December 15 marks the 70th anniversary of the premiere of Gone With the Wind, one of the highest grossing films of all time and a classic movie that repeatedly finds itself on lists of top-ten films ever released. Although a story of love and intense relationships, it is also a story of history, the coming of the Civil War in 1861 and the ultimate defeat and destruction of the “Old South.” From the first minutes of the film, the viewer is presented with the historical plot synopsis: an idyllic “civilization” that had been destroyed.
The Confederate South as Victim
David O Selznick’s epic casts the South in a sympathetic light. Viewers are taught that Northern “aggression” started the war and that the underdog South was merely fighting to preserve a “land of cavaliers and cotton fields.” It was, according to the movie, a land of “Knights and their ladies” where everyone lived in lavish plantations like Tara and Twelve Oaks. The hapless slaves were paternalistically cared for by wise and devoted masters.
Slaves and Slave Masters
The slaves of Tara – at least those recurring in Gone With the Wind like Mammy and Prissy are loyal to the end, even after federal emancipation grants them freedom. The film’s impression of black freedom is both dismal and follows the stereotypes of earlier films like Birth of a Nation. Writing in Film Magazine, Lincoln Kirstein stated that, “Gone With the Wind deserves our attention because it is an over inflated example of the usual false movie approach to history.”
Viewers of the movie are presented with two examples of Southern slave holders. Gerald O’Hara presides over the spacious and peaceful Tara, portrayed in the opening scenes as an Utopian estate. In one scene, he advises Scarlett to “be gentle with the darkies…” Ashley Wilkes is a sophisticated, educated man of principle, high-minded and moral.
Bruce Chadwick, a Rutgers University film and history lecturer, writes that Gone With the Wind portrays all white Southern men as “well-educated romantic cavaliers.” Most of the soldiers that made up the Confederate armies were literate and educated, but hardly cavaliers in the Margaret Mitchell sense, rather yeomen farmers that might have owned one or two slaves.
Lary May, a professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, characterizes Gone With the Wind as one of many examples of movies that “continued to perpetuate demeaning images” of blacks. The Prissy character is perhaps the best example. Gone With the Wind ignores the true plight of Southern slaves, well documented even in 1939. Rather, its creators chose to follow the flawed characterizations offered by author Margaret Mitchell in her book inspiring the film.
Incorrect Impressions Form Lost Lasting Biases
Gone With the Wind was re-released numerous times, well into the 1960s. As the 70th anniversary draws near, it is not inconceivable that a theater re-release may draw full houses to what has often been called the greatest film ever made. No disclaimers can erase lasting impressions left by the movie. When Woodrow Wilson watched a private White House viewing of Birth of a Nation, Wilson, a Southerner, commented that that was really how it was during Reconstruction.
Some Hollywood movies loosely based on history are easy to expose. Nobody believes that the Dirty Dozen really existed. Only those without some knowledge of the plot to kill Hitler can see Claus von Stauffenberg portrayed by Tom Cruise. Gone With the Wind, however, is an epic that builds itself as history. This is the danger that must ultimately be corrected in history classrooms.
Sources:
- Bruce Chadwick, The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 2001)
- Betsa Marsh, “In Search of Rhett and Scarlett,” Saturday Evening Post, September/October 2009
- Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000)
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