Gone With the Wind

Let me say I read Gone With the Wind back in junior high and the movie on its last time through Anderson. I just finished reading Southern Comforter which reviews The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells by Sarah Churchwell.

I still think the movie is the epitome of American movies: empty-headed spectacle. It did not raise racist notions in my head or sympathy for the South's Lost Cause. Same for the novel. I never believed the character of Prissy - I never met any black woman who behaved as she did. Could be I had seen Carol Burnett's parody and that undermined GWTW, the movie.  As for the novel, all I recall is it was long. Could be being raised in Indiana, I had early on knocked into my head that the Lost Cause deserved to lose.

I noticed in the review how the novel still sells. I suspect that has to do with the romance part of the story than what it teaches us about history. I also wonder how many read the full novel. Other wanting to see what all the fuss was about, I think I would have walked away from its romance novel dullness.

I agree with the reviewer it is past time to abandon GWTW to its times. It is time to be responsible adults and look at our history with adult eyes capable of facing up to propaganda, facing up to our truths regardless of their ugliness.

sch 7/8/22