HBO Pulls Classic “Gone With the Wind” Because Of ‘Racial Content’
Read Time:1 Minute, 43 Second
There’s a new footnote in the history of Gone With the Wind, and it’s not a happy one: The hugely popular film won eight Oscars, including best picture, in 1940. Eighty years later, it’s been yanked from HBO Max over its racial content—the Wall Street Journal flags its “portrayal of happy slaves” and “romanticism of slavery and that era of American history.” Seriously?
The move follows Oscar-winner John Ridley’s call to have that very action taken. In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, the winner of the best-adapted screenplay for 12 Years a Slave wrote Monday that:
“I know taking down a film—particularly a classic Hollywood film—seems like a big request. But it’s not nearly as big a demand as when your children ask whether they can join protests in the streets against racial intolerance, or when they come to you wanting to know what you did to make the world a better place.”
But he didn’t call for the film—which allegedly “perpetuate[s] some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color”—to be pulled for good. Rather, he suggested it could be reintroduced “after a respectful amount of time has passed” and in a thoughtful way. That’s the streaming service’s plan.
In a statement, it calls the four-hour film a “product of its time” and one that “depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.” It says the film will ultimately return…
“…with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions.”
The New York Times notes the film remains the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation.
While discussing censorship of what we can and can’t see the legendary police show COPS has also been removed from the entertainment lineup after almost 30 years, because it ‘glorifies’ police despite being a police reality show.
In case you missed it: Barack Obama’s Favorite Movies and TV Shows for 2019
Be sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
I hear now that Disney wants to close the ride where you ride a log down a water slide and there’s talk about getting rid of the “Dukes of Hazzard” because it’s too “southern”
Look, I agree with not having Army bases named after traitors, but Daisy Duke?
This feels so condescending – as though anybody needed to be told that it’s fiction and Slaves in the South weren’t willing participants even if a slave may have identified with the family who owned him or her. People are complicated. I just can’t wait for some executive or some committee at HBO to explain it all to me with my poorly functioning and inherently racist and gullible brain. You know how it is with those white people.
Hollywood’s mission to cram social commentary of the approved sort down our throats is bigger than this. I expect more of it. Say, does anyone think the Bible movies are historical?
Did they also pull “The Color Purple”?