Gone With The Wind Reflection

Gone With The Wind Reflection

Note: This is a reflection on the first half of Gone With The Wind, as we didn't watch the second half.

Gone With The Wind is a movie that hasn't been treated well by time. In recent times, the 1939 film has been called to be removed from streaming services due to its depiction of certain topics. For one, the movie underplays the issue of slavery. It depicts slaves as more of house maids than anything. Mammy, for instance, is depicted more as a servant and mentor to Scarlett than a slave. Prissy is depicted as a crybaby who doesn't do what she's supposed to and goes relatively unpunished. There's nothing inherently wrong with these depictions, because in truth it is how some slaves were treated at the time. The problem with these depictions is this is how slavery as a whole is depicted in the move. It conveniently glosses over the whipping, long hot days of hard labor, unsanitary and overcrowded living spaces, etc. 

The film also romanticizes the confederacy. The most obvious way it does this, as mentioned previously, is by downplaying slavery, the entire reason the civil war was fought. But even looking past that, it neglects to mention that slavery is the reason this war is being fought at all, which reinforces the harmful idea that it was not being fought for that reason. Confederates are depicted in a completely sympathetic light while northerners are just the enemy. We rarely see them, only what they left in their wake, being burned villages and wounded/killed soldiers. 

I do like how this movie gives us a glimpse into the southern perspective of the war, and It's good to have that, but I wish the movie actually acknowledged what was really going on. It's historically accurate to depict the confederacy as an area that believed it was fighting for a good cause, how the characters think about the war is accurate. This does not mean the movie has to treat the war this way however, I believe the movie could've had much more impactful messages if it showed the true sinister nature behind the war, and how the characters were ignorant to it. If someone who wasn't knowledgeable in U.S. history were to watch this movie, they could easily see the south as the good guys and the north as the bad guys. That's where this movie faulters in its historical accuracy.

To be completely honest, I did not enjoy this movie that much. What I mentioned previously is an echo of my overall feelings for this movie: it's outdated. I can look at a work of art from its time, but even in 1939 it was widely accepted that the confederacy was not good. Even ignoring all of that, just looking at it as a movie and nothing else, I'm still not a huge fan. I'll admit this isn't the movies fault, but a lot of the plot points felt cliche to me. I'm sure at the time these were pretty revolutionary ideas but nowadays, I've seen this type of story again and again. I also found a lot of the characters to be kind of unlikeable. I am glad I watched this movie, and I do appreciate it from a historical perspective, especially looking at the civil war from a different perspective, but truthfully I just couldn't connect with it that much.

Sources:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gone-with-the-Wind-film-by-Fleming

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-gone-wind-took-nation-storm-feeding-its-southern-sensibilities-180953617/

https://time.com/5852362/gone-with-the-wind-film-history/

https://movieweb.com/why-gone-with-the-wind-still-important/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/movies/gone-with-the-wind-controversy.html?smid=url-share

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