lost so he may as well. One can fairly argue there are problems with German films about the war like Das Boot or Downfall and so on, but they never embrace Nazi Germany as a basically unproblematic cause as GOTW treats the South.

What is this "was?"

Point to you. In my defence, it's nowhere near as impregnable as it was when GOTW came out. For example, W.E.B. DuBois was advocating a minority position in the 1930s and he was attacked by other historians for having dubious scholarship. Today, his central argument has been entirely vindicated and is status quo academically.

 

[stj]

^^^No, in one sense you're completely right: DuBois was correct, manifestly so. But it was not politically correct to admit it. The Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore, I happened to read recently did not know or accept the corrections, and insisted on viewing literature about the South negatively if it did not accept the standard ideology about Reconstruction as an assault on the South. And this was still after learning details of the KKK!

 

[Kegg]

Also, probably worth remembering that - per Vanyel's 'of its time' remark - there was a fair bit of controversy about the racial treatments in both the novel and film back in the 1930, something that many black writers found basically objectionable. So even if I find it kind of iffy to have to judge entertainment by its historical context, there were plenty of contemporaries of both novel and film who found a lot to object to.

Sample:

“Gone with the Wind is much too long, is cluttered with trivia and inconsequentialities, with special pleading, useless descriptions, wooden characters who jump like automatons; but it is eminently readable, bolsters Southern white ego, is an effective argument against according the Negro his citizenship rights and privileges and sings Hallelujah for white supremacy.

---

Walter White, then head of the NAACP, in a June 26, 1938 letter to Selznick, wrote that the book is ‘so essentially superficial and false in its emphases that it will require almost incredible effort to make a film from the novel which would not be both hurtful and inaccurate pictures of the Reconstruction era.’ He goes on to write: ‘Our interest is solely that of the accuracy according to the most rigid standards of historical truth.’ He reminded Selznick that most historical treatments of the period give a distorted and essentially vicious treatment of the African-American.

In addition to resistance from the NAACP, Selznick faced the criticisms and protests from Lester Granger of the Urban League, who insisted that Hollywood produce films in which blacks were portrayed with dignity. Granger made it clear that he felt that Hollywood threatened American democracy by refusing to recognize the equality and humanity of all of its citizens.

The pages I was looking at:
http://thegrio.com/2009/12/15/gone-with-the-wind-shouldnt-be-romanticized/
http://sadbetty.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/african-american-reactions-to-david-o-selznick%E2%80%99s-adaptation-of-gone-with-the-wind-in-1939-causes-and-context-part-iii/

The novel does come off worse than the film in those pieces, but damning, faint praise.

 

[Saxman1]

Kegg pretty much sums up my feelings about the film. I feel the same way about my rock cover band drooling to do every Skynard song ever put to tape (they of the Conferderate flag as their symbol): glorifying the old South of slavery is a pretty nauseating thing. No thanks says this Northerner.