I’m starting the fifth Wheel of Time book (again), as I’m finishing up the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection on PS4. After that? Rage of Dragons and Witcher III: Wild Hunt, I think?
Also tomorrow is Father’s Day! And my mom’s birthday!
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I Go Off on Gone with the Wind
HBO Max decided, due to recent controversy, to remove Gone with the Wind from their library. And I don’t know why--they said it was a temporary thing, and they’re bringing it back with an introduction talking about the context in which it was made, so the people shouting about erasing history can just chill out. But I’m also confused because there are people who think this is a great movie, and it’s really not.
When discussing this film, or criticism of it, there’s always this defense of something like, “Hey, this film is a product of its time! Of course it’s not politically correct by today’s standards! Give it some leeway!” But look, I think wherever you stand on any moral-socio-political spectrum, there is a line between “Not Politically Correct/Socially Insensitive” and “Flagrantly Racist.” Let’s not cut the crap here; Gone with the Wind is racist. I’m not saying you’re racist if you like this movie, but I do question your taste in movies. Gone with the Wind is a film that at best glorifies a rigid, sexist, racist, violently-enforced class system based while only barely glossing over how sexist, racist and violently enforced it is; at worst it tries to justify violent, racist extremism.
I wouldn’t say I hate the movie Gone with the Wind. But I sure as heck don’t like it, and I’m baffled by people that do. When I watched it as homework for film class, I made a list of Things That Are Not Okay, or TTANO for short, in my notes for the course. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find said notes, because I am a worthless mess of a human being, but it turns out that it sits on the shelf right next to my bed, so thankfully I have it available. The list goes up to seventeen, if you’re curious, with the last example being that time Rhett rapes Scarlett.
Most of these are from Scarlett. And to be fair, Scarlett is supposed to be terrible. That’s part of the point, and I acknowledge that. The story’s showing us that in a strictly patriarchal society, a woman has to do terrible things, especially by that society’s standards, in order to get what she wants. But look, you’ll excuse me if I can’t really get behind a protagonist who spends the entire story lusting after a married man, all the while marrying other men whom she doesn’t love because they’re means to an end. Yeah, it makes sense in the context of the story, but that doesn’t mean I like it, or that it makes her any more likable as a character.
I sometimes see the defense of “The first Oscar-winning performance of an African-American actress is in this movie!” Which… okay, I’ll concede that. But most of the people saying this generally have nothing but disdain for the Academy so using them as a defense here seems… selective. And despite Hattie McDaniel being awesome, this film doesn’t have a great depiction of African-Americans in general. It gets some credit in that doesn’t use blackface, but that’s like saying I’m a good guy because I didn’t slap your mother. The protagonist and company seem to think that any African-American who wants to have equal rights is just a delusional loser who doesn’t know his or her place. The African-Americans the movie paints as sympathetic are those who will gladly work to defend the Confederacy and those values--which, I remind you in this movie, are built entirely on their continued abuse. It’s like saying, “The good ones are those that know their place!” and I want to boot all of these white characters into a fire.
It is, I think, very difficult for me to like any of the white main characters in this film. I do appreciate the ambition of using the Civil War as the setting for a massive, sweeping historical epic, and maybe, just maybe, I could have been able to bear that story with Confederate protagonists. But this would not be the way to do it. Because the white characters of Gone with the Wind are all the upper crust of the Confederacy. Tara has peacocks on its grounds. Even if I could look past the issue of slavery in this film (which I assure you, I CANNOT), we are still faced with the notion that we are meant to be sad that there are bunch of rich people who are audacious enough to be horrified that now they have to work.
In his writings, Booker T. Washington had a bit where he feels sorry for former slaveowners after the Civil War, because they have no life skills to do the labor necessary to support themselves, having bought into a system where they have unpaid workers do all of those things for them. Cooking, farming, housework--they were up a creek and had no idea how to do those things. That doesn’t mean he wanted to be a slave again, obviously, but it was an odd sort of observation. But the characters in Gone with the Wind aren’t lamenting that they don’t know how to do this work as much as that they have to do it at all. And that makes it difficult to sympathize with these guys.
Speaking of the guys, we know that they’re Klansmen, right? The book is apparently more explicit on that point, and the director to his (minor) credit, removed explicit references to the Klan, and their role in the story as heroes, with the Klan actually threatening his life about this because they wanted more positive press and a big budget Hollywood movie with their grubby fingerprints on it. TV Tropes tells me that the movie claims the men are explicitly not in the Klan, but I don’t recall this at all, and in any case this doesn’t change that they all go out as a gang and carry out vigilante justice on a group of black men that attacked Scarlett. What else are we supposed to assume from this? If they are not meant to represent the Klan, they are something very much like it, just with the name changed. I’m going to say that I’m not thrilled with a movie where several main characters are unrepentant Klansmen.
Speaking of the men, Rhett Butler is garbage. Not only does he spend the entire movie trying to harass and bother Scarlett at every turn, we also get the lovely scene towards the end where he threatens to kill her, and then rapes her. Which, to be fair to fans of this movie, isn’t presented as rape in the film because she wakes up seeming to have enjoyed it (mega yikes), but he takes her to the bedroom as she struggles against him, and, uh… look guys, do I need to say that this is a problem? I’m not saying there can’t be rape in stories, but the narrative doesn’t treat it like a bad thing. And that’s not even remotely acceptable.
Racism, classism, sexism… we’ve just got the whole chalupa here, don’t we!
I’m not saying this movie needs to be banned; I understand why it might be viewed in film courses or the like. It is, after all, one of the biggest movies in popular culture of all time, and I don’t think that should be underestimated. As an artifact, I think it’s interesting to look at and I can understand why it’s worthy of study. This is a film that changed the way entertainment was made and distributed. And like I said, I admire its ambition. But do I like this movie? Nope. Do I think it’s a masterpiece that I just don’t appreciate? Fudge no.
So when HBO Max said that they were (temporarily, I remind you) taking this down, and people got up in arms about censorship… look, I don’t get it. This movie’s not good. You can still easily find it in other formats without looking too hard. For one single service to decide that it doesn’t want this piece of garbage in its library without some kind of disclaimer at the beginning, pointing out that they don’t remotely endorse any of the values the narrative espouses… that’s not even actual censorship. That’s them giving more much graciousness than is deserved to a movie that could be locked up in archives for all I care.
Screw this movie. I didn’t mind watching it for a film class because of its cultural impact, but I have no intention of sitting through this bloated monstrosity again.
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