By Chris Evangelista/June 11, 2020 11:00 am EST
“Gone With The Wind is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” said an HBO Max spokesperson. “These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.”
Based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind follows Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) against the backdrop of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley wrote:
“[Gone With the Wind] doesn’t just ‘fall short’ with regard to representation. It is a film that glorifies the antebellum south. It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color. It is a film that, as part of the narrative of the “Lost Cause,” romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the “right” to own, sell and buy human beings.”
