This is a negative article about Gone With the Wind... be warned, this guy has really stupid arguments. In the second half defenders of GWTW write in and he cuts down their arguments.
June 27, 1998
BY GREGORY KANE
There are basically two types of Americans. There are those who positively adore "Gone With The Wind," the 1939 classic starring Clark Gable, Clark Gable's ears, Vivien Leigh, Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, the latter in a role that made me seriously condsider changing my ethnic designation to Hispanic. And then there are those of us who despise the just re-released film.
Let's beat straight to the chase. Most of my objections to "GWTW" are racial.
David O. Selznick's revisionist and downright wrong piece of schlock implies that Southern blacks and nothing more during the Civil War than pine away about the fate of Massa Rhett, Massa Rhett's ears and Miss Scarlett. That's offense No. 1. Offense No. 2 occurs when Rhett Butler tells a group of men considering secession that the South had little going for it in the upcoming battle against the North. He rattles off a couple of things that make the South underdogs and then sneers sarcastically, "And slaves."
Slaves were more important to the Civil War thatn either Margaret Mitchell, the author of the novel Gone With The Wind, or Selznick realized. Read any of the several books now on the market about blacks who fought for the confederacy and you'll learn how the contribution of black workers helped the South survive as long as it did. Read James McPherson's "The Negro's Civil War" and you'll come across Abe Lincoln's Sept. 12, 1864, letter to Isaac Schermerhorn in which Lincoln wrote that the Union couldn't have won the war without the assistance of the tens of thousands of blacks who served the Union as soldiers, sailors, laborers, and spies. Most of those blacks were the slaves "GWTW" referred to so derisively.
I had read McPherson's book before I saw "GWTW". The film's distortion of the role blacks played in the Civil War infuriated me. But I wasn't surprised. "GWTW" was a Hollywood production, and Hollywood's producers, directors and writers then, as now, read little history, assuming they read anything at all. They all probably went with the flow of Mitchell's novel, and she probably learned her history by reading the back of an Aunt Jemima's pancake box.
But enough of the historical angle. I could also have done without Rhett Butler's referral to the slaves as "mindless darkies". I could call the term racist, but then folks would accuse me of trying to to impose political correctness. That's not the case. The phrase is offensive, but I can live with it. What I can't live with are double standards and unfairness.
A few years back, pop singer Michael Jackson had a song that had negative references to Jews on his "HIStory" album. I think the exact words in the song "They Don't Really Care About Us" were "Jew me, kike me". Thats sounds every bit as offensive as "mindless darkies". Such furor rose about Jackson's song that he was forced to change the lyrics to appease the disgrunted.
"GWTW" has just been put back on the big screen, to the horror and dismay of those of us who can't stand the thing. I'm sure the phrase "mindless darkies" is still in it. How many of those folks who claimed they were so horrified by the words "Jew me, kike me" will be outside theaters showing "GWTW" to demand that the phrase "mindless darkies" be excised from the film? None, of course. Apparently it's perfectly acceptable to offend ethnic and racial groups in classic films. But don't dare do it in song.
Ok, enough of the racial angle. Let's just talk about the dreadfully written the film is. It's not content to let you feel sympathy and empathy for the characters naturally. It tries to milk these feelings feelings out of you. Moviegoers gave me dirty looks when I laughed after the scene in which Rhett's and Scarlett's daughter, Bonnie, is killed after being thrown from a horse. But I didn't laugh because the child died. I laughed because I saw it coming when Bonnie first climbed on the horse. "They wouldn't", I said to myself about "GWTW's" screenwriters, who had already milked more than the average share of tears from the audience.
"They couldn't", I continued. "No, they will not try to wring out anymore sad emotion from this audience." They did, of course. I laughed not at Bonnie's death but at the chutzpah of Selznick, his director, and his screenwriters.
"That girl didn't die of a broken neck," I muttered from my seat. "She died from a bad case of maudling plot."
Praised as the greatest film ever made," Baltimore Sun film critic Chris Kaltenbach wrote. "GWTW" is certainly the most overrated film ever made. After its current run in theaters. I hope it goes with the wind and stays with the wind.~
July 3, 1998
TODAY, READERS, I will feature reaction from some of you to my column about that despicable dreck of a movie "Gone With the Wind."
