Should we ban GONE WITH THE WIND? (1 Viewer)

That seems to be the position New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick is taking in this opinion piece in today's Post, where he calls for "retiring this relic":


http://nypost.com/2015/06/24/gone-with-the-wind-should-go-the-way-of-the-confederate-flag/


I doubt that most of us on this board feel the same way. I find it alarming that a critic of Lumenick's stature would be taking such a position. Critics are supposed to defend the hard-to-defend. They're supposed to take difficult positions, not easy ones. Here, he seems to be joining the Ban-the-Confederate flag bandwagon, which so many politicians are leaping on because it's such an easy position to take nowadays. They get to prove their "social justice" or "anti-racist" bonafides without alienating too many blocs of voters. Critics are supposed to be different.


What's next? Ban all movies where the hero smokes? Ban all movies where they eat fatty foods? Ban all movies where any ethnic character speaks in dialect? Ban all World War II movies that portray Japanese and Germans as hated enemies and use such terms as "Japs" and "krauts"? Where does it end? When we've banned all "offensive" history we may not have any left. We become a nation of historical amnesiacs.

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

No. Period. Once something like this starts, it never ends. We'll be back to ignorant McCarthyism. Like Birth of a Nation, Gone with the Wind remains a valuable contribution to cinema history, whether we like it or not.

We're seeing mass hysteria in action. I remember when I was young, and we studied the Salem Witch Trials. The over-all explanation of the trials was that it was mass hysteria. I didn't understand it then. I do now.

Just read it. Same old arguments. You're swimming in dangerous waters when you propose stuff like this! There are many things in older works that are now considered offensive, but to ban those older works would be a terrible mistake! Take them for the artifacts they are and try and learn from them while still appreciating the artistry that went into them.

Broadly speaking (rather than specifically talking about GWTW), you shouldn't ban anything but at the same time, people should be embarrassed or ashamed to support certain things.

Sigh... give it a few weeks, and the outrage will move on to something else.

The entire "banning" of the Confederate flag is a complete waste of time. It makes people feel like they're "taking action" but it accomplishes nothing. Dylann Roof would've been racist and killed people with or without his love of the Confederate flag.


Yeah, let's ban the flag and "Gone with the Wind" - that'll stop racism and murders! And let's ban Batman since James Holmes dressed like the Joker!


I have zero love for the Confederate flag - I've long believed it was a racist symbol. But banning it doesn't change anything other than to allow some people to pat themselves on the back...

Lumenick writes "But what does it say about us as a nation if we continue to embrace a movie that, in the final analysis, stands for many of the same things as the Confederate flag that flutters so dramatically over the dead and wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train station just before the “GWTW’’ intermission?


His whole argument is nonsense. GWTW doesn't embrace slavery any more than DOCTOR ZHIVAGO embraces Czarist Russia. Neither the book nor the film condemns nor condones what the Confederate cause stood for. That's the equivalent of Hitchcock's MacGuffin. Margaret Mitchell's theme is about personal survival amidst cultural upheaval. Who survives and at what personal cost when society goes through a great change? The specifics of that change are beside the point.


Nobody behind the film or the book is endorsing antebellum attitudes. They are merely depicting them as having existed in order to tell a compelling story about their collapse.


The worst accusation you can throw at GWTW is that its racial attitudes reflect those of the 1930s. But one could also argue that the strides African Americans made in moving past the Stepin Fetchit era of the 20s and 30s began with the independently-minded characters created by Hattie McDaniel here and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson on radio.


Look at Hollywood films before GWTW and after. Before, you had the likes of "Stand Up and Cheer." Two years later, you had "In This Our Life" where Bette Davis is demonized for trying to frame an innocent black youth (Hattie's son in the film). Banning GWTW would be banning the link between the two eras and the dawning of black civil rights in film.

Colin Jacobson said:

The entire "banning" of the Confederate flag is a complete waste of time. It makes people feel like they're "taking action" but it accomplishes nothing. Dylann Roof would've been racist and killed people with or without his love of the Confederate flag.


Yeah, let's ban the flag and "Gone with the Wind" - that'll stop racism and murders! And let's ban Batman since James Holmes dressed like the Joker!


I have zero love for the Confederate flag - I've long believed it was a racist symbol. But banning it doesn't change anything other than to allow some people to pat themselves on the back...

