Gone with the Wind?

In celebration of “Gone With The Wind’s” 80th anniversary, the film is returning to the silver screen this month.” My introduction to this classic film came on its thirtieth anniversary release in 1969. I’m not sure if I saw it at the Star or the Riviera, but I know I watched the 223-minute movie with a boy, a first for my fourteen-year-old self. It was an epic movie, and I was caught up in the drama, heartbroken (spoiler alert) when Melanie died, captivated by the naughty-boy Rhett Butler, and not so sure about Scarlett O’Hara. I did love the young character of Prissy (Butterfly McQueen), with the terror of her wide-eyed words, “Miss Scarlett, I don’t know nothin’ about birthin’ babies.” At fourteen, I had no idea as to how the movie perpetuated a distinct narrative of the South, nor that some of its actors were forbidden from attending the premiere that debuted in a whites-only theater.

Film critic Roger Ebert reminds us of the challenge the film presents. “Remember that when “GWTW” was made, segregation was still the law in the South and the reality in the North . . . The movie comes from a world with values and assumptions fundamentally different from our own.”

How do we make sense of those fundamentally different values, of the legacy of enslavement in this country? We often speak of legacy as a positive contribution, such as money or property, but it can also be something transmitted by or received from an ancestor, with no guarantee of its goodness. We are just as able to receive a legacy of deceit as we are of integrity. Based upon factors such as wealth, education, zip code, gender and race, that legacy may bring an inherent privilege by lineage alone.

As a current-day viewing of “Gone With The Wind” painfully points out, privilege and legacy in terms of racial disparity have deep roots in the enslavement of people of color. I’ve lived long enough to understand how something deemed acceptable within a certain time (or cultural cycle) is no longer acceptable today. As Kate Hudson writes, “[GWTW] is a reminder of a bygone time – both in its subject matter and in its production – and should be understood and digested within its contemporary context. Not in 2019 with a tub of popcorn on date night. Its narrative hurts people.”

I’ve thought about Hudson’s words as I watch the scenario unfold in the Virginia governor’s office, as a photo of a man in blackface and another man in white robes was discovered on his medical school yearbook page. The furor over the photo has been massive, and his handling of the situation has been less than stellar. Now, the admission of a college blackface appearance by the state’s attorney general has been made. I wrestle with the question as to whether a thirty-five-year-old photo or the report of a freshman antic should outweigh a lifetime of responsible leadership.

I’m guessing many of us have flipped through our own yearbook pages and photo albums, wondering what shameful reminders of youthful indiscretion or foolish behavior are lurking there. In that light, I have sympathy for public figures who have been “outed” for unwise behavior from their early years, tempted to offer them some defense because I know how life was back in the day. I’m not suggesting that racist behavior should be ignored, but might these situations open the door to soul-searching dialogue instead of condemnation? Can we recognize that reveling in the downfall of another human points that same condemning finger at ourselves (see John 7-8)?

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave . . . it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.” These starry-eyed words filled the screen at the beginning of an epic film in 1939. Now, in 2019, is it time for another “last bow?” What will be the legacy of this decade?