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posted by martyb on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the [deleted] dept.

HBO Max Temporarily Removes ‘Gone With the Wind’ From Library

An HBO Max spokesperson says “Gone With the Wind” will eventually return to the platform with a discussion about its historical context and a denouncement of its racist depictions.

On Tuesday, HBO Max removed the 1939 film from its library in the wake of protests over the death of George Floyd.

[...] Upon its release, “Gone With the Wind” broke theater attendance records and was the highest-grossing film of all time to that point. It still holds the record when adjusted for inflation. However, despite being considered one of the greatest films of all time, some film commentators have since criticized its depiction of slavery and Black people.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by wisnoskij on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:44PM (1 child)

    by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:44PM (#1006500)

    The strange thing is that the films these guys go after are always the pro-black propaganda.

    The Sound of the South, GwtW are films specifically designed to ease racial tensions, and make people feel good about black people.

    Here is the opening criticism on wikipedia.

    [Gone with the Wind] perpetuated Civil War myths and black stereotypes.[102] David Reynolds wrote that "... the black slaves are mostly dutiful and content

    The same could be said about tSotS. These are stereotypes pushed on America with the explicit purpose of forcing white people to like, trust, and be willing to live beside black people. Who truly believes that we have moved past needing these positive black stereotypes to create a functioning society?

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @01:41AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @01:41AM (#1006712)

    These are stereotypes pushed on America with the explicit purpose of forcing white people to like, trust, and be willing to live beside black people. Who truly believes that we have moved past needing these positive black stereotypes to create a functioning society?

    I can't respond to the idea it was explicitly forced on us for a purpose. Honestly, this seems like an attempt by many sides to retcon history for their purposes. Your idea though it helped normalize black people, and make people willing to live besides black people, and whether we still need it is interesting.

    Last night I watched it again. I have everything Disney ever produced in their original formats. Got it off the dark web some years ago to preserve history for one, and to be able to show the young children today some truly wonderful cartoons from their Golden Age. For an awful lot of people, across multiple generations, Disney movies and cartoons were influential in general. Combined with Looney Tunes, other cartoon properties, and the 80's Saturday morning cartoons, generations of children were raised and influenced by the TV. Although, the 1st Disney generation had the distinction of seeing them on the big screen first. A ton of kids packed into theaters in the 30's, 40's and 50's seeing Disney cartoons, and the Song Of The South.

    I believe I was influenced positively by black portrayals on TV, and positive ones. Dr. Huxtable, Mr. T, Uhura, La Forge, all helped influence me along with Uncle Remus. As a child though, you didn't really care about the live action parts. Some of that was confusing, and I can see how it can be interpreted differently by people. For me, I saw friendship between the children, and the inequities aren't something that children readily understand. Uncle Remus in general was played by a wonderful actor. The warmth and empathy he had, and the way he looked after the kid was very nice to see on the screen. One could understand how children would see Uncle Remus quite favorably, and I can believe that such experiences did influence me to not see black men with fear. That's *before* we even get to the animated elements. Those scenes are by far some of my favorite. Briar Rabbit outwitting Briar Bear and Briar Fox is hilarious, and Uncle Remus delivers the whole thing with excellent storytelling, and Roger Rabbit-like integration with the animation. The Zipp-dee-doo-dah song is the just gasoline on the fire so to speak.

    As a child I did not see the negative elements, it didn't occur to me. Whether it subtly enforced racism in me I found doubtful, and those parts I believe were just over my head. In an innocent viewing of those parts of the movie (just Uncle Remus and the boy), it's actually quite wonderful. Thinking about it now, perhaps I tend to lend old black men the benefit of the doubt, that they're more Uncle Remus's than men to fear. Although, I really want to see people embodying their more positive potentials than negative ones.

    Do we still need them? Need what though? Only objection I can think of with Uncle Remus (isolated on his own) is that he is portrayed as poor, a slave without outright stating it, and a patois possibly negatively associated with ebonics. It was appropriate for the time period though, and as a child I even understood this was something that happened over a long time ago. It wasn't a negative because I just accepted him for who he was without judgement, and why not? Watch it again if you have a chance. Uncle Remus is just pretty awesome, but perhaps not appropriate for contemporary audiences. At least not without a parent explaining the context that this was a long time ago and that people got better.

    We don't really need anything. There doesn't need to be an education, or some sort of mental preparation. A YouTube video of smiling black people interacting postively with white people? :) We need to steadily advertise this in a new brand awareness campaign for black people stat.

    All we need to do is treat each normally. If all our sitcoms and creations show us treating each other equally from the start, it won't occur to us that we need to explicitly teach our children to not fear black people. Which the opposite would help too, and that's not pushing stuff designed to teach people to fear black people. So get rid of Tucker and Fox News :) So while Uncle Remus I'm sure did influence how I see older black men via a positive stereotype, it was also a lifetime living next to black people and finding the whole thing a big nothingburger that influenced me too. Talk about luck or something, but I've never had the feared stereotypical violent interaction with black men. The worst stereotype I've had is probably assuming more black people smoke weed than white people do and assuming some dude is holding just because.

    Which brings up diversity and that whole alt-right nutjobbery. That's hilarious to me, because in my average every day life I've been exposed to a very diverse group of people constantly. You know what is fucking strange man? Watching a TV show with all white people that isn't set in Norway, or back in Viking times. The world is diverse, and people are generally nice and kind to each other.

    Perhaps, just show the truth more.