Welcome to Retro Rewind, the TGJ original feature launched to revisit TV and Film’s entertaining yet occasionally difficult past.
Today, we make our back to 1939, the year in which the movie ‘Gone with the Wind’ was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
In it, we meet the feisty and vivacious belle Scarlett O’Hara, the daughter of a wealthy Irish man whose wealth depends on African-American chattel slavery.
Much to their dismay, their lives are turned upside down when the Civil War strikes the South and eradicates the lifestyle the enslaving and torture of enslaved Africans afforded them.
This forces young O’Hara to find her way in a world that soon becomes cold, dark and dangerous once the North’s efforts to dismantle slavery shatters the cotton-clad fantasy that is her life.
The critic Lou Lumenick had this to say about the problematic yet iconic release:
If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture? It buys heavily into the idea that the civil war was a noble lost cause and casts Yankees and Yankee sympathisers as the villains.
He added:
It goes to great lengths to enshrine the myth that the civil war wasn’t fought over slavery — an institution the film unabashedly romanticises.
Press play to see it for yourself below…
‘Esquire’ came to this conclusion when discussing ‘Gone’:
The film more or less invented the concept of the sassy black friend, in Hattie McDaniel as Mammy, who was the first African-American to win an Oscar. The film explicitly talks about reparations, the famous 40 acres and a mule, as a vote-buying scam put about by Yankee carpetbaggers. There are good blacks and insolent blacks. There are house blacks and there are field blacks. Whenever African-American characters are articulate, it is always meant as a comic surprise. These are still the prejudices that bedevil representations of African-Americans onscreen.
But what is most fascinating about Gone with the Wind is the capacity for the story not to be about race. One would think that a story about the Civil War, about the liberation of the slaves, would naturally involve the discussion of the nature of enslavement, the nature of rebellion. But there is really almost none of it. Even after the war is lost, Mammy remains Mammy. The good blacks remain the good blacks. The carpetbaggers only appear in a tiny fragment of a scene, and they are not really given enough personhood to count as villains. That honor goes to white trash and the Yankees. The details of the material life of the Southerners is the key, and in that drama the black people amount to furniture. During a nap before the war, white girls sleep while black girls fan them with peacock feather fans. Whether those black girls have any feelings whatsoever is a matter of the strictest irrelevance to this movie.
I didn’t realise how racist this was until my mom pointed it out to me.
I didn’t know it as a kid. I love was like mama why the black dressed like a bottle of syrup and my mama just shook her head.
The film is iconic though. Hattie Mcdaniel was as important for this movie as were Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, such a lovely woman.
What was so lovely about her? Did she speak out against the racism the movie endorsed?
She was a very calm person, I don’t think she had the strength to speak out against it, not everyone has it, it doesn’t mean they didn’t care, regardless, she was adorable.
The 1st Oscar to be won by an African American, was because she played a s****.
Not a surprise. We usually only win for playing a s****, w****,drug addict, or some type of pimp/gangster.
I can’t make it through this movie, it nauseates me..
Not much has changed. When Halle Berry won an Oscar for playing Billy Bob Thornton’s w****, she thanked Hattie for being the 1st AA winner.
From s**** to w****. We have come a long way.?
I get what you mean but look at it this way, a s**** character can only be played by black people, better yet if it is an African American. I mean those are strong roles, it takes passion, emotions and strength to play such character. White actors actually win when they transform themselves into a fat, ugly or a drug addict, it’s not easy for white to win an Oscar neither, look at Charlize Theron, Jared Leto, Matthew McConaughey just to name a few. Only black people, specially African Americans can really feel at role like that.
The difference is that gaining weight for a role is completely different than playing a character that shows the humiliation of your ancestors.
It’s oranges and apples really.
Look where we are now. Still playing a whole lot of slaves and it servents.
The grounds of slavery have been covered ad nauseum.
How about roles, and awards for those roles that portray African Americans as complex human beings and not property.
No offense but it’s easy for you not to take it personally..
At least we should have empowering movies of people during that time. The stories of Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, etc. Smdh.
Well, you got a point, there’s nothing wrong with playing a s**** IMO but it’s true there should be more diversity when it comes to African American actors.
Thanks @Onyx. You’re right about it not being easy to win an Oscar for anyone, but also right that people of color should have more diversity of roles than is.
The majority of Oscars, from the beginning, has been Won by white people period. Sure some actors go to great extremes to secure the golden statute, but most do not. Whites get to play a wide range of characters and quite a few have more than one Oscar. Blacks on the other hand, makes up a small percentage of Oscar winners. The roles are usually subservient, demeaning, criminal or uneducated. Unfortunately, those descriptions apply to our everyday life.
Sidenote: The lack of knowledge and understanding of black history by this generation is scary. You’re in the midst of a battle to obtain liberties and freedom which you’ve been fooled to believe you have. History, in some form can repeat itself. Wake up children.
I’m looking forward to the remake ” gone with the wind fabulous!”
Lol! ?
As an 80’s baby, growing up I NEVER thought of white people as ‘superior’ lol…Thriller was the first album I listened to and Michael was my first music star…Michael Jordan was the first basketball star to me…Tom Cruise was the first movie star to me…Oprah was the first TV star to me…The Cosby Show was the first television programming that I loved…I remember Fatal Attraction as the first ‘grown up’ movie I saw in the theater…it MIGHT have been ONE black person in the whole movie lol…I didn’t care, I was eating popcorn…Michael Douglas cheated, Glenn boiled the bunny and Anne Archer got to capping lol…my parents took me to see School Daze and Do The Right Thing too…Madonna, Prince, Whitney, Janet, Tina, Phil Collins, Sade, George Michael, Run DMC…it truly was a balance in my eyes…hip hop, Spike Lee and the early 90’s woke me up to race relations as a kid…I love being black! I’ll watch this Gone With The Wind (Fabulous) for the first time soon! lol
Amen . The 80’s was the best
Fancy
Yas! These kids just cannot appreciate how big the difference is in all aspects. Balance, diversity and talent. You only have to compare the lists with hits from the 80s and 90s to the ones you have now when TGJ does the Retro Rewind thing.
I was a little kid in the 80’s and a t*** in the 90’s. I remember all you mentioned and it was a better time culturally in the US.
I remember those spike Lee movies, and movies like action Jackson,whoopi Goldberg and eddie Murphy’s reign as well.
The way blacks were represented was empowering.
Now it feels like a regression back to gone with the wind days and the 70’s blacksplotation era.
Hopefully things will comeback around to better opportunity for all people of color in cinema,music, and all genres of life.
Blimey! TGJ barely goes back as far as the 90s usually and now all of a sudden we are in like the 30s 🙂 🙂 🙂
So let me get this straight, this “critic” is critiquing the film for showcasing the 19th century as it was? What exactly did he expect from it? A BLM march during the 2nd half? And no s*** the Yankees got the credit, they were the ones who deserved it. As for the Civil War, it was about slavery, but not just slavery.
Criticizing something for being the product of its time is callow, haphazard and pointless. Gone With the Wind is almost 100 years old. It can’t be critiqued by what some feel is acceptable/unacceptable by today’s standards.
You´re absolutely right. Not to mention these guys couldn´t be real “critics” if their lives depended on it 🙂
Wow