HBO removes Gone with the wind.

[Rev. Rye]

While I can't find a date for Gone With the Wind coming back on HBOMax, I did find out that yes, they did plan on reinstating it with an intro by Jacqueline Stewart, and for those of us who want to know what that will be like, here's an OpEd by her about the film.

Some complained that taking the film down was a form of censorship. For others, seeing "Gone with the Wind" featured so prominently in HBO Max's launch felt like salt rubbed into wounds that have never been permitted to heal. These wounds are reopened with every act of anti-Black violence, every delay in justice and every failure to acknowledge the extent of Black suffering.

But it is precisely because of the ongoing, painful patterns of racial injustice and disregard for Black lives that "Gone with the Wind" should stay in circulation and remain available for viewing, analysis and discussion.

"Gone with the Wind" is a prime text for examining expressions of white supremacy in popular culture. Based on Margaret Mitchell's blockbuster novel, "Gone with the Wind" taps into longstanding myths about the gentility of the antebellum South. The film's lavish costumes, magnificent plantation sets and sweeping Technicolor cinematography render Scarlett O'Hara's romances and economic tribulations in grand melodramatic fashion.

As the title indicates, "Gone with the Wind" looks back nostalgically at idyllic days that are no more (because they never were). By harkening back to the great old days, plantation dramas invite white viewers to imagine appealing but false pedigrees. When working class and poor white viewers identify with a noble white lineage, for example, they might be less likely to form what could be beneficial alliances with their Black working class and poor counterparts.

...

At the same time, "Gone with the Wind" illustrates how trenchant racism has restricted Black possibilities, as well as the efforts of well-meaning white allies. Producer David O. Selznick supported Hattie McDaniels' nomination for an Academy Award, believing in the strength of her performance. But he capitulated to Southern sensibilities when he did not include Black cast members at the film's premiere in Atlanta. And at the 12th Academy Awards ceremony, where she became the first Black actor to win an Oscar, McDaniel did not sit at Selznick's table with the rest of the cast. She had to be given special permission by management to enter the whites-only Cocoanut Grove club and was seated at a small table on the side of the room.

Frankly, this looks like the stuff of a substantive intro to the complications of a complicated film, acknowledging how fucked up it is by modern standards to identify with the Southern aristocracy and how deeply entrenched and normalised open racism was at the time. And I've seen far more long and pointless intros to great films on DVD than this looks like it's going to be.