Gone With the Wind = outstanding movie.
Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable = outstanding actors.
233 minutes = not so outstanding.
Yet, I find myself being intrigued the entire way though. Usually, with most movies I lose interest after 2 hours. But there is something so wonderful and glamorous about this movie that makes me stare at the screen, wondering what is going to happen next, even though I've seen it multiple times.
There is an aspect of Gone With the Wind that really makes me think though. The entire movie is set in the South, and is focused on the Civil War. Having grown up learning that Southern values around the time of the war were horribly wrong, and that all of the people living in the South were cruel to their slaves and were white supremacists, the first time I saw this movie confused me.
The movie somewhat debunks these claims that I learned in school. The O'Hara family owns slaves...but by the middle of the movie they work together more than they work against each other. We learned in Black Media last quarter of the "mammy" character, which is obviously represented in the character of Scarlett's maid who is appropriately named...Mammy. Mammy and Scarlett have a very close relationship, yet the separation between boss and maid is still very clear.
Even with these separate roles between the slaves and the owners, the relationship between the two groups is much different than you learn in a textbook in seventh grade history. It becomes obvious that the people of the South truly believed in the idea of slaves and never looked at it as a cruel and harsh thing. Instead, they thought of it as what it was to them...a tradition, and the way things truly should be.
How can we hold it against the people of the past, when they grew up with it? It's kind of like me hating country music...all of my friends from Southern Ohio can't believe I have such a closed mind, but my argument is how in the world could I all of a sudden like country music if I never grew up with it!?
Those examples aren't very strongly related...but hopefully everyone can see my point. I definitely believe that the people of today who believe in slavery are wrong...but back in the days of the Civil War, the people of the South were simply fighting for what they believed in and they didn't know any better.
I kind of hate it and love it when random things like this pop into my head...love it because it's fun to write them down, but hate it because they rarely make sense and become a bother to my brain until I finally jot them down!
Hopefully I didn't lose anybody in this little entry...It's random after all!
5 comments:
Those examples aren't very strongly related...but hopefully everyone can see my point. I definitely believe that the people of today who believe in slavery are wrong...but back in the days of the Civil War, the people of the South were simply fighting for what they believed in and they didn't know any better.
Wanna bet? Abolition has been around in the U.S. since the Colonial period. And although he did practice slavery, Thomas Jefferson (a Southerner) opposed it on moral grounds. George Washington (another Southerner) left a will freeing his slaves following his wife's death. He grew to oppose slavery. Martha never did.
And there have been Southern-born abolitionists like John Fairfield of Virginia, who became a conductor on the Underground Railroad. There was a Disney movie about him called "THE LIBERATORS" that starred Robert Carradine and Larry B. Scott.
There was also a Kentucky born politician named Cassius Clay, who also became an abolitionist. So did Mary Todd Lincoln, who came from a slave-holding family in Kentucky. And last, but not least, there were the Grimke sisters of South Carolina - Angelina and Sarah. Their father was also a slaveholder. And they became die-hard abolitionists and supporters of civil rights for women and African-Americans.
Ok, I completely understand your point. But I was just writing about something that occurred to me when I was watching the movie...I didn't mean to infer that people of the South never became abolitionists. All I was doing was stating my opinion on how I can see why there was a Civil War. Sorry if it was misinterpreted.
I agree with you, I was confused to. In school we always sort of learned that the South was the enemy, but when I read "Gone With the Wind", i was torn. I really liked the story and just the description of the south in general, but i know slavery is wrong. The really confusing thing to me was that the O'Hara's treat their slaves as part of the family, and they would never hit them or anything. But when my social studies teacher talks about how slaves were beaten and whipped and stuff, i sort of have to believe him because I know he's right. It's doubly confusing becuase my family is southern and we had slaves and fought for the conferderacy. I don't know. I guess i just wanted to say that you're not alone.
Thank you for your comment! It's a very confusing topic, and I can especially see how that hits close to home considering where your family is from. I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in my thoughts!
One very important thing that you should remember is that although this novel is fiction, Margaret Mitchell spent 10 years researching the facts for the book to make it historically correct. She also lived in a time when there were actually survivors of that time period to learn from. No history book or teacher can give you that today.
While slavery is wrong in every aspect, history seems to eliminate the stories of positive, loving, family relationships of southern whites and blacks that often existed.
It was the influence of the North that brought racism and discrimination to the South. And, that is accurately described in the pages of Gone With The Wind.
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