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Gone With the Wind physical copies are now sold out everywhere... (Thanks to HBO Max) (1 Viewer)

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Will Krupp

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There is no mention of any black families, which dulls the meaning of "Sell her South" if they don't have families.

In school, we were taught that slaves had a much harder workload in states such as Louisiana, Alabama, or Mississippi (or were led to believe they did) and common wisdom held that life was far more brutal for them on plantations there. I'm going to "sell you South" was apparently a common threat.
 

Garysb

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In school, we were taught that slaves had a much harder workload in states such as Louisiana, Alabama, or Mississippi (or were led to believe they did) and common wisdom held that life was far more brutal for them on plantations there. I'm going to "sell you South" was apparently a common threat.
I found this on the internet after I saw your post.

What is meant by being sold "down river" or "sold south"?
U.S. History Manifest Destiny and Slavery The Slave Trade, The South, and Plantations
1 Answer

To be sold down the river is to be betrayed, Slave prices in the deep South of the United States escalated and many slaves were "sold down the river" by their masters.

Explanation:
Slave importation in the US ended in 1808 so new slaves had to come from the existing families of slaves already in America. Increasing cotton demand increased the cost of Labor (slaves).
The selling of slaves broke up families as different members were sold to different places. Many slaves went to the hard labor of growing Cotton.

Slaves would have been sold to cover a Master's debts or raising money or death of a Master. Slaves were capital assets not people.

Slaves would have perceived their sale at auction to a unknown Master as a betrayal and a threat their well being and family.

The "river" referred to often meant the Mississippi but it really meant the unknown. Rivers were major transportation routes in early America.

 
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Will Krupp

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To be sold down the river is to be betrayed, Slave prices in the deep South of the United States escalated and many slaves were "sold down the river" by their masters.

I don't presume to know the definitive answer, I just know what was told to us when we were in school.

I think there might be SOME conflation between the two terms and it's entirely possible that "sell you down the river" and "sell you south" have slightly different, though very closely related, connotations.

There are at least the following mentions on the internet that imply there is a school of thought supporting "sell you south" as Scarlett likely uses it.

You have to make a life changing decision. If you are caught your master will never trust you again and will make your life more difficult, or he can sell you south where people work their slaves until they are dead. On the other hand if you are successful you will be free. You make the decision to escape, freedom is worth the risk.

I had heard the grown folk whispering about how slaves were taken farther south, never to be heard from again...

my momma warned me, "Child, now that you at hiring age, you better do a good job or they'll sell you south." Being sold south struck fear in every slave's heart.

I'll sell you south was a very common threat because slaves knew the further south the worse it got

We were led to believe that "sell you South" was a threat designed to keep recalcitrant slaves in line with the idea (or myth) that they didn't realize how "good" they had it and that it could be exponentially worse. It was a psychological torment.
 
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MartinP.

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It only would have taken a scene or two to show the horrors of slavery. Doing so wouldn't have changed the overall focus of the movie that much. Let's be honest, the reason there wasn't such a scene was a pure economic one made by Selznick as he didn't want to offend the "Jim Crow" South. Thus, negatively affect the box office.

I'm still wanting to know "what kind of scene" that would've been. It wouldn't have been a scene that would've reflected badly on the main characters, except by inference. It's not shown, but hinted that the overseer, Jonas Wilkerson, was an evil person, white trash in other words, so maybe something with him, perhaps. In the second half of the film it's noted that there's trouble and abuse of white convicts that Frank Kennedy hires for his saw mill. Perhaps a scene of that abuse, too? (I believe he even mentions he'd rather hire free darkies.)

Maybe I'm naive enough to think that "the horrors of slavery" is simply a given, understood by audiences. I mean, it hastened a war that ravaged the south, literally and figuratively, produced the most casualties of any U.S. war, and was, in fact, understood by many of the founding fathers as something that should've been dealt with from the start. Benjamin Franklin said something like that if it wasn't dealt with now it would be a hundred years hence, but in order to get the south to adopt the idea of a new country, the United States, it was either let it alone then or no United States. And the country did pay the price nearly 100 years hence.

And let's just say that if by this time in our history, the horrors of slavery is not a given, then no amount of movie prefaces to GWTW or panel discussions, is going to help anyone for the simple reason that I don't think anyone watches GWTW for those reasons, they watch it for the main characters stories. Who knows how anyone would act in their own personal circumstances. Some French people that one probably wouldn't have thought would, collaborated with the Germans. Why? For food? Or to save their lives, who can judge? Some black people captured slaves that had escaped and returned them to their owners for some money, according to the film Harriet.

There's that Indian saying about not judging anyone unless you've walked a mile in their moccasins. Our current culture judges everything in the present and increasingly to everything in the past and are encouraged to and to do it immediately without thinking about it---note the like buttons or thumbs up or down on practically every website. Or comment sections where you're encouraged to argue with each other about almost everything. Or surveys that pop up to weigh in on something.

Someone recently asked me something about a hot topic and wanted to know my opinion. I said I didn't have one right now and they just could not understand that idea. "How can you not have an opinion?" I said I didn't have enough info to have one yet, didn't know that much about it and aren't inclined to do research on it at present, so I don't have one. I told him that not having an opinion on everything, nor is it necessary to have one, that some things you can just let be, observe, not attach judgment to, etc. -- it's very freeing. Heh!
-30-​
 

MatthewA

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Yet in the movie, all we see or hear of that is Dolly Merriweather referring to a ball where young women are "auctioned" off to their men to raise money for the Confederacy as "a slave auction," and her face pinches in disgust at it.
 

Dave Lawrence

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51Rm4%2BiowvL.jpg
 

Robert Crawford

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@Robert Crawford It’s nice to be laughed at for asking a sincere question...NOT.
@Johnny Angell I wasn't laughing at you, I was laughing at -30- because it appears to be an editing error which I'm guilty of many times during the course of a day here! Anyhow, I was going to post that, but got sidetracked by another forum issue that needed to be immediately addressed.:)
 

Mark Mayes

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Margaret Mitchell would have been vilified if she had written of the slave experience (as many would feel it beyond the true comprehension of a white woman) to any real degree and she is vilified because she did not.
She was pretty much following just one character and did it quite successfully. But that success now makes it an easy target. People are more comfortable to take aim at this older piece of work that perpetuates stereotypes like GWTW than, say, Tyler Perry. Although Spike Lee has not held back on him.

The direction of the film is subtle in some of its criticism-but it is in there, like that moment when Prissy hurls "F...ew" at Scarlett behind her back just before the wounded white soldiers thingy. It is clear her opinion of Scarlett is not so very complacent.
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Robert Crawford

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I wonder what the movie would be like if they did that in the way you intend?
I'm still wanting to know "what kind of scene" that would've been.
It doesn't take much creativity from a writer and/or filmmaker to display the horrors of slavery in an almost four hour movie. Doing so would not have adversely affected the basic theme of the movie. Anyhow, I'm done arguing about this movie as it's a reflection of a time and place in this country's history that isn't complimentary at all, whether it's the 1860's when this movie takes place or the filming of this fine movie during the "Jim Crow" era of 1939.
 

MartinP.

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MatthewA

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Would the Production Code have even allowed it? It's in no small part because of them that a lot of things are hinted at and not shown. But Scarlett's cruelty towards the house servants, so bad that even her father admonishes her for it, shows us plenty.
 

Douglas R

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In the U.K. the Sky Cinema subscription service has a description saying “This film has outdated attitudes, language and cultural depictions which may cause offence today”. The same description is given to FLASH GORDON (1980) which has got me puzzled!
 
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