Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Thinking About Gone with the Wind

Here's a piece from Slate about screening Gone with the Wind and thinking through its representation of the south.

"Sometimes the relative subtlety of Gone With the Wind’s politics, when compared to The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will, can make it even more dangerous. Just as the Civil War “wasn’t about” slavery according to its revisionist history, neither is Gone With the Wind—at least according to the movie itself, in which black characters are never referred to as slaves and just seem happy to be there."

And here's a documentary, Old South/New South commissioned by Warner Bros. when the movie was re-released for its 75th anniversary.