Is America still living the 'Gone with the Wind' lie?
If you use Amazon to rent the 1939 film that, adjusted for inflation, remains the highest-grossing ever, you are greeted with a stern warning. “Gone with the Wind,” it reads, “depicts racial and ethnic prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.” On the other hand: “To create a more just, equitable, and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.”
Now Sarah Churchwell amplifies Amazon’s message into a 464-page book – and, sad to say for Gone with the Wind fans, it is mostly very persuasive. She makes an overwhelmingly strong case for the film’s racism and a completely unanswerable one for that of Margaret Mitchell’s original 1936 novel: America’s best-selling of the 20th century. She also argues convincingly that Gone with the Wind is “the skeleton key” that unlocks “America’s illusions about itself” – and with them, much of its history since 1861.
That year, of course, saw the outbreak of the American Civil War: the setting for the tale of Scarlett O’Hara, Rhett Butler and the Tara plantation in Georgia. Or rather, the setting for the first part of it – because for both Scarlett and Mitchell, the real tragedy for the American South came with the post-war era of Reconstruction, when the North imposed such injustices as abolishing slavery and allowing black people to vote.
Not that the South took this lying down. Soon after the war ended, the Ku Klux Klan – praised in the book; unmentioned in the film – was formed to keep “uppity” blacks in their place, largely by murdering them. In the novel, Rhett kills “a n-----” for being “uppity to a lady”, as he puts it, adding: “What else could a Southern gentleman do?”
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/america-still-living-gone-wind-040000818.html
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