Susan Fanske of Ellicott City wrote:
GWTW "should be interpreted and left for the literary work that it is, a love story taking place with the Civil War as a background. I think it is no more historically correct than James Cameron's 'Titanic,' which is also a love story first. Please don't read more into the story than what is there and let the author have his/her own literary license."
Leslie Cale sent in an e-mail:
"I think you may be a bit off the mark with GWTW. I agree the movie is dated, but so are a lot of movies considered classics. Perhaps the movie didn't show how blacks were involved in the Civil War -- but that's not what the movie is about. I thought it was about the love story, of course, and about how the Civil War affected one particular spoiled white Southerner. And when Rhett said anything stupid, like about 'mindless darkies,' I just assumed the character was expressing the character's opinion, not that the moviemakers agreed with him. Just as when Malcolm X said something disparaging about whites in Spike Lee's movie, it was Malcolm X giving his opinion, not Spike Lee. Wait a minute, maybe that's a bad example."
Bill Newhall of Baltimore wrote:
"Let me point out that [GWTW] does not pretend to be a documentary. It is not a Civil War
history, it is just the period in which Rhett and Scarlett acted out their unfortunate relationship.
The Civil War is merely the background, and if it is painted badly, it doesn't matter.
"The roles of the servants were the roles of those who chose to remain with their former masters -- there truly were such people. This is their story -- not someone else's story. As for Mr. Butler's offen-sive and racist attitudes, they make perfect sense. Mr. Butler is racist and offensive.
"The feeling I am left with after having read that particular column is that you purposefully set out to be offended and had to grasp at straws of invented indignation in order to defend yourself."
Wrong, Newhall. GWTW genuinely offends. It offends from the opening credits to the last line. Stephen Hunter, former Sun film critic now with the Washington Post, said pretty much the same thing in last Sunday's Post. "The most overrated film of all time," Hunter called GWTW. He counted 28 other films made in 1939 that were better than GWTW. And I get the feeling Hunter just stopped counting at 28. There would have been serious flaws to this movie even if there had been no blacks in it at all, and Lord knows, I wish there weren't.
Jonathan Jensen of Parkville addressed the double standard between Rhett Butler's reference to "mindless darkies" and Michael Jackson's use of "kike" in his song "They Don't Care About Us":
"To equate Rhett's line with Michael Jackson's deliberate slur," he wrote, "strains logic."
No, it doesn't. Every writer above suggested or said outright that the producer, director and writers of GWTW had artistic license to have Rhett Butler utter the phrase "mindless darkies." And, if any of them recall my column, I specifically said that my problem wasn't so much with the line but with the double standard applied to Jackson. Jensen implies that Jackson shouldn't have the artistic license he so willingly grants to David O. Selznick and the GWTW horde. He even goes so far as to say Jackson made a deliberate slur, which shows he -- and, I suspect, many others -- hasn't even listened to the song.
Jackson's song is an attack on racism. His line "Jew me, kike me, don't black or white me" is an appeal to not do to blacks and other people what has historically been done to Jews. It certainly isn't intended in the derogatory way "darkies" is used in GWTW.
Finally, let's address this notion that I'm picking on GWTW. I'm applying the standards to it I apply to other movies. I didn't like Eddie Murphy's "Harlem Nights" because every white in it is portrayed as racist, stupid or both. I didn't like TNT's "Buffalo Soldiers," produced by black actor Danny Glover, because it showed members of the all-black 9th Cavalry as having the Apache leader Victorio in their sights and then letting him walk into Mexico. I didn't care for Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" because Lee failed to show the main reason for the rift between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad -- how the Nation of Islam should have responded to an April 1962 police shooting of Muslims in Los Angeles -- and implied that Muhammad's secretaries filed paternity suits against Muhammad while Malcolm was still in the Nation of Islam. In truth, the suits were filed with Malcolm X's encouragement and after he left the Nation of Islam.
Don't hand me any of this "historical event as background" nonsense. Using a historical event as a background is no excuse for mutilating history.
AARGH!! Some people JUST DON'T GET IT! =)