Gone With The Wind Was Robbed- Page 2
Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
#25Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/5/14 at 11:15pmIt's not like Gone with the Wind is alone in retrospective criticisms in its portrayal of that era. Read James Baldwin on Uncle Tom's Cabin called 'Everybody's Protest Novel'. It's just as much a book to be completely picked apart, even by somebody who had sympathies to what Harriet Beecher Stowe was aiming for in a book that definitely had impact but was from a very removed perspective.
#26Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 2:01amTrue but Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the hundreds of theatre adaptations are largely forgotten now in a way that GWTW (probably due mainly to the film) isn't. I mean how may people are confused by Company's "Eliza on the ice" lyrics--I knew what it was referencing due to King and I.
#27Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 7:12am
I think it's strange (sometime sad, sometimes fascinating) to watch social and cultural changes effect material like GWTW and make it either passé or alter it into something else entirely. I have mixed feelings, because from a nostalgia perspective I remember how much of an impact GWTW made on our society. I don't think anybody took it as history lesson, they viewed it as a sweeping romance of the Old South. But it was far easier for them to dismiss or ignore the idealized world of Scarlett at the beginning of the story. This was a tale of unrequited love on a massive scale. And people embraced it (mostly white people).
But as the years went on, it became harder to ignore the historical setting and its misstep and disservice. Scarlett's love story and tale of survival became secondary to the illusion depicted of the South.
I also remember, growing up, that almost none of my African American friends had seen the film. This was supposedly a time when "everybody" had seen and loved the movie. It turns out, they more likely were referring to "every white body." My black friends weren't angry about it. They didn't trash it or hate it.
It just didn't interest them. There wasn't enough "good" in it for them to bother (I'm speaking primarily of Hattie's performance).
Over the years, this disinterest has spread. It's not that people hate the movie or even are angry about it. They just view it as an irrelevant fairy tale, probably because they see that it wasn't meant to hurt or challenge anybody's opinion of Slavery or the South. It just misrepresented it.
So over time, this movie (which is still a part of pop culture, even though it has diminished in my own lifetime) has lost much of its impact and relevance. Today, I know many white people who haven't seen it and have no interest in it. I imagine that will only increase in time.
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
#28Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 5:48pmI don't think anyone cares about GWTW anymore, except for film buffs. But the Average Joe doesn't care or even know about it. It seems the only time GWTW is brought up is when a new movie unseats the current highest-grossing film. GWTW is usually referenced as "the all-time moneymaker when adjusted for inflation."
Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra
Salve, Salve Regina
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
O clemens O pia
#29Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 5:54pm
It still gets above average audiences, so I've been told, when AMC and other movie channels or PBS show it. But that does probably appeal more to a specialized audience. How many people watched the apparently awful miniseries sequel? That might say something about interest (though I guess it was 20 years or more ago.)
Time (people?) magazine I believe put out a gorgeous special deluxe magazing for the anniversary I picked up in a grocery store the other day...
#30Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 5:58pm
I think there are plenty of average people who are not cinephiles or what have you who like Gone With the Wind. The TBS/Superstation used to play it constantly but admittedly that has passed when there are so many fractured stations and ways to watch film with 'classic' films only being shown on TCM.
I think even in the case with GWTW, its historical context may override the film quality itself. It had a crazy production history and was largely coming from the image of producer David O. Selznick in a studio-system Hollywood. Even if Victor Fleming directed two of the most popular films that year, people remember more of what Ford, Capra, and Lubitsch directed that year. They're auteurs, Fleming is not and those films were where the studio and producer were stars. I think now we turn more to concentrating on great director works or works that denote this was in the hands of great director, in which case examining something that was always really popular and accessible at the time as Gone With the Wind, takes a back seat
Updated On: 3/6/14 at 05:58 PM
#31Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 6:35pm
I'm sure it's as recognizable as the Confederate flag in certain southern states. Don't forget the great pop culture divide going on in this country now. It would probably be their official state movie if there was such a thing.
And don't forget those commemorative plates that pop up on TV late at night. And doll collectors. And gold coins.
I'm not exactly joking.
It's not the movie it once was as far as worldwide recognition, but it's in no way obscure ... yet.
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
Gothampc
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#32Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 7:05pmI still think one of GWTW's draws is that Vivien Leigh was one of the most beautiful actresses in Technicolor. To see her on the screen is to see classic beauty which we don't see anymore. And people watch because Scarlett was a spunky woman and a character the audience wants to root for. The "God as my witness" scene has entered into iconic status and audiences enjoy revisiting it.
#33Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 9:16pmRight Strummer, which is why it seemed so short sighted for Selznik to hire Rebecca for one of his other "Faithfu literary spectacles." (I love Rebecca, but...)
#34Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 10:05pm
Also Clark Gable as Rhett Butler is an icon, appearing on everything from coffee mugs to T-shirts. That doesn't mean people have seen the movie, though. It still serves to keep the film in the public conscience.
Most people in the world can identify Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin and James Dean just by their images on endless shelves of merchandise. But if you ask them if they've ever seen one of their movies, and you'll get a different answer entirely. They've gone from "movie star" to "icon."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
Gothampc
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#35Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/6/14 at 10:18pmI think the character of Scarlett O'Hara is an interesting one. She's not a likeable person but you can't help feeling sorry for her. I can still hear Paulette Goddard gnashing her teeth for losing that role to the Brit.
Phyllis Rogers Stone
Broadway Legend Joined: 9/16/07
Gothampc
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/20/03
#37Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/7/14 at 4:11pm
"People feel sorry for Scarlett?"
Yes they do. Consider her circumstances:
All she wants is a tumble in the sheets with the only man who is too upright to do it with her
The Yankees come in and burn her house down and all she has left to eat is rutabagas
Look at the company that she keeps: holier than thou Melanie, crazy Aunt Pitty Pat, and that shrew India Wilkes
She can't ditch her governness for five minutes and the governness is always trying to shove food down her throat and making snarky comments about how she should behave
She'd like to have a girls night out with Belle Watling, but society wouldn't hear of two unaccompanied wimmin visiting a few discos
Her family's from Ireland ferchrissakes. She can't go back there, some IRA hooligan might blow her hoopskirt to smithereens
#38Gone With The Wind Was Robbed
Posted: 3/7/14 at 6:09pm
FWIW, Scarlett was a controversial character in the Deep South, even when I was a kid. I had friends whose parents banned the book from the house because the central character was so "trashy". (This wasn't my view or that of my friends; it was more a Greatest Generation sort of thing.)
But, goth, I don't think we pity Scarlett so much as we admire her tenacity. She is trying to survive in the toughest, possible times and there's something admirable in that. It also doesn't hurt that she pays for her mistakes (usually with public humiliation), and learns and rises above them as well.
She's also a doting mother and honors Ashley's request that she look after her rival, Melanie. So she isn't all bad, even seen in the worst light.
Videos