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I have watched, for the first time, Gone With the Wind.
This is not to say that it has never been playing in my presence for the past five decades or so.
My mother watched it whenever it was on broadcast and she wore out more than one video tape and would probably have worn out her DVD had cancer not vetoed that idea.
She was also a fan of the book. She was a bit disappointed that her son, the avid reader, never picked up the thing and read it.
While it was often on at my house, I never actually watched it.
Thanks to the controversy over it recently, I have.
It's a darn good film.
I don't think that any racism was intended, and I'm getting from my old-west research for Sabers that the racism that is shown, both overtly and by stereotype, is essentially period depictions of it.
More than one black character is given a pivotal role to play and not as a villain. Hattie McDaniel deserved the accolades she received and Butterfly McQueen even defended the movie from accusations of racism at the time of its release.
This is very significant because black actors had not been playing black people all that long in 1939 and so very rarely as anyone who could be respected or sympathized with.
For better or for worse, Gone With the Wind portrayed the South accurately. Though Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh had the star power, I always thought it was the supporting cast that really made the film.
ReplyDeleteIt shows a part of the past that made the US what it was, before the prog bastards that support Marxism-socialism-communism took over a major political party and the media and so many other institutions. Just like the dark days early in the 1930's in Germany.
Margaret Mitchell grew up listening to people who'd lived through that time in the South, and was praised for getting so much of what she wrote right. For better or worse, it's almost entirely from Scarlett's private point of view, and while Scarlett chafes at the restrictions her gender lays on her, she is still very much a person of her time.
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