My point is that Gone with the Wind is so damn racist- it should no longer be considered “Great”.
Now it is still on the AFIs 100 greatest films of all time list- at #6 no less. But they removed Birth of a Nation (a very good move, but perhaps late) and eve Fantasia (due to one very short scene)…
Of course- there are films with some small part that is now no longer “great”- Andy Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. . Sure he is cringeworthy now, but the rest of the film is still good.
But GwtW is nearly 100% racist bullshit- even showing slaves cheerfully marching off the help the CSA.
We do not have to like what it is depicting but we do not need to. It has been a long time since I have seen the movie but I do not think it was promoting racism. Just depicting it as it was viewed at the time.
Personally, one of my favorite HP Lovecraft stories is a thinly disguised MAGA rant where the eldritch evil that threatens the good Yankee folk of Boston is Italians.
To his credit, Lovecraft realized his youthful xenophobia was misguided later on, but he died before he could correct the record very much.
Many film critics consider The Birth of a Nation to be technically brilliant in many aspects, especially considering it was made in 1915. And in 1992, the Library of Congress deemed the film “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Birth of a Nation can be considered “great” in the context of its importance to the medium of motion pictures. It is also an iconic document of attitudes which have become morally repugnant. As entertainment, I cannot assess how “great” it is because I’ve never seen it. I’ve never seen Gone With the Wind or Song of the South, either.
In terms of entertainment, I would not call Fantasia a “great” film. I think of it more as a sort of novelty item. Among its flaws, the racism is pretty minor.
Some of my favorite cartoons are blatantly racist. I can still enjoy them and even defend them as “great cartoons” because of their gags/timing, none of their entertainment value (for me) derives from their racist content.
Bottom line: a blatantly racist film could in theory be considered “great,” but any assessment of it that did not also acknowledge its racism and the context in which it was made would clearly be deficient.
Another technically good but morally bankrupt film is Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl. She was an amazing film maker and broke new ground in art of documentary films, but it’s pretty much impossible to separate her work from the Nazi subject matter. You could make the case that any propoganda film shouldn’t be considered great because of inherent bias built in.
Most Americans haven’t see Birth of a Nation but I had to watch it for an American Culture course I took as an undergraduate. I couldn’t decide what was more offensive, the fact that it bored me to death or all the racism. Gone with the Wind had its racism but it didn’t bore me.
Birth is certainly a very important film not just for it’s social importance but because it introduced a lot of tools that became common when make films.
I think a lot of us are still trying to figure out the best way to reconcile how to acknowledge seminal works of old fiction while recognizing they contain elements we find distasteful today. The subject has certainly come up for those of us who enjoy role playing games. I’ve heard others argue H.P. Lovecraft’s name should be removed from any mention of authors whose fiction influenced the game and that Wizard’s of the Coast should stop selling digital copies of Oriental Aventures which was first published by TSR in 1985.
I’m not a fan of efforts to ignore an important work because it has elements we dislike today. It smacks of the same mindset among those who are worried about “woke” lessons in class because they’re afraid they might make white students feel bad. I think it’s must better to acknowledge why these works are important while being open about what problems they have.
Hard disagree. Most white audiences ate it up, the Lost Cause myth having taken firm hold by then, but the movie shaped, not reflected, their views. Meanwhile, there was criticism from Black newspapers and protests by Blacks outside theaters.
The book is even worse. (When I ranted about the movie, someone recommended the novel.) It glorifies the KKK, vilifies the Blacks who left the plantations, and praises the “Good Negroes” who stayed–out of loyalty and affection, according to Mitchell, out of fear and necessity, according to those who knew better.
Any film buff worth his or her salt is able to look at a movie like Triumph of the Will or Birth of a Nation and separate the objective craft from the thematic intent, with each of these considered in the context of the time, and further separate the entertainment value of the film, both for its original audience and for a modern viewer. The film buff can therefore recognize where a movie may carry creative and/or technical innovations, and trace those innovations down to other movies influenced by the original.
Most movie viewers are not worth very much salt.
These movies should absolutely be viewed and discussed by people with the knowledge, skills, and perspective to understand them. They should be taught in film classes to people who want to acquire said knowledge, skills, and perspective. They should not, however, be referred to as “great” because of the squishy connotations of the word. They should be described as “important” or “significant” with their problematic elements fully disclosed and conceded.
For people who judge whether a movie is “good” or “bad” solely on the basis of whether or not they found it entertaining (or, worse, make a value judgement about the movie by arguing whether other people should be entertained by it), films like these have no value and should not be watched. To claim a movie is good or bad based strictly on its entertainment value is just as ignorant and reductive as to say a Kandinsky painting is good or bad based on whether or not it’s pretty.
I’ve seen Triumph of the Will, subtitled. It was in a Cinema Studies class that I took during my undergrad. It was a double-bill actually, as we saw Triumph back to back with In Which We Serve, a British propaganda film from 1942. Long afternoon, seeing both, so we picked up in the lecture a day or two later.
“What are the similarities? What are the differences?” asked the instructor. Naturally a lot of discussion ensued. “They’re similar because they’re both propaganda films.” “They’re different because one is a documentary, the other is like a film story, with a plot.” Lots of excited discussion followed, comparing Hitler addressing troops at a rally in a documentary versus the plight of British sailors whose ship has been shot out from under them in a story.
“Ah. But is either ‘great’? Are they both ‘great’? Is neither ‘great’? How many of you have seen either? Both?”
Most in the class had seen neither; only a few had seen both. I had seen In Which We Serve a few years prior on a TV late movie, so I was one of the ones who had seen one.
After discussion, the general consensus of the class was that neither was “great.” Triumph was over-the-top propaganda designed to rally Germans behind their Fuhrer; In Which wasn’t quite so much over the top, but it was designed to rally the Allies behind King and Empire. The class agreed that neither, being overt propaganda suitable for the time in which they were made, had the hallmarks of “greatness” that other contemporary films had. and that are still shown today.
So much depends on the definition of “great”. Undoubtedly GOTW contains a great deal of racism, and nobody involved should be praised for that. But it was extremely popular, and a milestone in film-making at the time, so that aspect of greatness can never be diminished. It is a “great” movie but it becomes less “good” over time.
IMO the biggest thing undermining the argument for greatness here is that it treated the “lost cause” myth as a literal truth, flattering the worst narcissism of the southern white bourgeoisie. In that sense it can be seen as a pop-culture product pandering to the lowest common denominator. So in that sense, we could say that GOTW is “grand” not “great” or “good”.
In any case it doesn’t matter what we say here. GOTW is a cultural touchstone nearly 100 years on. Its memorabilia can sell for millions of dollars a piece. For better or worse it’s a “great” film, and we just have to live with what that says about us as Americans.