Gone with the Wind dropped from HBO Max over depiction of slavery
The US civil war epic Gone With the Wind has been
dropped from HBO Max, the streaming service recently launched by Warner Bros as
a rival to Netflix and Disney+, after protests over its depiction of slavery.
The move followed an article in the LA Times by John
Ridley, Oscar-winning scriptwriter of 12 Years a Slave, in which he described
it as “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”.
Ridley added: “At a moment when we are all
considering what more we can do to fight bigotry and intolerance, I would ask
that all content providers look at their libraries and make a good-faith effort
to separate programming that might be lacking in its representation from that
which is blatant in its demonisation.”
HBO responded with a statement, which said: “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.”
The streaming service added that the film would
return to the platform accompanied by “a discussion of its historical context
and a denouncement of those very depictions”, but would remain unaltered
“because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never
existed”.
Released in 1939, Gone With the Wind won eight
Oscars (and two honorary awards) and was a commercial hit in the US and
elsewhere. However, African American writers and activists objected to its
depiction of passive, compliant slaves, and sentimentalised depiction of the
south before the civil war. A contemporary review in the Chicago Defender
called it a “weapon of terror against black America”, while dramatist and
film-maker Carlton Moss wrote in 1940 that it was “a nostalgic plea for
sympathy for a still living cause of southern reaction”.
Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to
win an Oscar, for best supporting actress for her role as house servant Mammy,
but was not allowed to sit with the rest of the cast at the Academy Awards
dinner at the Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles, which enforced racial
segregation until 1959.