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You win the prize for best post on the internet. Getting rid of the Confederate flag is easy and utterly unimportant when compared to trying to solve the much more serious and difficult issues behind racism and mass murder.

Vic Pardo said:

That seems to be the position New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick is taking in this opinion piece in today's Post, where he calls for "retiring this relic":


http://nypost.com/2015/06/24/gone-with-the-wind-should-go-the-way-of-the-confederate-flag/


I doubt that most of us on this board feel the same way. I find it alarming that a critic of Lumenick's stature would be taking such a position. Critics are supposed to defend the hard-to-defend. They're supposed to take difficult positions, not easy ones. Here, he seems to be joining the Ban-the-Confederate flag bandwagon, which so many politicians are leaping on because it's such an easy position to take nowadays. They get to prove their "social justice" or "anti-racist" bonafides without alienating too many blocs of voters. Critics are supposed to be different.


What's next? Ban all movies where the hero smokes? Ban all movies where they eat fatty foods? Ban all movies where any ethnic character speaks in dialect? Ban all World War II movies that portray Japanese and Germans as hated enemies and use such terms as "Japs" and "krauts"? Where does it end? When we've banned all "offensive" history we may not have any left. We become a nation of historical amnesiacs.

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I actually think that by questioning if GWTW should be banned-and this piece as I read it seems more like Lumenick is merely bringing up the question rather than stating that it should be, attention-grabbing/clickbait headline aside (which may or may not be his creation, BTW)- that he is taking the difficult position, and one that is more challenging (to my mind) than whether or not South Carolina's capitol building should raise the Confederate flag (and consider the disagreement that clearly exists on that.)

In that way, we'd live in a crazy world where Triumph of the Will is allowed yet Gone with the Wind and Dukes of Hazard are banned for being evil and subversive.


Also I agree that Lou is likely just posing the question. I seriously doubt he actually believes it should be done and is stating an extreme example.

TravisR said:

You win the prize for best post on the internet. Getting rid of the Confederate flag is easy and utterly unimportant when compared to trying to solve the much more serious and difficult issues behind racism and mass murder.

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Yup, a purely political move to pretend they are actually making a difference. It's mostly been just a harmless "Southern pride" quirk and "banning it" will do little more than alienate Southerners. Supremacists tend to stick with Nazi imagery or other supremacist banners anyway.


But going after a flag is easier than actually doing the harder job or rooting out the cause of racism and white supremacy or mass murders. That might actually require work instead of a simple stroke of the pen.

Patrick Sun said:

Sigh... give it a few weeks, and the outrage will move on to something else.

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Please, God, let this be so.

A few weeks is a few weeks too long.

Vic Pardo said:

That seems to be the position New York Post film critic Lou Lumenick is taking in this opinion piece in today's Post, where he calls for "retiring this relic":


http://nypost.com/2015/06/24/gone-with-the-wind-should-go-the-way-of-the-confederate-flag/


I doubt that most of us on this board feel the same way. I find it alarming that a critic of Lumenick's stature would be taking such a position. Critics are supposed to defend the hard-to-defend. They're supposed to take difficult positions, not easy ones. Here, he seems to be joining the Ban-the-Confederate flag bandwagon, which so many politicians are leaping on because it's such an easy position to take nowadays. They get to prove their "social justice" or "anti-racist" bonafides without alienating too many blocs of voters. Critics are supposed to be different.


What's next? Ban all movies where the hero smokes? Ban all movies where they eat fatty foods? Ban all movies where any ethnic character speaks in dialect? Ban all World War II movies that portray Japanese and Germans as hated enemies and use such terms as "Japs" and "krauts"? Where does it end? When we've banned all "offensive" history we may not have any left. We become a nation of historical amnesiacs.

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And don't forget the westerns....they will have to be banned for their negative images of native americans...

TravisR said:

You win the prize for best post on the internet. Getting rid of the Confederate flag is easy and utterly unimportant when compared to trying to solve the much more serious and difficult issues behind racism and mass murder.

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But...by no means ban anything -- or structure the usage of anything -- regarding the real "weapon" that killed those people -- the GUN that Roof's father gave him (to which he was legally unentitled).


