![]() ![]() What was enlightening for me about the experience of watching Gone with the Wind was its embracing of the equally odious idea of the Lost Cause understanding of the Civil War. The offhanded way in which Rhett Butler, Scarlett’s on-again-off-again love interest, refers to Prissy as a “simple-minded darky” is odious, but not surprising. The character Prissy, the house slave of Scarlett O’Hara, the movie’s hero, becomes a stand-in for all black people as mentally inferior and buffoonish. The ways in which the 80-year-old film depicts its black characters – speaking in heavily stereotyped, broken English, for example – while disturbing, wasn’t anything I wasn’t expecting. Gone with the Wind is vile and insidious in how it depicts race, the Civil War, and slavery in the Old South. That’s what I want to do now, in the form of my reaction to watching Gone with the Wind for the first time, as part of my 100 Essential Films series. “I believe Hollywood’s history of racism should be openly discussed,” Longworth tweeted. Canceling the film completely would, as film critic Karina Longworth said about Disney’s racist out-of-circulation-for-decades film Song of the South, turn it into a fetish object. This will allow the film to remain accessible, but not irresponsibly so. ![]() ![]() The forthcoming introduction by Professor Stewart will, I’m sure, add rigorous critical and historical analysis – most importantly from a person of color. They haven’t announced yet when the movie will return to the service, but Jacqueline Stewart, an African American cinema and media studies professor and Turner Classic Movies host, will provide the introduction to place the film “in its multiple historical contexts.” HBO Max, the service that holds the streaming rights to the 1939 winner of ten Academy Awards, announced just a few weeks ago that it would be taking Gone with the Wind off of its service temporarily, so it can find a way to add context to the picture’s outdated and ugly depictions of race. This is, however, a minor complaint about an otherwise well-written, interesting, and authentic book.I’m wrestling with Gone with the Wind as our culture wrestles with it. Patrick Carman’s Skeleton Creekseries employs this style effectively and it immediately hooked me into thinking that I really was reading the teen’s thoughts. Woodrow’s parenthetical notes could also have been written in another handwriting-like script, rather than just indented italics. That’s an effective way of reinforcing the realism of the idea – it’s not a printed book but a real journal. I like the conceit behind this book, but I was thinking how much more effective it could have been if it had been printed to look like handwriting on notebook paper. It easily reads like he is in high school which makes the crossover appeal great since there aren’t any drugs, sex, foul language or other objectionable issues that would it from being suitable for middle grade readers. It’s not clear what grade Tod is in some reviews say 8th grade, but I don’t recall having seen that mentioned anywhere. Since Tod obviously has a working moral compass and the will to “pop” his droogs when he thinks they’ve crossed the line, it’s pretty clear Shulman intends Scrawl to be a redemptive story. He could fall easily into the life of juvenile delinquency which would lead to a much harsher, bleaker adult life. It’s really his intelligence and wit that keep him on the good side of the edge. He’s definitely a realist (although surprisingly not as pessimistic and angry as he could be, given his situation)and he’s certainly not overly violent. Through the journal Tod eventually opens up and we can see that he is a smart, thoughtful kid who lives a bad home life, isn’t socially accepted at school, and doesn’t have any qualms about using intimidation to get what he wants out of others. Not really sure why he escaped grounds-keeping duty, Tod only knows he’s supposed to write about himself, his family, friends and school life in a beat-up notebook and turn it in for Mrs. Woodrow, a no-nonsense guidance counselor. After he and his droogs are busted for breaking into the school, he’s sentenced to spend his daily detention in a hot, empty room with Mrs. Mark Shulman’s Scrawl is the detention journal of the school’s bully, Tod. ![]()
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