Gone with the Wind

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Gone With The Wind

Gone with the Wind is an American drama film produced by David O. Selznick of Selznick International Pictures and directed by Victor Fleming in 1939. This film is adapted from a novel written by Margaret Mitchel in 1936. Set in the American South against the setting of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction period, the film tells the narrative of Scarlett O'Hara, the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner. It follows her romantic quest of Ashley Wilkes, who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, and her following marriage to Rhett Butler. [1]

Plot

The story starts at the O’Hara family cotton plantation Tara, in Georgia, as the Civil War approaches. Scarlett O’Hara’s husband dies while serving in the Confederate Army, leaving her a widow and their child without a dad. Melanie, Scarlett’s sister-in-law and the spouse of Ashley Wilkes (the neighbor Scarlett actually loves), persuades Scarlett to grieve her dead husband at the Atlanta home of Melanie’s auntie, Pittypat. The appearance of Union forces traps Scarlett in Atlanta, where she gets familiar with Rhett Butler. As Sherman’s army burns Atlanta to the ground, Scarlett persuades Rhett to save them by stealing a horse and carriage that will return her and her child to Tara. Although many neighboring plantations have been destroyed altogether during the war, Tara has not gotten away the war’s ravages, either, leaving Scarlett unprepared to pay the higher taxes imposed upon the plantation by the victorious Union forces. Getting back to Atlanta to try to raise the money she needs, Scarlett is reunited with Rhett, whose attraction to her continues. However, he can't help her financially. Desperate for money, Scarlett deceives her sister’s fiance, Atlanta businessman Frank Kennedy, into marrying her instead. Insisting on pursuing her business deals instead of staying home to raise their children, Scarlett finds herself accosted in a dangerous part of Atlanta. Frank and Ashley look to retaliate for her, but Frank passes away in the attempt and it takes Rhett’s timely intervention to make all the difference. Widowed again, but still in love with Ashley, Scarlett weds Rhett and they have a little girl. But after their daughter’s death—and Scarlett's endeavors to reproduce pre-war southern culture around her, with Rhett's cash—she understands it's not Ashley but rather Rhett she loves. By then, however, it’s dreadfully late. Rhett’s love for her has died. [2]

Controversy

Critics have brutally scrutinized the film for potraying slaves as cheerful and content while being devoted to their owners, in this manner blurring the extreme conditions where enslaved people lived, and for painting individuals people as naive and moronic. The film is also assaulted for sustaining Lost Cause myths propounded by white supremacists. [3] Mammy, who was played by Hattie McDaniel sees the white people who give work as great, while other black people are “awful” and referred to using racial slurs.

Other than that, during the reconstruction era, as numerous slaves were liberated and joined the society for the first time, there was a lot of concern with respect to what this would mean for the south as white individuals knew it. These worries are raised all through Gone with the Wind, with one scene – which shows McDaniel's Mammy fighting off a sneering freeman – proposing that liberated slaves were shameless and a danger to ladies of every racial backgrounds. In a similar scene, an administration official can be heard in the foundation offering pay-offs to the freemen. This infers that liberated slaves were politically and personally naive and too easily manipulated to properly integrate into a Reconstruction-era society. [4]

References

  1. Gone with the Wind (film). Wikipedia. Retrieved January 16 2021.
  2. Lombardi, Esther. Plot and Main Characters of Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind". ThoughtCo. 8 January 2020. Retrieved January 16 2021.
  3. Explained: Why the Hollywood classic ‘Gone with the Wind’ is in controversy, again. The Indian Express. 19 June 2020. Retrieved January 16 2021.
  4. Lewis, Isobel Gone with the Wind: Why has the film been accused of racism and will it return to HBO Max?. Independent. 10 June 2020. Retrieved January 16 2021.