HBO Max Pulls ‘Gone With The Wind’ After It Was Criticized For ‘Romanticizing Slavery’

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Gone With The Wind

The iconic 1939 film Gone with the Wind has been temporarily taken off the HBO Max streaming platform following complaints about its racist portrayal of black characters.

HBO Max said the film, which was set during and after the American Civil War, was “a product of its time” and depicted “ethnic and racial prejudices” that “were wrong then and are wrong today”.

A spokesperson told Deadline “we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible”.

It’s removal comes on the same day that Paramount Network pulled the reality series Cops following protests about the death of George Floyd.

BBC news reports: Based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, it features slave characters who seem contented with their lot and who remain loyal to their former owners after slavery’s abolition.

Gone with the Wind received 10 Oscars and remains the highest-grossing movie of all time when its takings are adjusted for inflation.

Hattie McDaniel became the first black actress to be nominated for, and win, an Academy Award for her role as domestic servant Mammy.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times this week, screenwriter John Ridley said the film “glorifies the antebellum south” and perpetuated “painful stereotypes of people of colour”.

“The movie had the very best talents in Hollywood at that time working together to sentimentalise a history that never was,” continued the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years A Slave.

In a statement, HBO Max said it would be “irresponsible” to keep the film on its platform without “an explanation and a denouncement” of its “racist depictions”.

It said the film itself would return “as it was originally created”, saying “to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed”.

The wording of the statement is similar to advisories that accompany Tom and Jerry cartoons and other vintage animations on various streaming services.

7 Comments

  1. You’re giving that movie too much credit. It was dull and boring and didn’t do anything for or against slavery.

    So which city will be the first to start a house-to-house search for banned books and video?

    Which city will be the first to ban the Bible?
    .

  2. By the time white apologists finish rewriting history to suit their PC needs, every black will be considered a god.

    • They have already made career criminal George Floyd a saint, along with terrorist Nelson Mandella, who used to put burning tires around people’s necks. Half the country still thinks the Kenyan usurper is Chicago Jesus.

  3. They hate the truth They want the world to think o ly the south american french cotton plantation owners had slaves and that they were all assists and rapists Which is of course a total lie There were total laws in place regarding slaves because the entire world had always had slaves from the beginning of history Everywhere ,asia africa europe ,middle east ,the whole world most likely Excepting maybe done very primitive u civilised peoples The last thing they want is for people to ever know the facts or the truth about anything .That’s them.

    • Sadists They want the worlds dumbed up educated idiots who trust frauds and liars to believe the slave owners were all evil sadists.
      How does flipping auto correct think sadists should be corrected to assists? What idiots programme it?And some to done or sone How does it autocorrect to non existant words?

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