To think Gone With the Wind really isn't a romantic film?

[FestiveFruitloop]

Just finished watching it, hadn't ever seen it all the way through before. Toxic/abusive relationships, marital rape depicted positively (WTF??), racism and misogyny, manipulative characters... all I can say is I hope it's no longer considered romantic in this day and age. AIBU?

@GreatGateauxsby
I did not know that about Clark Gable!! That's a shock

Wasn't OdH's sister also famous, but they didn't get on?

This. It’s a depiction of the 1860s viewed through the lens of the 1930s. It’s absurd to judge it by 2023 standards.

No it was me! My teens distracting me and being annoying 😅.

I love it. A wonderful epic and a great tale and obviously it has never been regarded as being a “romantic” film.

I have no difficulty reading books written many hundreds of years ago or indeed watching a film like this (made over 80 years ago) and understanding that they reflect different times. Even films made in the 1980s and 1990s can jar now with their values but it’s a useful reminder how attitudes change.

She is one of the best things in it

The irony that she didn't go to the first showing, because it was at a white only cinema ... and she had to sit at a segregated table at the Oscars

In fact, I vaguely think she couldn't be buried in the sort of Hollywood stars cemetery, because it was for white people only

I also think she got married quite a lot of times, she was a bit of a goer was our Hattie!!

Others have already said this, but I do think it’s important - we lose empathy when we reject anything that doesn’t align with our worldview. If we don’t understand that the ‘baddies’ have complex emotional justifications for what they do then we can’t spot those self-serving hypocrisies when they appear in ourselves or in our society. I personally hate an antihero for the sake of an antihero, i’d never read American psycho, but GWTW isn’t that, it’s a study in humanity, like all the best fiction. We can learn from (proper, complex) antiheroes, and to understand different times and radically different perspectives. There’s very little to learn from a story about perfect, or trivially flawed people, behaving well, in a society that supports and encourages that…

I thought the book was awful..Margaret Mitchell was writing in the 1930s wasn't she, not shortly after the Civil war period the novel is set in. The book is basically dishonest and gives a distorted picture of what was going on at the time. Rhett and the other men are involved with the KKK and yet are depicted as dashing romantic heroes. The enslaved people are depicted as childlike and happier and safer when they were living on the plantations. The northern soldiers are depicted as uncivilised scoundrels destroying the harmonious civilisation of the south.

Yes it sold well at the time and was considered a romance. Margaret Mitchell's world view was warped though. The main black actress, Hattie something (?) was given an Oscar but at the Oscar ceremony she was shoved onto a table right at the back, as the venue was normally segregated.The other actors did not stick up for her. Later she died in poverty. I think that says a lot.

The cinematography in the film was lush and Vivien Leigh was gorgeous. That's about all I can say for it. A lot of people quite rightly see it as offensive now.

One of my favourite books of all time. Scarlett is an incredible character; unlikeable, but yet somehow admirable in her determination to survive. The book is far more complex and the film missed some of the best characters, notably Will, who runs Tara for her in the end.

It’s not meant to be remotely romantic. Rhett has romantic notions of Scarlett and believes he can change her but in the end he realises it’s a foolish dream. She will never change, she’s been forged by the world around her, spoiled and petted and then suddenly forced to rely on her own wits. It makes a character that will never be softened or redeemed, even if we can understand why she makes the decisions that she does.

I always thought though that she should have just married Cade Calvert at the beginning…

It is a story about resilience and flawed characters.

Not everything you see has to be moral and sugar-coated and end up as a perfect love story.

It also I think gives a fair idea of what the Southern societ was like in those days.

Of course that society was racist and misogynist, what do you expect?

I never understand people who look at films representing a specific period of history, the American Civil War, but expect it to show modern values.

It does not work like that...

The character of Scarlett is deeply unlikable, selfish and spoilt but she also shows great courage, resilience and strength. Same with the male character. He is not a hero.

Same with a Streetcar named Desire. Great film but again characters doing really questionable things.

