Gone With the Wind -- Potentially Toxic "Grace And Gallantry"

I understand the significance of D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, and I still believe the David O. Selznick's adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind is one of the greatest films of all time. However, the works' portrayal of slavery – a glorification of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy myth – is indicative of gross historical negativism that not only distorts reality but also feeds racism and division.

Millions get their most powerful impressions of the Civil War from fictional films like Gone With the Wind. The popularity was immediate and continues to this day. Fifty years after the appearance of Mitchell's novel, the book had sold 28 million copies and trailed only the Bible on bestseller lists. Selznick's three hour and forty-five minute Technicolor epic dwarfed the book’s profits and won ten Oscars including the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of 1940.

Historical Note:

Mitchell modeled Tara on local plantations in the area of the country where she lived pre-Civil War, particularly the Clayton County plantation (Georgia) on which her maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens (1844–1934), the daughter of Irish immigrant Philip Fitzgerald and his American wife Eleanor Avaline "Ellen" McGhan, was born and raised.

At the very start of the film, we are informed that it is a tribute to the “grace and gallantry” of a vanished civilization in “the age of chivalry.” These impressions are presented as bland, unquestioned assumptions.

The flowery and poetic opening credit prologue begins …

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South ... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow … Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave … Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind …”

By the way, those words were not in the book. It appears Selznick and the screenwriters did the novel a great disservice in this account. Hollywood altered meanings and bended history. To them, the South was a “land of grace and plenty” (quotations are literal).

Selznic knew that he could “go too far” in his faithfulness to Mitchell's text. "I, for one, have no desire to produce any anti-Negro film," he wrote in an exhaustive, exhausting memorandum to the screenwriter.

(Leonard J. Leff. “‘Gone With the Wind’ and Hollywood's Racial Politics.” The Atlantic. December 1999.)

In its presentation of the times, the film portrays the Civil War as less a sermon on divine retribution, and much more a nostalgic vision of the old Southern way of life – an alternate world portraying benevolent white slaveholders, their complacent, jolly slaves, and the noble Cause of the confederacy they tirelessly fought for.

Consider that when the film was made, segregation was still the law in the South and the reality in the North. And, consider that the Ku Klux Klan was written out of one scene for fear of giving offense to elected officials who belonged to it.

(Roger Ebert. “Gone With the Wind.” https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-gone-with-the-wind-1939. June 21, 1998.)

Stereotyping and dangerous fictional representation? The film Gone with the Wind portrays the slaves as people with no drive or desires of their own who don’t mind being enslaved. In reality, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Although the major plantation owners in the book all own slaves, the issue of slavery is hardly even addressed.

The historical statements and implications of the picture are false from the beginning to the end. A few thousand slaveholders in the South exploited millions of slaves, while a few thousand others bred slaves for the slave market as today people breed horses and dogs.

If house servants were often treated kindly, the majority, the Negroes in the field, were worked to death and terrorized in order to be kept in submission.

And, by the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 Black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy … and nearly 40,000 Black service members had died.

Even in the making of this picture, the natural resentment of the Blacks showed itself. The Pittsburgh Courier claims that the script as originally written was even more offensive to the African-Americans, and it was only because of the Courier agitation that some of the offending parts were taken out. The Amsterdam News, 18 December 1939, states that during production many Blacks, irritated at the role that was attributed to their people, refused to go on with their parts; there were quarrels and even fist fights. 

Historical Note:

"By the spring of 1937, spurred by memories of racism in black organizations on both coasts had written to Selznick International about Gone With the Wind. "We consider this work to be a glorification of the old rotten system of slavery, propaganda for race-hatreds and bigotry, and incitement of lynching," members of a Pittsburgh group wrote in a letter that, like other such correspondence, has rarely been cited, much less discussed, in popular histories of the picture.

