Gone With The Wind

[1bigsteve]

Anybody read John Jakes The Bastard series?

I never have but didn't they make a TV movie on that book?

I seem to remember a father commiting a crime which he blamed his son for and the son, unable to prove his innocence, took it on the chin and, mounting his horse, left for greener scenery. That scene sticks in my mind. I wanted to rack up the father so bad I could taste it.

Are his books any good? I don't like books with descriptive scenes of violence and sex.

-1bigsteve (o:

[RayS]

I've never read it, but saw the film on TV. It is "great art", but art, like science, is created to support the Ruling Class. You can admire it, like clever advertising, even tho it is BS. Look at it as the interpersonal conflicts set in a period of history. How to succeed financially in adverse times.

Viewing it some years ago, it seemed like a sermon against any radical changes in 1930 America, since it "didn't work" after the Civil War. Actually, the Reconstruction worked quite well until it was ended in 1877.
A good history book may tell you. Howard Zinn gives his radical view ot this and other eras. Worth reading as long as you have a counterpoint.

Because there is so much of American History that is censored or blurred by the Official Historians. I learned this in college (implicitly) when I took an advance course that contradicted much of the First-Year obligatory history. Its not just my opinion.

[SallyG]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Margaret Mitchell was also an avowed racist who thought and wrote of blacks as akin to small children and, to use her words, "monkeys."

I teach Birth of a Nation in Film History and we explore that film's bias and bigotry (Griffith was also a racist and white supremicist who would not allow blacks to play major black characters in his film, but, instead, used white men/women in black face. He also didn't allow the whites and blacks to mix on the set of his film and housed the blacks in separate quarters. Griffith's father was a Civil War Colonel, for the Confederacy, and the film BOAN, was made to mark the 50th anniversary of the ending of the war.)

I explore similar themes and biases in GWTW. You have to think about this carefully or you will get sucked into the love story and forget that what we have here is a false romantic view of slavery, with happy house slaves (who are treated as a part of the family) and equally happy field slaves who, in the very first few minutes of the film, joyously proclaim (as they ring the dinner bell), "It's quittin' time!"

Did you ever notice the way in which the KKK is represented, while never calling the group the KKK? As Ashley's vigilante raid to avenge the attack on Scarlett in Shanty Town? Exactly Griffith's assertion as well. It is played as if the KKK is a "good thing" and a much needed retaliation during Reconstruction as the "darkies" are asserting their freedom by running amuck and assaulting white women.

And just look at the simpleton characters of Big Sam, Pork, and Prissy. They may make us laugh, but they also bring with them horrible racist stereotypes. Mitchell's slaves are mostly content with their lives on the planatation, and the Great Rebellion is portrayed as a disruption in the southern genteel way of existence.

A great romanic story, yes, but set against a backdrop of false history and, even more profane, a romanticized version of enslavement. The stereotypes are wrapped in a good story, and that makes this book more inidideous than you can imagine.

Ask an African-American what they think of this book or that movie and you might be surprised by the answer. What you thought was glorious is, in fact, for those misrepresented, a travesty.

Stefanie, I have to agree with you on all your points. I did find her depictions of slavery to be unrealistic. And her descriptions of the KKK DID try to show it as a positive thing that was needed to protect the women from the blacks who were running amok. Margaret Mitchell obviously had no real idea of how slavery really was, nor of the cruel acts the KKK perpetrated on the black population. She was a product of her time period and her culture of the South. Yes, she was racist, like most people in the south during that time. You make excellent points. The book does present a romanticized view of the time period of the War Between the States. On the other hand, Margaret Mitchell was a talented writer. She was a professional writer who worked for newspapers and was one of the early women in that profession. She was not, as rumored, a housewife who just happened to write a bestselling novel. In fact, she was hesitant to have the manuscript published because she didn't think it was any good. She wrote that book with a single purpose in mind...to show the strength of women and their relationships with each other during the backdrop of the War. In fact, she actually considered Melanie the main character of the book. I am not defending her portrayal of blacks and the KKK...but lets remember when the book was written. I would venture to say there are many famous books out there with the same types of sterotypes and inaccuracies in them. Famous books in their time, and probably still classics today. Many of Mark Twain's books come to mind. What do we do with them??

[Audrey]

I think that the media in general tends to portray things in negative ways.

'The Lifetime Network' touts itself as the "network for women'. I guess so-- if you like seeing women raped, murdered, tricked by men, abused, having their children stolen from them... etc. Frankly-- I do not see this as a positive television experience for anyone, let alone women!

GWTW is just another example of a situation where you have to have the sense to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[doug65oh]

Many of Mark Twain's books come to mind. What do we do with them??

What we do with them is the same as you suggest of Gone With the Wind - recognize that classic as they are, they still suffer certain imperfections, in that they are often products of - reflections of - authors, time periods and cultures. We cannot deny or change them. But we might try to better understand them thru study; and in so doing, perhaps better understand ouurselves. (I hope I'm stating that clearly. It's very hard to tell sometimes.)

But let me throw this out, in light of the presumption that Melanie Hamilton is the main character of the book. Is it fair to say that she (for whatever she was - despite faults, foolishness, foible or fancy) and her ultimate demise represent the core metaphorical point of the entire book: The final passing away of 'the old South' - its virtues and its vanities?