I really wish people would stop trying to 'cancel' everything and obsess about reframing/criticising everything with today's values, rather than seeing them as something of their time.

As a story about women’s survival in a world where they have little agency it is unparalleled.

Scarlett is dependent on men and uses them to carve out a place in the world. It is a story of survival

It's historical fiction so of course the values are true to its time

I still love it.

It's a phenomenal film. Agree it's about how a woman can affect her own life and achieve her ambitions. You have Scarlett as a an example of a hard, unkind, selfish woman but also Melanie as an example of selfless, forgiving, cherishing womanhood, a great contrast.

It's also about change, and how those that lead in society may not be there through their own ability (see how Ashley is useless in the post war world, all he's fit for is drifting round Daddy's library). Scarlett's tenacity and ruthlessness are great qualities for success in the new world, but not needed by her class in the old world. The book makes this a lot clearer. I can't remember it but there's a great quote about how the largest amounts of money get made when society changes, and this is so relevant to today.

I'm not into "romantic" films anyway but I love the bit where Rhett has made her go to Melanie's party, because he knows she has to brazen it out otherwise nobody will ever talk to her again, and she arrives looking sulky in her red dress. Wonderful! In the book it's explained that she and Ashely just fancy each other, they aren't in love, but Rhett really understands her and loves her for who she is.

Yes, a lot of the attitudes and events depicted are more shocking year by year but it gives us in the UK some idea of the history of the US.

It seems pretty obvious to me that Margaret Mitchell is the one doing the 'sugar coating'. Misplaced nostalgia for the old South where everyone was content in their role in life, gorgeous looking plantations and beautiful women in lovely frocks waited on happily by content black people, who were almost like family. Like hell it was! And she's hardly a great writer, it's just a pot boiler probably only remembered now because the film was so huge.

Other writers have problematic elements, eg Dickens and his unrealistic portrayal of women, for example, but he still has enough literary merit to be worth bothering with. Margaret Mitchell does not imo.

Clark Gable was not a “drink driving murderer”. 🙄

Beat me too it @RatHammock ! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clark-gable-accident/

But in its time and in its day, that was the norm. No one's suggesting that should be the norm now.

That's the thing with norms, they change and evolve

Rhett telling her she needs kissing badly, and by someone who knows how, is pretty romantic

The ambiguity of 'needs kissing badly' always affords me a childish giggle, though. 😁

The main black actress, Hattie something (?)

Her name was Hattie McDaniel.

I haven’t read the book, though it’s on my list.

My perspective was she was writing from the perspective of plantation owners, many of whom, i’m sure, slept at night because they had that worldview. I’m sure many believed the slaves were fine and better off under their control. Hearing that story I think is still important. Because it’s a helpful reminder to us that our own worldview is also skewed and the importance of taking in objective evidence to counter our own experiences.

I read ‘12 years a slave’ and something which interested me was his experience that there were well run plantations where the slaves were happy enough. After all they didn’t have a frame of reference for freedom (this is his own experience of being a slave). He explained that the plantation owners in these places would have only their own experience to judge the practice of slavery by and would therefore think it was fine and everyone was fine and he didn’t judge them though of course made the case they were wrong. Only by taking a step back and looking at the big picture could you see the true evil of the whole enterprise.

That's how things were in those days

Only worse

FFS. must everything be destroyed by political correctness. It's a bloody film and an old one at that. No 10 year old boys are taking relationship lessons from it

I've always loved the film. It was never meant to be a romance. Watch the documentaries on it and you'll appreciate it for what it is. We shouldn't stop showing how things once were, or we can't appreciate some of the pov of certain groups.

Well both the book and the film are getting close to 100 years old and romanticise a period 70 odd years before that, in which slavery was a central tenet of society. So unsurprisingly, it's not at all aligned with our values today!

Olivia de Havilland's sister was Joan Fontaine who starred in Hitchcock's Rebecca and Suspicion. They were very alike

In large parts of the US, views on the end of slavery and the KKK are still the norm. I grew up with people whose fathers were in the klan. If it isn't written about, it becomes too easy to believe that it isn't still happening.