Warner Bros. stirred up quite a bit of controversy, with a certain segment of people anyway, when they decided to pull Gone with the Wind from HBO Max during the recent Black Lives Matter protests. The move was inspired by a plea from 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley, after years of complaints about the movie’s antiquated presentation of black people in the antebellum South. To listen to some, this was part of a larger scheme to disappear the movie from history altogether, but it was always meant to return with added context…and now it has.
Gone with the Wind is indeed back on HBO Max, but along with it you’ll get two videos from Turner Classic Movies. These short segments shed light on the movie in fuller context, detailing its history and depiction of black people as happy servants during the time of the Civil War and later during Reconstruction.
The first of the added segments is hosted by Turner Classic Movies film scholar Jacqueline Stewart. The second is an hour-long panel discussion titled “The Complicated Legacy of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ moderated by historian Donald Bogle.
There are a laundry list of problematic movies and TV shows, many that we still consider classics to this day. So don’t be surprised to see more decisions like this being made, and if it helps people understand why Gone with the Wind is considered to be racist, maybe this will help them. [Variety]
