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“Gone with the Wind” is coming back. HBO Max will again start streaming the controversial slavery-era movie — with a lecture about the racial themes that first got it pulled, according to the scholar providing the intro. “I will provide an introduction placing the film in its multiple historical contexts,” cinema professor Jacqueline Stewart wrote …
“Gone with the Wind” is coming back.
HBO Max will again start streaming the controversial slavery-era movie — with a lecture about the racial themes that first got it pulled, according to the scholar providing the intro.
“I will provide an introduction placing the film in its multiple historical contexts,” cinema professor Jacqueline Stewart wrote in an op-ed for CNN, confirming the movie’s return to the streaming service.
“For me, this is an opportunity to think about what classic films can teach us,” insisted Stewart, a 50-year-old host on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
She did not announce a date for its return, and HBO Max did not immediately return calls for comment.
The movie — starring Vivienne Leigh, Clark Gable and Hattie McDaniel — was pulled by HBO last week following an op-ed by “12 Years a Slave” screenwriter John Ridley who said it romanticized “the horrors of slavery.”
In her own op-ed, Stewart called it one of a number of old movies that “have played a major role in perpetuating the racist beliefs that devalue Black lives and normalize the use of excessive force against Black people.”
“The film romanticizes slavery as a benign and benevolent institution,” she wrote, noting it is “still the highest-grossing film in history when adjusted for inflation.”
Stewart conceded that seeing the movie “so prominently in HBO Max’s launch felt like salt rubbed into wounds that have never been permitted to heal” amid “every act of anti-black violence.”
“But it is precisely because of the ongoing, painful patterns of racial injustice and disregard for black lives that ‘Gone with the Wind’ should stay in circulation and remain available for viewing, analysis and discussion,” she insisted.
“‘Gone with the Wind’ is a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture,” she wrote.
“Right now, people are turning to movies for racial re-education,” Stewart said.
“If people are really doing their homework, we may be poised to have our most informed, honest and productive national conversations yet about black lives on screen and off.”