"Cautionary letters continued to arrive at the producer's Culver City offices well into 1938. An associate of the Conference of American Rabbis told Selznick that the novel, though it entertained readers, also excited a latent 'anti-Negro antipathy.' Selznick, the correspondent said, must not cater to the public's narrow-mindedness, in part because it was wrong and in part because he, David Selznick, like most of his Hollywood peers, was a Jew. Walter White, the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also wrote to the producer. He offered to send along a packet of well-researched papers that demonstrated Mitchell's biased presentation of Reconstruction. Better still, he suggested, the studio should employ 'a person, preferably a Negro, who is qualified to check on possible errors of fact or interpretation' …

“As the principal photography began, in early 1939, scrutiny by the black press increased. Eight years before, The Pittsburgh Courier had acquired thousands of signatures on a petition to bar from the airwaves. The Courier hoped for even wider support on Gone With the Wind. Using the screenplay's racial epithets as a battle cry, the paper threatened a letter-writing offensive and, if necessary, a boycott of the finished picture.

“Selznick was nonplussed. The movie industry's censors had ruled only that “n-word" "should not be put in the mouth of white people. In this connection you might want to give some consideration to the use of the word 'darkies.' For once, Selznick agreed with the Hays Office; certainly, he thought, the black characters could use "n-word" among themselves. But the Courier was not alone in its outrage …

“Selznick had meanwhile chosen his technical advisers – both white. Aware of the potential for political backlash, he asked Kay Brown (powerful Hollywood agent and talent scout) to assure Walter White that 'the only liberties we have taken with the book have been liberties to improve the Negro position in the picture and that we have the greatest friendship toward them and their cause.'

“Moreover, he promised that his advisers would not allow the studio to 'turn out a Hollywood or NY conception of the Negro.' Whether Selznick, Brown, or the studio consultants understood the 'Negro position' was uncertain. Susan Myrick, a Macon Telegraph reporter and a dialect coach for GWTW, was convinced that the atmosphere of the picture belonged to the black characters; accordingly, she intended to teach the black actors to speak like "the middle Georgia Negro of befo-de-wah days." However accurate, that accent would connote the poverty and ignorance of black people – both the characters and, as White could easily have imagined, the actors who played them.

(Leonard J. Leff. “‘Gone With the Wind’ and Hollywood's Racial Politics.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/12/gone-with-the-wind-and-hollywoods-racial-politics/377919/. December 1999.)

Characters in the novel portrayed attitudes of slave owners as firm, but loving. Of the slaves themselves, old O’Hara tells Scarlett, “You must be firm, but you must be gentle, especially with darkies.” And Negroes, not only the house-servants but the field hands, are all faithful unto death.

This summary shows the depiction that continues throughout the film:

“Of the old Negro mammy, Rhett Butler says that there are few persons whose respect he so much values. When Scarlett O’Hara sees the faithful Negro man-servant in tears, she says, “I can stand anybody’s tears but yours.” When Ashley remonstrates with Scarlett, about exploiting white convicts, she retorts that he wasn’t so particular about owning slaves. Ashley (arguably one of the more noble characters of the novel) replies that slavery was different: we treated them well, and besides, he intended to free all his. When Scarlett is attacked by louts, a white and a Negro, it is a Negro, a former slave, who rescues her at great danger to himself.”

(Dalcassian. “When Gone With the Wind Glorified the Old Slave-holding South Alliance.” Workers' Liberty. January 02, 2014.)

Ashley is insinuating that his slaves don’t mind being owned because “they weren’t miserable.” It is enough to make someone cringe by merely suggesting that it’s all right to own slaves as long as they aren’t unhappy.

Historical Note:

"Fans might be surprised to learn that the movie’s leading man almost boycotted the film’s premiere. Due to Atlanta’s lingering Jim Crow segregation laws, Hattie McDaniel was not allowed to attend the 1939 event. McDaniel and Clark Gable had become fast friends during the many months of filming and the actor was reportedly rightly outraged at the African American actress’s treatment. Gable threatened to forego the premiere in protest, but McDaniel managed to convince him to attend"

(Hanna Dayani. “Discover unknown facts behind Gone with the Wind.” University Fox. August 16, 2018.)

