It was re-released in 1942, 1947, 1954, 1967, 1971, 1974
*long inhale*
1989, 1998, and 2014.
This movie has been repackaged again and again for white audiences. White girls
with their "mammy" dolls have turned into white women with their Gone with the
Wind tote bags. Hey everyone welcome back to my channel and today's video is
the last video, for now, in my series about anti-Blackness in the United
States. The first video was a basic 101 conversation about the overt
and covert ways white supremacy operates in the United States, and the second
video was about anti-Blackness in the Asian-American community. So if you
haven't seen those, I highly suggest you check them out before watching this one.
So today we're gonna talk about Gone with the Wind and why it should be
archived away. So Part One: What is Gone with the Wind?
So for those of you who don't know, Gone with the Wind is a movie from 1939 that
I still think holds the record for highest grossing movie ever
when adjusted for inflation. It's based on a book of the same name by Margaret
Mitchell, which came out in 1936, and the book was so popular that the movie
adaptation only came out three years later. So the movie takes place before,
during, and after the Civil War, and it centers around the O'Hara family, who
live in the confederate south and want to fight, and do fight, against the
Yankees, or the north, in order to keep their slaves. And at the helm of the
family is of course, Scarlett O'Hara, one of Hollywood's most remembered
anti-heroes. She does anything and everything necessary in order to survive
after the South loses the war, and she in turn loses her wealth and status. The
film is three hours long and details decades of Scarlett's life, from when
she's a young woman looking to be wed, to after the war when she's a widow, and to
her eventual marriage with longtime sweetheart Rhett Butler, who in the end
leaves her due to her shrewdness, but not before raping her. And throughout all of
this, the "peculiar institution", of slavery hangs in the background like window
dressing. The Black actors in the film - Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Everett
Brown, and Oscar Polk play the roles of Scarlett's slaves, and of course they're
quite happy being enslaved. "Mammy", portrayed by Hattie McDaniel, is the
"Black best friend" character, who is loving and supportive to Scarlett, but we
never learned anything about her. Butterfly McQueen, who plays "Prissy", was
written to say this line:
"I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies."
When we all know Black women definitely knew about the
realities of childbirth, due to the sexual violence they faced, which by the
way was already well known as Black memoirs have existed since slavery, but
Hollywood didn't and still doesn't give a shit about that. Next there's "Pork",
portrayed by Oscar Polk, and he stays with Scarlett even after the war. And in
reality a lot of enslaved people did stay because they just didn't have much
or anything and they most certainly were not given reparations, but the movie
frames it as if he wants to stay there in order to help his former master out,
as if they're friends or equals or something. And lastly there's Everett
Brown who plays "Big Sam", who saves Scarlett from some Yankee bandits. This
scene always perplexed me because it is nice to see an old movie portray a Black
man as heroic, but he's only saving her because the movie portrays Scarlett as a
"good slave master", which she most certainly was not. Besides its portrayal
of enslaved people the movie goes out of its way to make the audience
sympathize with the confederacy's plight, which was to keep Black people
in bondage. Most people in the US, and of course outside of the US, don't really
realize how much the Civil War meant for the South, they really wanted to keep
people enslaved. Decades after the Civil War during the early 1900s statues of
slave owners were donated to institutions across the country by the
sons and daughters of the Confederacy. The US navy still flies the
Confederate flag. The Confederate flag is also sewn into a lot of southern state
flags and is a symbol of white supremacy and needs to be put away, much like this
movie. So Part Two: The Normalization of White Supremacist Propaganda, and you
might be wondering, "Wow that's pretty harsh. It's not like Birth of a Nation or
something." But here's the thing, it basically is, it's just a more
sanitized version and seen as "high art" or a "masterpiece". And in many ways Gone
with the Wind is a remarkable film. The filming techniques were really
innovative and new, and the performances are also very well done, but it's also a
movie that holds up white supremacy. And both can be true, but one of those
outweighs the other. Something being called "art" doesn't give it any intrinsic
value. The conversation around Gone with the Wind needs to change from, "Yes, it's
propaganda, but it's still worth keeping around because film techniques" to "It's art -
a form of human expression and that doesn't give it any inherent value,
especially if it falsifies history and holds up dangerous ideologies." So let's
get into the nitty-gritty of how Gone with the Wind upholds white supremacy.
