You’ve probably heard of HBO’s pulling of ‘Gone With The Wind’ lately. It’s been everywhere and has people in an uproar. The classic film takes place during the civil war and focuses on the life of a spoiled southern girl, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh). According to its description on IMDB, “A manipulative woman and a roguish man conduct a turbulent romance during the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods.”
HBO seems to be focusing on the very few cries of the loudest group of people. All you have to do is Google ‘Gone With The Wind’ to see that it’s jumped to the top of Amazon’s best-seller charts. So what exactly are they adhering to? According to sources like The New York Times, Entertainment Tonight, and NPR, they pulled it down for ‘racist depictions’ and ‘racial prejudices’. I’d hate for anyone to see a film like ‘Schindler’s List’ or Disney’s ‘Remember the Titans’. Do they not deal with subjects like racial prejudices and racist depictions?
Above: Hattie McDaniel who portrayed Mammy in ‘Gone With The Wind’
HBO Misses The Mark With ‘Gone With The Wind’ – How Hattie McDaniel Changed Film
Perhaps the biggest thing that sticks out, and what people and HBO seem to be missing is all the good that the film did for African-Americans when it was released. Like Hattie McDaniel not only being nominated for an Oscar but winning that Oscar for Best Supporting Actress!
Hattie McDaniel became the FIRST African-American to be nominated for, and win, an Academy Award. It doesn’t stop there, though. Not only did ‘Gone With The Wind’ give us our first African-American Oscar winner, when it came time to the actual awards show, McDaniel wasn’t allowed into the hotel with her costars at first. In fact, she was taken to a small table in the back where she was to watch the show.
This didn’t happen, however. The producer of the film, David O. Selznick, got the hotel to let her in so she could attend. After receiving the award, McDaniel received hate from other African-Americans, who accused her of being an ‘Uncle Tom’. In a famous response, she said she would, “rather make seven hundred dollars a week playing a maid than seven dollars being one”. This was said to Walter Francis White, leader of the NAACP, and he was the one who accused her of being an ‘Uncle Tom’.
If we’re going to begin taking films down for their depictions of racists, or things that may be hard to watch or understand now, there is a laundry list of films that will have to be on that list. HBO has put the film back up in their library, now with a special note explaining that it was created at a different time. However, I think what we see on-screen is far less important than what went on behind the scenes. Discrediting this film could discredit the things the film accomplished, which at the time and looking back now were monumental.
Not everything is one dimensional, and you can’t just look a film that has horrific depictures of history and claim it’s bad. You must look at the story, how they show our history, even if it’s hard to watch and see what was created from it. Without ‘Gone With The Wind’, who knows how long it would have taken for an African-American Oscar winner, or to be allowed into a whites-only hotel. Hattie McDaniel lives on as an icon and will forever be known for her Oscar win. What do you think? Do you think HBO did the correct thing? Let us know in the comments below.
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