Gone with the Wind is being ‘reframed’
Frankly, my dear, someone finally gives a damn. The new streaming service HBO Max has temporarily removed the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind from its lineup, announcing it intends to bring it back with added material discussing the racist characterizations of enslaved plantation workers. The move came in response to an essay written by screenwriter John Ridley in the Los Angeles Times, in which he reminded HBO Max — owned by Warner Media, which also holds the rights to Gone with the Wind — that “when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery,” the film “pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of colour.”
Unsurprisingly, HBO Max’s decision was immediately misrepresented for maximum outrage, with alarmist headlines blaring that the film had been “pulled” and critics taking the company to task for giving in to the most censorious Torquemadas of the American left. (The film can still be viewed on a variety of platforms, including Vudu, itunes and Amazon Prime.)
But this thoughtful, measured response is precisely what was called for by Ridley, who wrote the 2013 historical drama 12 Years a Slave. Like most film lovers, he didn’t want the movie shut away “in a vault somewhere in Burbank.” Rather, he was calling for added context, and an acknowledgment that the images, assumptions and values embedded in a moonlight-and-magnolias epic that for decades reigned supreme as America’s favourite blockbuster should no longer be blithely accepted as “just a movie.”
It’s an argument that many historians, critics and filmgoers have been making for a long time — myself included. In
2017, a Memphis, Tenn., theatre announced it would cancel its annual screening of Gone with the Wind the following year, after receiving complaints from some audience members. The 2017 screening took place right before a march by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., led activists around the country to call for the removal of statues honouring Confederate leaders.
As I wrote at the time, those statues weren’t great art — they were propagandistic kitsch. But Gone with the Wind couldn’t be dismissed as easily. Yes, it’s “a soapy, hysterically pitched melodrama drenched in sentimentalism and Old South cant” that helped perpetuate a gauzy Lost Cause myth that has romanticized oppression for generations. But it’s also “a genuine work of art whose production design, staging and camera work are worth admiration and study, even while keeping the film’s most toxic properties in mind.”
I also suggested more context when encountering contradictory and even deeply offensive works of art: “What if every repertory presentation of (Gone with the Wind) could be accompanied by conversations with historians, critics, activists?” I wrote. “What if we re-sited (it) away from commercial multiplexes and into libraries, museums, cinematheques? What if we dared to contend honestly with our most shameful and enduring cultural legacies rather than wishing them away or erasing them outright?”
Ridley’s challenge to HBO Max came at a time of public protest regarding the racism baked into American institutions — protest that once might have been met with hand-wringing and happy talk, but now actually seems to be leading to concrete change.
Gone with the Wind, isn’t cancelled. It’s being reframed. Viewers who love the movie can still see it, while, encouragingly, filmgoers who have yet to discover the film will benefit from a far richer historical understanding with which to watch it than those of us who’ve gone before. To quote Gone with the Wind’s own Scarlett O’hara: “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
It might even be a better one. The Washington Post