Firstly, it teaches us that slave owners were good and that enslaved people
actually like to being enslaved. It desensitizes us to the horror that was
slavery, and essentially Black genocide. And because it desensitizes us, when we
learn about the real horrors of slavery, a lot of people refuse to believe that
it was "that bad". The movie is also a huge middle finger to the actual descendants
of enslaved people, which Hattie McDaniel was. They most certainly did not and do
not want the suffering of their ancestors to be portrayed as them having
a "good time" in order to make white people feel better about themselves.
Secondly, like I mentioned before, the movie romanticizes the Confederate south
and the Confederacy in general. Scarlett's main love interest, Ashley, is
a Confederate soldier. Thirdly, and most notable, is that Gone with the Wind has
never really gone away. It was re-released in 1942, 1947, 1954, 1967, 1971,
1974, 1989, 1998, and 2014. This movie has been repackaged again and again for
white audiences. White girls with their "mammy" dolls have turned into white women
with their Gone with the Wind tote bags. White women show this falsification of
history to their children at very young age. I remember being in
elementary school and watching Gone with the Wind with my family. I grew up with a
very intense Gone with the Wind fan. I saw the merchandise, the tote bags, the
dolls, the calendars, and grappling with the fact that this movie needs to be put
to rest goes against a lot of what I was taught, and what a lot of other people
were taught. We were taught that this film is a "cinematic masterpiece" and
teaches us about history, when in reality the film doesn't teach anything
except how our the racist the film industry was. You just can't keep toting
around a movie about the Confederacy and enslaved people that are happy to be
there in 20 fucking 20. So part three: What happened to Hattie McDaniel? A lot
of white people feel absolved of any guilt they feel watching a movie about
"happy slaves" because the Academy gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar for her
performance. That's why I think it's imperative to talk about the Black
actors of Gone with the Wind, and note how their careers - unsurprisingly - did not
take off after it. Hattie McDaniel actually had a very sad life after Gone
with the Wind. She continued to be typecast in "mammy" roles and she was
criticized by some members of the NAACP for continuing to play
those roles, when that was literally all she was given. She later died an early
death at age 59 due to health complications, and her estate, which was
only worth around $10,000, was taken away by the IRS. Her Oscar is also missing.
Hollywood was not kind to her and does not deserve a pat on the back
considering all they did to hurt her. Next there's Butterfly McQueen who
actually took a break from acting in the 60s due to the fact that the only roles
that were available to her were that of maids. After leaving acting she went to
the City College of New York and graduated in political science at age 64.
She later returned to acting in the 70s and starred in the original production
of The Wiz in Baltimore. Oscar Polk was a Broadway man, and was actually in a few
films after Gone with the Wind, but unfortunately he was struck by a cab in
New York and died at the age of 49. Lastly, there's Everett Brown, who also died
at a very young age at age 51. And he actually has
a very extensive filmography, but most of the roles he portrayed went uncredited.
So Gone with the Wind not only hurt Black people, but also these individuals
careers. No one gave a shit about them. They just gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar and
was like, "Equal rights, I guess?" So the conclusion. There are still plenty of
physical and digital copies of this movie for you to watch it whenever you
want in the comfort of your own home. It's not like the white supremacist police
is going to break into your house and steal your Gone with the Wind VHS. It
being vaulted means that it will no longer be released on the big screen, on
streaming services, or on cable. It means that it will no longer be shown as part
of the school curriculum in classrooms across the United States. It's memory
will fade and it will be remembered for what it was - extremely hurtful white
supremacist propaganda. We don't need another Scarlett O'Hara anniversary
Barbie doll. We don't need the tote bags. And we most certainly don't need "mammy"
dolls and "sexy" Rhett Butler calendar art. What we really need to do is sit down
and see slavery and the Confederacy for what they were - evil. And the way we
do that is by laying the most lauded film in Hollywood history to rest. So
that's the end of the video. Thank you so much to everyone who comes here every
week to support my content. I hope you enjoyed, as well as learn something new
in this miniseries about anti-Blackness in the United States, and I'll definitely
be making more videos about this topic as the fight for Black lives is far from
over. If you like this video please like and subscribe and ring the bell
and comment down below what you think about Gone with the Wind, and if you're
new here I post every Friday. Next week I will post my review of Frozen 2, so if
you want to see that, please subscribe and ring the bell.
Thanks again for watching I'll see you next week, bye :)