 

Relevance

Since its inception, the film Gone With the Wind has been a lightning rod for contention and socio-political inspection. And, granted, it is a beautiful work of art, a monument of artistic freedom for both Margaret Mitchell and David O. Selznick. I am not for censoring the original work – even in all its controversy. But, the art does not represent accurately the history of the United States of America … especially in regard to slavery. Viewers should understand this.

You can consider the portrayal “culturally acceptable for its time,” but that is a weak excuse for dismissing the film's inherent racism, especially since the movie was extremely controversial even upon its release in 1939.

Here is the point: the views of slavery and the Lost Cause depicted in the film need to be properly contextualized. So many people believe the false narratives and actually form real-world opinions on their viewing experience.

The power of the fiction is accurately (and ironically) described by in an article by Rafia Zakaria, author of the “Read Other Women” series at the Boston Review and writer for The Guardian …

"In an essay on Gone With the Wind, New Yorker cultural critic Hilton Als describes the effect of Mitchell’s brand of white supremacy on himself, a young black boy watching the movie version for the first time: “I loved [Scarlett] so much and I didn’t want her to suffer,” he confesses, even though “Scarlett in real life might have lynched a 'n-word' in order to make that person pay for all the inexplicable pain that she had gone through.”

“Als’s words describe the premise that Gone With the Wind enacts: that it is the white and beautiful who must be rooted for, their individual complications considered, their possession of privilege assumed rightful, and their complicity in injustice ignored. How must a woman who longs for a world of slavery be evaluated? It is not a question that bothers most readers. But it is in the details of cultural relics like Gone With the Wind, preserved here in the name of nostalgia, that the nubs and seeds of a resilient bigotry pass from one era into another.”

(Rafia Zakaria. “Is Gone With the Wind's nostalgia for slavery acceptable?” The Guardian. June 16, 2016.)

It is precisely the “nubs and seeds of resilient bigotry” that alarms me. The rise of White nationalism and right-wing militias in the United States in recent years attests to the fact that many continue to hold beliefs that slavery and unspeakable prejudice should continue. White fragility grows, and one cannot help but believe false narratives fertilize bigotry in the soil of present discontent.

After uniformed and uneducated people watch such a film and assume it is based on facts, they think they know everything about slavery in the United States, but they don't. In fact, they likely become emotionally invested through a false, romantic interpretation.

The "Lost Cause" theme of the movie claims the Civil War was not really about slavery, which it most certainly was. Historical revisionists have tried to offer a variety of reasons for the war. For example, in the South, it is not unusual for history to teach that States’ Rights was the actual issue.

Preservation of slavery was the primary cause of Southern states’ secession and their creation of the Confederacy. Period.

Evidence of this connection is found in the slavery-related demographics of the South, the dedication of slave-owners to the war, the official secession resolutions and declarations of the seceding states, prewar settlement efforts, lobbying and diplomatic activities by early-seceding states, contemporaneous pronouncements of the Confederacy’s military and political leaders, the Confederate Constitution, Confederate diplomacy, Confederate refusal to arm and liberate slaves, and Confederate prisoner-of-war exchange policies.

("Reasons for Secession and the Civil War" History on the Net. Salem Media. https://www.historyonthenet.com/reasons-for-secession. 2000-2022.)

Many people also see the problems of slavery and race as resolved when the Civil War ended over 150 years ago with the defeat of the Confederacy. In reality, though, slavery has morphed into segregation, economic disadvantage, rights denied, and racist terrorism for African Americans.

And now, even after the advances of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, systemic issues remain: mass incarceration, unequal educational opportunities, economic disparities, political disenfranchisement, police violence.

Elizabeth Austin, writer and strategic communications consultant, says she has even thrown away her copy of Gone With the Wind …

“I didn’t want to be responsible for one more young girl reading Gone with the Wind. It is a pernicious book. It is an evil book. It weaves a spell that has perverted our national vision of slavery and warped our understanding of the Civil War and its long, vicious aftermath.

