Don’t cancel ‘Gone with the Wind’

I recently took up a “movie challenge” on social media, to show a picture a day from a movie that impacted you in a deep way. Well, I love movies, and have a minor addiction with Facebook, so I took up the challenge. This op-ed is a result of some of the commenting on my first pick.

One of the first movies that came to mind, was “Gone with the Wind.” I loved watching this film as a young adult, and still do (when you have four hours to watch a movie that is). It saddens me to see such an amazing piece of art attacked like it has been recently. So I’d like to take a moment to use this film as an example of a serious flaw in today’s “cancel culture,” “woke” movement.

The cries for the film’s removal from screen and history are as ignorant as the removal of historical statues. The “woke” want to remove this film from existence because it is “racist,” because it seemingly portrays slaves as being “happy” to serve their white masters. As with all shallow thought, this seems like a fair point on the surface. But let us use some critical thought for a moment and put this movie into historical context.

The movie was based on a book that was written in 1936 by Margaret Mitchell. Although Mitchell came from a well-off family, and went to finishing school and graduated from Smith College, she was not a stranger to discrimination, and suffered daily insults while at school because of her Irish heritage. (Irish were considered sub-human in many parts of America, at that time.) Her mother was a political activist, who marched in the woman’s suffrage movement of the ’20s, and gave passionate speeches on women’s rights, and had even gotten Margaret involved on numerous occasions.

As a child Margaret was into horseback riding, a hobby that inspired many of the scenes in the movie. Her horseriding teacher was a veteran of the Confederate army and would talk with her about dozens of firsthand experiences from the Civil War.

In 1936, she wrote her only novel, “Gone with the Wind.” A Pulitzer Prizewinning love story, it was set in a time and culture that was literally “gone with the wind.” Shortly thereafter, the popular book was adapted for film, by David O. Selznick. At the time, Hollywood had barely acknowledged the talent of African American actors and actresses. Selznick, with “Gone with the Wind,” broke that mold.

When the film was scheduled to premiere, in Atlanta on Dec 15, 1939, Selznick, who was an active Republican, was contacted by the mayor of Atlanta, William Hartsfield, who said he did not want Hattie McDaniel (Mamie) to attend the premier because it could cause a “ruckus,” and suggested that she attend a different premier, at a black theater, some weeks later. Reluctantly Selznick agreed.

Following a huge success, the film went on to win the 1940 Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best actress and also for best supporting actress, Hattie Mc Daniel.

So in 1940, McDaniel made history, and was the first African-American woman to win an Oscar. The next time Hollywood would give an African American woman an Oscar for a supporting role, would be 50 years later. And to this day, the only African-American woman to win an Oscar for best actress, was Halle Berry, in 2001’s “Monsters Ball.”

Forgive me, but if there is institutional racism to be found anywhere, Hollywood might be a good place to look. Nonetheless, “Gone with the Wind” broke racial barriers, promoted black actresses and actors in Hollywood, and gave history its first African-American Oscar winner.

Today, those of the “woke” and “cancel culture” mobs, would have it removed from history, removed from the screens. These cries from the crowd to take this picture down illustrate perfectly the need to recognize that history doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, and that the attempt to erase or rewrite the past and make it comply with today is absurd. We should not encourage this shallow and short-sighted thinking.

Rather, we should be using such conversations to bring folks together, not divide us along yet another line. If you have any doubt about why “Gone With The Wind” deserves its place, go to YouTube, watch Hattie McDaniel accept her Oscar. See if you can hold back the tears, and then tell me how we should forego the context of history, and just … take it down.