The Projector #47: What to Do With Our Problematic Movies? (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

When HBO Max premiered last month, it arrived with a wide (if not that deep) selection of Hollywood and international classics, among them Gone With the Wind. Adjusted for inflation, GWTW remains the highest-grossing film of all time, an influential classic seen and loved by many. It also features a candy-coated depiction of slavery filled with benign slaveowners, demeaning depictions of Black characters, and a depiction of the antebellum South as a genteel period of lost gracefulness rather than a culture built on the back of unfathomable cruelty. When HBO Max pulled it a few weeks later, it caused a minor uproar among those ready to uproar about any perceived overstep from what they dub political correctness. Its disappearance was always planned to be temporary (and it’s not as if the film disappeared from the face of the Earth by HBO Max removing it). The announced plan was to return it with some context-setting bonus features, which HBO Max has now done in a way that provides a fine model for others to follow.

Specifically, it’s added an hourlong 2019 TCM panel discussion of the film and an introduction from film scholar Jacqueline Stewart (above) who both provides a bit of history and helps set viewers of the film in a proper frame of mind for watching it. On the first front, she points out that it’s always been a subject of controversy. Producer David O. Selznick, for whom it became a passion project, issued assurances to the NAACP, who were concerned that it would recreate the selectively clouded vision of Margaret Mitchell’s novel. That the film did just that has made it troubling ever since. “Watching Gone With the Wind can be uncomfortable, even painful,” Stewart notes, but suggests it’s also an invitation for “viewers to reflect on their own values and beliefs.”

It’s part of American culture, an often ugly reflection of a different time and place that's closer to our current time and place than we like to think. And even if it went away, it would never really disappear. It’s better, then, to frame it, contextualize it, and shed light on it. And, of course, Gone With the Wind is hardly the only problematic product of the past that can’t just be ignored. A couple of years ago I did a list of the greatest Christmas movies ever made and included Holiday Inn, a terrific movie that needs some heavy duty warnings about a blackface sequence. It’s just one example of many in Hollywood history, and while you could cut it out — as some TV airings of the film have done — doing so means pretending that we no longer have to reckon with the past, or that elements of the culture that allowed such images in the mainstream are no longer with us. 

That said, it doesn't mean they should just be encountered in the wild with no warning. To wit: the recent pulling of some episodes of 30 Rock that used blackface. The Tina Fey sitcom used it ironically and to make a point, but what an image to encounter unexpectedly while watching a rerun! (Some Scrubs episodes have been pulled too, but I can’t speak to how that show used it.) Again, this seems like a case where HBO Max has provided a model. It would be a shame if these episodes just went away, but just letting them hang out with the other episodes without any warning seems a little irresponsible. Whatever the show’s intent, it makes sense that depictions should be framed and given context.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Let me know in the comments.

Meanwhile, enjoy our current episode about The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and tune in next week for our discussion of Da 5 Bloods by Spike Lee (who made brilliant use of scenes from Gone With the Wind in BlacKkKlansman).

Also, there’s plenty to read, some of it related to our recent episode on Almost Famous: 

• At Vulture, our former co-host Rachel Handler writes about the bittersweet experience of watching Almost Famous 20 years after its release. Rachel’s also providing live commentary about the film TONIGHT on Vulture’s Twitter feed.

• If that weren’t enough, Rachel also talked to Patrick Fugit about the film.

• At Entertainment Weekly, Clark Collis has penned an oral history of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

• At The Guardian, our own Scott Tobias considers the legacy of The Blues Brothers at 40.

• At Mel, Tim Grierson considers the lamentable stereotypes of the Transformers films’ Skids and Mudflap.