“Its sugarcoated white supremacy has inflicted grievous, lasting harm on our country for generations. Gone with the Wind is poison. And it is more toxic because the poison is concealed within a powerful – even feminist – story told in deathlessly lyrical prose.”

(Elizabeth Austin. “Why I Threw Away My Copy of Gone with the Wind.” Washington Monthly. June 11, 2020.)

Austin says again and again, the book glides over the fundamental importance of slavery in the economic lives of its central characters. She offers one particularly lovely passage, in which Scarlett and Ashley reminisce about life on the plantation before the war:

“As he spoke, his light grip tightened on her hand and in his voice was the sad magic of old half-forgotten songs. She could hear the gay jingle of bridle bits as they rode under the dogwood trees to the Tarletons’ picnic, hear her own careless laughter, see the sun glinting on his silver-gilt hair and note the proud easy grace with which he sat his horse. There was music in his voice, the music of fiddles and banjos to which they had danced in the white house that was no more … Over it all rested a sense of security, a knowledge that tomorrow could only bring the same happiness today had brought.”

(Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind. 1936.)

Austin concludes that the full passage beautifully evokes the “slow-paced glamour” of an idealized antebellum South – and “it draws an opaque, green velvet curtain across the bitter forced labor required to bestow endless leisure on a small class of favored white people.”

(Elizabeth Austin. “Why I Threw Away My Copy of Gone with the Wind.” Washington Monthly. June 11, 2020.)

My conclusion? Watch and read Gone With the Wind as fiction. That's all.

* Do not let the twisted portrayal lessen your understandings of the real horrors of slavery.

* Do not allow the movie to cause you to believe that the Lost Cause was just and heroic.

* Do not let a love story of the Deep South during the Civil War twist your emotions into accepting that slavery was just a minor, unfortunate part of Southern culture and tradition.

* Do not let the lies and propaganda re-established through Jim Crow affect your vision.

Instead, teach your children the truth about prejudice and hate and domination and how these things through slavery account for America's original sin … a moral offense with which we still struggle.

I believe we should put more effort into upholding the Union and the struggle for truth and right. I'm not advocating dismissing American history or erasing its impact. I am though strongly recommending learning the truth and framing history in its proper context without glamorizing the glory of something truly ungodly like the rebel cause.

Our Ohio cemeteries are full of Union veterans who fought and died for the United States of America. Ohio sent over 309,000 men to the Union Army during the Civil War, and most fought in the Western Theater. About 4,400 were at Gettysburg.There are 18 Ohio monuments at Gettysburg honoring 13 infantry regiments, a regiment and two companies of cavalry, and four artillery batteries.

Please, click here and take some time to view “Ohio Monuments At Gettysburg.” Thank you. https://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/union-monuments/ohio/

“Some will call this censorship. Some will chortle at the notion that a novel or a movie abounding in flounces and hoop skirts could actually influence the body politic. Proud southerners will take high-handed offense at the notion that their beloved Gone with the Wind is actually a powerful racist tract. And conservatives will continue to carp at the politically correct snowflakes who refuse to view a prettified story of chattel slavery, lynching, and undiluted white supremacy as an 'American classic.'”

“Far from being simple, wholesome family entertainment, the film is an admiring portrait of a conniving, lying, mercenary seductress. It’s a valentine to the slave-owning South, and a poison-pen letter to the anti-slavery North. It’s a tonal rollercoaster that plunges from frothy comedy to gruelling tragedy and back again. It’s a romance that puts the hero and heroine at each other’s throats. And it’s an episodic coming-of-age story that keeps going for nearly four hours before reaching its abrupt, unresolved ending. In short, Gone with the Wind is a preposterous, almost unclassifiable mix of highly questionable elements. The wonder is not just that it’s America’s most beloved film, but that it isn’t America’s most hated.”

(Nicholas Barber. “Gone with the Wind: Is it America’s strangest film?” BBC. June 10, 2020.)