Racist and insensitive films on TV or Theatres need a second look

On June 10, the birthday of Hattie McDaniel, who won one of the 1939 epic’s eight Oscars, HBO Max blew GWTW off the streaming service’s line up.

Without a doubt, the four-hour

Technicolor blockbuster about the South, Civil War and Reconstruction is problematic, right from its racist opening title card: “There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind....”

In addition to the troubling racist caricatures of Black characters—call it “type-caste-ing”—such as McDaniel’s Mammy and Butterfly McQueen’s despicable Prissy—GWTW glorifies not only the Ku Klux Klan (the movie’s night raiders), but marital rape.

After Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler proclaims to his estranged wife: “This is one night you’re not turning me out,” the blockade runner for the Confederacy forcibly sweeps resistant Scarlett O’Hara upstairs to the bedroom. In one of cinema’s most jolting jump cuts, the next scene shows an obviously satisfied (if not languorously ecstatic) Vivien Leigh in bed.

However, in the same film, Mammy is a complicated character, a slave then servant depicted as a maternal figure, the arbiter of good taste and the proper code of behavior, who frets over Scarlett’s misbehavior in often bossy ways. Rhett declares: “Mammy’s a smart old soul. And one of the few people whose respect I’d like to have.” McDaniel’s shrewd portrayal scored a Black talent’s first Oscar.

Premiering in December 1939 as WWII erupted in Europe, GWTW also includes one of the most poignant anti-war scenes in Hollywood history, a sweeping overhead shot of Confederate casualties revealing the disasters of war. Depression-Era audiences were moved when impoverished Scarlett swore, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

So, what should be done with culturally insensitive productions from the past? Ban them outright? Must we burn GWTW? The Motion Picture Association of

America’s ratings system, which aims at providing parental guidance for appropriate viewing by children—such as G, R, and NC-17 classifications—currently focuses on sex, violence and language.

It should expand its ratings to monitor racism and cultural insensitivity for minors and adults. The MPAA should apply these labels—recommended by film historians, scholars, and human rights activists—to preface all relevant productions whenever they’re screened on television, online, and in live venues.

Of course, long term solutions to onscreen racism involve creating and supporting more authentic productions by non-white and culturally aware artists. Perhaps there could be a screen adaptation of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, which tells GWTW from the slaves’ perspectives?

(IPA Service/Courtesy: People’s World)