Gone with the Wind Cancelled

osarusan wrote: »

They are also the people who burned their own Nike shoes after Nike signed a deal with Kaepernick, and they're also the people who threw their Gillette razors away after an advertisement aired in a different country.

Fragile and overwrought persecution complex clowns come in all hues.

faceman wrote: »

It might make you more aware of how racist your views are

faceman wrote: »

Amazing that you continue to deflect from racism at the core issue. I’ve not heard one valid argument from you or anyone as to why racism is mutually exclusive from this discussion. Instead what we are getting is the belittling of the people who are of the opposite view than you. Not the challenging of their perspective, which is what it should be.

Even the argument being put forward in this thread by those who share your view is that this is a censorship issue. Which it isn’t, because nothing has been censored or banned. Content providers pulled certain content with outdated and racist views to review it. Some streamers have reinstated content with comments, similar to what the BBFC do, flagging that the show contains racist views etc. This is a positive step. Not a solution but a step to highlight an issue.

Sky has put these statements on movies too referencing outdated or inappropriate content.

While it won’t suit your agenda, I’m against the concept of the vast majority of censorship. But I’m also against any content that makes unacceptable issues normal or acceptable. Racism was created by white people and it’s up to white people to address that. Do we just ignore the past? If we do we are muting the issue. It hasn’t gone away and won’t until we face it head on.

If people want to argue that the issue is content being removed than at least get your point of view stating facts. Let’s park the racism issue for a moment. The argument in this thread is censorship has resulted in tv shows and a movie being pulled. This is incorrect.

Snickers Man wrote: »

Nope


Nope


I wasn't going to, having seen it a couple of times before. Long ago. But I have a hankering to watch it now.



In what Thesaurus or Lexicon are the words "irritated" and "outraged" synonymous?

It is an irritant because the assumption is that one can only interpret or be moved by a piece of art, be it a movie, a drama, a novel, a song etc in a way that is acceptable to a modern, vociferous and organised lobby. They (that is whoever convinced HBO to suspend distribution of the movie) clearly think that modern viewers are so stupid that they might be inspired by an 80 year old movie to conclude that slavery was a decent institution or that black people were most fulfilled while in bondage to whites.
Come off it!!

I have only heard third party suggestions as to what parts of the film offended the complainants but I gather the depiction of slaves having amicable and often influential relations with their masters is deemed to be inaccurate and disingenuous. Assuming that to be a complaint, let us examine it further.

Perhaps the key black character is Mammie, the "house negro" played by Hattie McDaniel who became the first African American actor to receive an Oscar for her performance. She is big, fat, tough and rules the kitchen, and indeed the young white women of the house with a rod of iron. She disapproves of Scarlett O'Hara's designs on Ashley, married to Olivia de Havilland's character and physically prevents her from rushing to greet him on his return from the war. "No black woman would dare do that in practice!" is the implied complaint. "She would be whipped. Go see 12 Years a Slave if you don't believe me!".

Mammie is a competent, industrious and worldly woman, who despite being confined in slavery nonetheless has a strength of character, wisdom about human frailties and sense of humour that makes her a heroic person, in my view.

50 years after McDaniels received the best supporting actress Oscar, the same award went to an actress playing another strong, determined, resourceful, loving but seriously underprivileged woman: Brenda Fricker as Christy Brown's mother in My Left Foot. Women in 1930s Ireland couldn't open bank accounts without their husband's permission, had zero financial support from the state, were forbidden from controlling their fertility and were often confined to being breeding factories for children and had no career prospects beyond raising their families.

Yet that Mrs Brown is the heroine of the film, devoting herself to caring for and nurturing her disabled son despite having almost zero means at her disposal. To admire that character is not to glorify the conditions with which she had to contend any more than admiring Mammie is to infer that slavery must have been OK if it produced women like that.

Both those characters were utterly believable. I bet there were loads of women like Mammie, just as I know there were loads of women like Christy Brown's Ma.

One character, also played by a Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner, whose depiction really did offend my sense of credulity appeared in a much more recent film, 12 years a Slave.

I can believe that there were many beautiful young slave girls that the evil masters brought into their beds for their own sexual gratification.

I can also believe, with a bit more effort, that there may have been some slave women who were the best cotton pickers on their plantations. Women with the strength, stamina and dexterity to be more productive than any of the male slaves.

What I refuse to believe, or at least will raise my eyes to heaven if asked to do so, is that the same woman could perform both roles! There is usually a trade off between those two strengths. Yet that is just what 12 Years a Slave asks us to believe. Presumably the case against slavery would be seriously diminished if the pretty slave girl who warmed the master's bed was useless in the field!

Are we only to be permitted to watch bad films, with unrealistic messages imposing impossible standards on underprivileged people for fear that we might confuse a movie with reality?

faceman wrote: »

Like I said already. As while people we have the privilege or being able to opt in or opt out of racial discussions. Black people don’t. Choosing to not watch it is still accepting it and brushing aside racism