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HBO Max is temporarily pulling “Gone With the Wind” from its movie library — and frankly, many people on social media do give a damn.
The AT&T-owed T, -1.47% streaming service announced Wednesday that the American movie classic set in the South during the Civil War and antebellum eras is being taken down temporarily, just days after “12 Years a Slave” screenwriter John Ridley wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed calling on HBO to remove it. “It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color,” he wrote, adding that it “romanticizes the Confederacy.”
Ridley said he plans to keep his HBO Max subscription, but suggested that the platform pull the film for “a respectful amount of time” before reintroducing it with conversations about different Hollywood narratives. And HBO has agreed, explaining in a statement that: “‘Gone With the Wind’ is a product of its time,” and “these racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.” So when the movie eventually returns to HBO Max, it will include “a discussion of its historical context.”
But this has fired up backlash from viewers for a variety of reasons, leading “Gone With the Wind” and its abbreviation “GWTW” to trend on Twitter TWTR, -2.17% and to top Google GOOG, +0.66% searches on Wednesday morning.
Many critics including Megyn Kelly, who was fired from NBC’s CMCS, -1.97% “Today” show in 2018 for defending blackface as a Halloween costume, have accused HBO of censoring the much beloved 1939 American classic. “Gone With the Wind” remains the highest-grossing film ever when adjusting for inflation, and won eight Academy Awards. It took sixth place in the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of greatest films of all time.
Others have noted that the movie’s lengthy list of Oscar wins include Hattie McDaniel, who became the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award for her portrayal of Mammy, a house slave close to Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara played by Vivien Leigh. They argued that pulling the film off HBO Max erases her landmark accomplishment — and on the late actress’ birthday, no less.
And that’s led still others to accuse these critics in turn of appropriating McDaniel’s achievement — and to remind them that the actress wasn’t even allowed to sit at the same table as her white co-stars at the Oscars because of the color of her skin.
Even some viewers who agree that “Gone With the Wind” is problematic have complained that there are bigger statements and gestures that HBO could be making right now about racial inequality beyond pulling a single movie off its platform — such as hiring more black directors, screenwriters and actors.
So why has removing one movie from a streaming platform (temporarily) stirred up so many varied feelings and reactions? Nancy Wang Yuen, the author of “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism,” explains that there are a number of factors at play.
First and foremost, “We are having a much deeper conversation about race right now,” she told MarketWatch. “The different responses show the different levels of understanding of racism in the U.S.”
And the range of arguments represents both the pushback against racism that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, as well as how removing this movie alone doesn’t change anything. “The right is feeling there is so much censorship now — ‘I can’t say anything, I can’t do anything’ — and then of course people on the very left are feeling that taking down one Confederate statue, taking down one movie, isn’t enough,” she said.
What’s more, Hollywood films are often a touchstone to measure what the nation’s racial perceptions are like at the time. “Even if you add in the fact that Donald Trump referenced [‘Gone With the Wind’] when ‘Parasite’ won is another layer of what represents ‘American cinema or ‘good cinema,’” she said. She was referring to when the president criticized the Korean movie winning the Academy Award for best picture earlier this year while speaking at a rally.
“Can we get like ‘Gone with the Wind’ back please? ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ so many great movies,” he said.
Yuen believes this could be an opportunity to discuss why “Gone With the Wind” was such a popular film in its day, and why there is still a lot of nostalgia for it and the book it was based on today. “I think what’s missing in most of these discussions is really doing a very thorough examination of what this movie means, and what it means for the time that it was being shown,” she said. “The nation is now having these very complex conversations, and what we’re noticing on Twitter is very much reflective of how far we’ve come, and yet how far we’ve still got to go.”
Many content providers are taking stock of the films and shows on their platforms in light of the renewed reckoning with systemic racism in the wake of the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Paramount Networks, which is owned by ViacomCBS VIAC, -7.76%, is taking “Cops,” a reality show that glorifies police officers, off the air after 33 seasons. Its networks including BET, MTV and Nickelodeon also recently went dark for eight minutes and 46 seconds — the length of time that officer Derek Chauvin was recorded pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck. And the BBC has removed episodes of the comedy series “Little Britain” from its streaming service because it featured a character in blackface.
