HBO Max on Tuesday yanked the Civil War epic “Gone With The Wind” from its catalog amid rising racial tensions in dozens of cities across the nation.
The film immediately became the bestselling film on Amazon by early Wednesday morning, “even though both DVDs and Blu-ray discs were sold out,” Breitbart reported.
HBO’s move is the latest from the cancel culture following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died on Memorial Day while in police custody.
“’Gone With The Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” said a network spokesman. “These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible,” the spokesman told Variety.
“These depictions are certainly counter to WarnerMedia’s values, so when we return the film to HBO Max, it will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history,” the spokesman said.
The classic 1939 film is based on Margaret’s Mitchell’s novel and earned 13 Academy Award nominations, winning eight, including best picture, best director, best actress, and best adapted screenplay.
The film’s removal came after a director wrote an op-ed piece on Monday in the Los Angeles Times headlined: “Hey, HBO, ‘Gone With the Wind’ romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now.”
“It is a film that glorifies the antebellum south,” wrote John Ridley, a director and screenwriter who won an Academy Award for his adapted screenplay for “12 Years a Slave.” “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.”
“Let me be real clear: I don’t believe in censorship. I don’t think ‘Gone With the Wind’ should be relegated to a vault in Burbank,” Ridley wrote. “I would just ask after a respectful amount of time has passed, that the film be re-introduced to the HBO Max platform along with other films that give a more broad-based and complete picture of what slavery and the Confederacy truly were. Or, perhaps it could be paired with conversations about narratives and why it’s important to have many voices sharing stories from different perspectives rather than merely those reinforcing the views of the prevailing culture.”
