‘Gone With The Wind’ Returns To HBO Max With Historical Context Videos – Deadline

A day later, Sandra Dewey of WarnerMedia promised a virtual Cannes that gone With the Wind He would return to HBO Max “very soon,” the controversial 1939 film has returned, with a poignant historical context “about the film’s handling of the slavery theme and its treatment of black characters.”

Taken from the AT&T owned new-ish streamer on June 9, the Antebellum Sout set movie now comes with three new videos that are partly disclaimer and partly re-evaluation of the Academy Award winner.

One of the additional videos sees TCM’s Silent Sunday nights Presenter Jacqueline Stewart offers an extensive and specific critique of the epic starring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland and Hattie McDaniel as film and cultural defense of white supremacy. A second newly added video is the TCM Classic Film Festival 2019 panel that Donald Bogle moderated in the titled “The complicated legacy of gone With the Wind. “

The other accompanying reused TCM video GWTW on HBO Max it’s Hattie McDaniel: What a Character! Forced to sit in the back of the Ambassador Hotel’s Coconut Grove restaurant for the 12th Academy Awards, McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar for her supporting role. The little over four-minute video included with the transmitter movie details McDaniels’ career and talent.

Skillfully, University of Chicago Department of Film and Media Studies professor Stewart states in her nearly five-minute video that the film produced by David O. Selznick intentionally depicts “Antebellum South as a world of grace and beauty without acknowledging the brutalities of the chattel slavery system on which this world is based. “

“gone With the Wind, with its iconic production values, iconic scenes and iconic characters, has shaped the way generations have envisioned slavery and the period of reconstruction that followed, “adds Stewart of the film. The scholar also says contemporary viewers should see the movie “to reflect on your own beliefs”.

“It is not only an important document of the racist practices of Hollywood’s past, but also an enduring work of popular culture that speaks directly to the racial inequalities that persist in the media and today’s society,” Stewart said of the winner of the Best film.

Often grotesquely representing slaves quite satisfied with their status and loyal to their white owners, this last turn and return for the long and just repentant gone With the Wind It came as the United States was rocked by the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day by Minneapolis police and the protests against systemic racism and police brutality that followed.

In that sense, the move was the object of a scathing Los Angeles Times Oscar winner John Ridley’s opinion piece on June 8. Entitled “Hi HBO, ‘Gone With the Wind’ romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now “, the piece next to 12 years of slavery The screenwriter pointed out the argument between the film as a work of art, its time and the time in which we live today. In that context, Ridley said, “At a time when we are all considering what else we can do to combat bigotry and intolerance, I would ask that all content providers review their libraries and make a good faith effort to separate programming. it may be lacking in its representation of what is evident in its demonization. “

“I may not be able to see it, but some people may,” Ridley said of GWTW in a later interview with Deadline. “Okay, but you need to have broader conversations around you, about managed rehabilitation of what the Confederacy was and how it was somehow used to reinforce segregation and Jim Crow.”

It should be noted that, as HBO Max stated “if we want to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first recognize and understand our history” when he took gone With the Wind Offline, the film reached the top of Amazon’s TV and movie bestseller list in its DVD, Blu-ray, and 70th Anniversary Edition formats.