The Confederate Battle Flag did not kill those 9 people. A young man steeped in a culture of hatred killed those people. With a gun.


Removing the flag is way overdue, but its absence would NOT have seen a different outcome, I fear. Hatred is ingrained in many people in the south...hatred of anything different from themselves, hatred of anyting from outside of the south.

Disney tried that tactic with another movie Hattie McDaniel* was in. It didn't seem to work then, nor did any of their other acts of selective censorship. To say that it wouldn't work here is an understatement. And you cannot equivocate a movie where a plantation owner's family loses everything in the war while her daughter, who opposed the war in the first place, becomes even richer without slavery after he dies to putting a battle flag from the losing side of the same war on a public building. The whole point of calling the book and the movie Gone with the Wind is that the slave-based economy was just that. It's never coming back, and as time marching on, it will march over anyone who even tries.


But unlike The Dukes of Hazzard, I haven't seen the Confederate flag on any of the merchandise related to it. And in that famous scene with the dead soldiers, the flag that waves over their head is tattered and torn.


Don't forget, though, that Scarlett O'Hara stood up to a lot of the stifling social conventions of the era: dancing while in mourning, riding a carriage without a driver, doing the same thing to an attempted rapist Susan Sarandon did in Thelma and Louise; things women were not "supposed" to do.

And look at the demographics of this poll about the film.

*Whose Oscar remains missing to this day.

Lumenick "seems to me" to be suggesting the film be banned.



To answer one of his sillier questions: What does it say about us as a country that we embrace a film that has, at its intermission, the confederate flag fluttering over the Atlanta train station? Well, for one thing, and for most people, it shows a culture that is being handed its butt on a plate. That scene at the Atlanta train station shows a flag in tatters flying over an incredible shot of men wounded and dying, lying on the ground between the train tracks. It shows us what was the death knell of the confederacy. To this film critic, I ask what SHOULD it have shown us?

No, the film should not be banned. It's a ridiculous idea and he should frankly know better than that!


But the casual flippancy I've read regarding the current furor over the confederate battle flag is disheartening. The issue is state governments embracing/flying the flag on state grounds. The flag is an unadulterated symbol of hate in this day and age (if you read up on the flag's rise to prominence among certain circles, you'd see just how problematic it is for any government to fly that flag on state grounds.) The rest of the places banning or removing the flag are business, doing so for corporate interest. And that's the free market at work.


I abhor that flag and all it stands for. It's high time it gets removed from government property. But the flag isn't being banned. Anyone can stick it on the bumper of their car or fly it in their yards if they so choose.


And removing the flag won't change the issues with racists and racism - but it's a very tiny step in the right direction. Now, let me stop there before the moderators tell me off!!

Virgoan said:

Removing the flag is way overdue, but its absence would NOT have seen a different outcome, I fear. Hatred is ingrained in many people in the south...hatred of anything different from themselves, hatred of anyting from outside of the south.

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The guy who killed the innocent people in SC was a nutjob. Being from the south had nothing to do with the fact that he was a nutjob. The guy who killed all those people in Norway was a nutjob and he wasn't even from the south (though he may have been from south Norway; I'm not sure). Hatred may be ingrained in many people in the south. It's also ingrained in many people from the north. Nutjobs can come from anywhere. I believe Charles Manson currently resides in your state. Didn't he plan to incite some kind of race war?


I think some of you are making way too much out of the flag business. I agree that it should not fly above state houses. Most of the state houses that fly them started doing so as a thumb in the eye to those who favored desegregation in the early 60's. But as a historic relic from the Civil War, it is fairly harmless. A good example is the Dukes of Hazard car - the ...dare I say it..."The General Lee", with its Confederate Battle flag painted on its roof. I realize that the show and Dukes are fictional. But there are people from the south who simply see the flag as nothing more than a symbol of being from the south. I think most people who wear it on a jacket or have it on their car are like the Dukes - simply "good ole boys, never meaning no harm". Sure some may be racists, like the little nutjob who killed those people. I think it is a stretch to believe that all are racists, or that they even equate the flag with racism. Many people feel pride for their state's favorite son, who in many cases was a Civil War general. People take pride in all kinds of things that aren't important to me, such as the school they attended, the state they are from, who they voted for, their favorite sports team, whatever.