377 days, blog #138 on the occasion of its 85th anniversary another reflection of a movie that troubles me

I clicked on a BBC article this morning and realized it is the 85^th anniversary of the premiere of Gone with the Wind.  I admit, I considered watching it tonight in honor of the occasion… but it isn’t available on Netflix any longer… and my copy from another anniversary (maybe 70th) is on VHS.  It’s been a while.  I want to say the last time I saw it was on the big screen.  Maybe.  I can’t remember.

I have written about this film before.  About my mixed feelings about it and the book.  I would have thought by now I could have written off any interest in seeing it again.  But then I read this article that tells me a lot I already know, but reminds me of how very fascinated I am of the film that opened in Atlanta 85 years ago.

Why?

Seriously, why do I still find entertainment value in this film?  Even before my fascination with our country’s history of race and a deep desire to fight to undo racial bias, I found fault with this film for how badly they translated Scarlett from page to screen.  How poorly MEN interpreted a woman driven by her wits and the skill of her charm (not her beauty if you read the first sentence of the book) as a calculating bitch.  Yes, she is calculating… but she is much more human in the novel.  She struggles to survive for her family and she grieves the death of her mother in a very profound way.  She has two other children – one for each of her husbands. And speaking of that… why is she cold for being disappointed in her husband for joining the KKK?  The movie does a nice little dance around that fact… but I’m sorry, I don’t feel sorry for Frank Kennedy after he made that life choice.

But it is still… Gone with the Wind.  It is a movie that defied the odds.  A movie that some allege (especially the book I have on the making of it) the consequence was all who were involved with it were cursed.     It is still the most popular film of all time.  It is still popular with young women now – women to whom 1939 is as distant as the Civil War.

Shouldn’t that be amazing?  It’s fascinating… but it also troubles me.

Whenever I bring up the racial bias of this film or book, people shake their heads and say it’s different.  Or it’s not important.  Or it was a different time.  Or it isn’t what the book/movie was about.  What they are really saying is that it is okay to like it even though it paints Prissy as an idiot and every other character of color except Mammy is pretty much useless on their own.  YES.  It is from 1939/ 1937, when it was still okay to lynch someone for wanting to vote.  Times were different.  Blackface was entertaining.  Mammy was an acceptable trope.  The KKK could be labeled as martyrs.  The victory of the side who ended slavery were the enemy for destroying a more genteel way of life.

But, no, that’s not why it’s so popular.  It’s because… Scarlett … and a dress made from curtains… and Rhett’s steamy kisses.  That slavery thing is just scenery.  And besides, who pays attention to that part of the story anyway?  Especially when there is a great sweeping speech to be made about surviving to another day after puking up a carrot?  That race stuff… well, who sees it?

Right.

Exactly.

That is everything.  Everything that is exploding on our city streets right now.  Every counter argument of “All lives matter” or “I don’t see race, just the human race.”  Or… my particular favorite myopia, “white people were oppressed and made into slaves, too.”

We don’t see the problem… so obviously there isn’t a problem.  We don’t want to see the problem because we want to go on enjoying our pretty movie with a ball that isn’t really a dance but just a rotating stage or the burning Atlanta that is the King Kong set being cleared from the lot… during which supposedly Selznick’s brother brought Vivien Leigh with her married lover to audition.  A lot of hype and a lot of lies to cover the grittier truths and mechanics.  I find those things fascinating, too.  But they do subtract from the fantasy…

… the fantasy I think we like to play that it wasn’t really that bad.  That we aren’t obligated to make things right.  That it is okay to turn a blind eye and just enjoy the view in Technicolor.