As an aside, I think "Mammy" is one of my favorite characters, in both book and film. Stereotyped perhaps, but she more than any of the other characters as it seemed to me was able to survive in the truest sense, despite the limitations or constraints of her position.

[RayS]

I've read than "America" is a racist country. As if this is not true of other countries? You just have to accept that people are not perfect, they echo the opinions that are current in any age.
"Mark Twain a racist"? He uses the same word that James Fenimore Cooper uses in his books (a free black man who insists on getting his fair price from the Judge). Any auther who does not downgrade minorities in his 19th century published works should be considered a "liberal".
Weren't Huck and Jim treated as near equals? (I've never read this book, only know it from legend.)
BTW how many of today's authors meet this rule?

[SallyG]

Exactly the point I was making. Margaret Mitchell was a product of her upbringing, culture and time period. Quite obviously, she did not do an indepth study of the conditions slaves lived under, nor the origin and practices of the KKK, when she wrote her book. She had long had inside of her a story she wanted to tell, and quite a bit of it was based on people she knew and stories she had heard as a child. I would hope that anyone who has read, or reads, GWTW has enough intelligence to realize that her depictions of "happy" slaves and the KKK are not realistic. When I read the book at 12 years old, I realized the contented slaves and the KKk who were just protecting their "womenfolk" in the book were not the way things had really been.

By the way, RayS, in Huckleberry Finn, Huck was a boy of about 12, and Jim was his friend. Huck had not absorbed the prejudices of society at that time, and saw Jim as a friend and equal. It's too bad that we all can't retain that quality of young childhood...accepting people for who they are and not be concerned with their color, religion, race, disability, or any of the other adult prejudices.

[Kat]

Just to be clear:
No one said "Mark Twain [was] a racist." Quotes are rays.

I don't like the quotes around the name America.
Why would someone put quotes around that?
Maybe I don't want to know...
Just seems weird.

[RayS]

No! Really? Maybe you're just trying to score a point against me.
I use the quotes to signify this was somebody else's definition.
In truth, racial, ethnic, class and sectional biases are as normal as human beings. And so is gossiping. Haven't you noticed this?

But if that style offended you inadvertently, please accept my apology.
I seldom apologize for deliberate insults. Because I never do it.

[Harry]

Experiment to add audio URL

http://home.earthlink.net/~harwid/siteb ... s/tara.mp3

[Stefani]

Stefanie, I have to agree with you on all your points. I did find her depictions of slavery to be unrealistic. And her descriptions of the KKK DID try to show it as a positive thing that was needed to protect the women from the blacks who were running amok. Margaret Mitchell obviously had no real idea of how slavery really was, nor of the cruel acts the KKK perpetrated on the black population. She was a product of her time period and her culture of the South. Yes, she was racist, like most people in the south during that time. You make excellent points. The book does present a romanticized view of the time period of the War Between the States. On the other hand, Margaret Mitchell was a talented writer. She was a professional writer who worked for newspapers and was one of the early women in that profession. She was not, as rumored, a housewife who just happened to write a bestselling novel. In fact, she was hesitant to have the manuscript published because she didn't think it was any good. She wrote that book with a single purpose in mind...to show the strength of women and their relationships with each other during the backdrop of the War. In fact, she actually considered Melanie the main character of the book. I am not defending her portrayal of blacks and the KKK...but lets remember when the book was written. I would venture to say there are many famous books out there with the same types of sterotypes and inaccuracies in them. Famous books in their time, and probably still classics today. Many of Mark Twain's books come to mind. What do we do with them??

SallyG: thanks for your kind words, however you and others make the same false assumption that if a person is raised a racist it excuses their adult behavior---at least that is what I gleen from your defense of Ms. Mitchell and her upbringing.

Mitchell was 36 years old when her book was published, and the Civil War had been over for 71 years. Birth of a Nation had been out for 16 years and she lived through the years of those riots and NAACP protests over that film. She was old enough to know better. She was old enough not to present a picture of the old South that romanticized our greatest shame. She was old enough to know better.

You really can't say she didn't know how slavery really was. She didn't live in a bubble or on the moon. She consciously chose not to present the truth in order to make her story---as all artists do. Everything is biased and this book is no exception. But her bias reflects her racist attitudes, not those of her mentors!

I live in the South and in the heart of KKK land, actually. I know that there are racists living all over this nation, but I also know that how you were raised is no excuse for your adult behavior.

I LOVED this book as a child and read it three times. I watched the film about a dozen times. I bought into it--yelling at Scarlett for not realizing that Rhett was the only real man she would ever know and that he loved her so deeply. She was blind to him and I was angry at her and this movie echoed into my life and became a part of me. I didn't pay much attention to the "history" of the story as that wasn't what I was interested in. I wanted to feel the romance.

Well, little did I know just how corrupted I had become in regards to American history when I finally found out what was going on with this story. Wrapped in a GREAT romance is this unbelievably biased and insideous telling of reconstruction. And we take that medicine with the sugar of the rest, which makes this a very dangerous work of fiction.

Read what you want, believe what you want. But I have to say that one cannot praise this work without a big caveat that this is a racist book by a racist author.

[Haulover]

GWTW is a romance/fantasy novel using the civil war as a decorative backdrop. we inherit many myths from the civil war, which was a definitive era. i think what this amounts to is that we glorify the good we can find in it and we denounce the bad. and sometimes these two extremes collide and we make the best of it.

two things that need to be said is 1) when we are offended by a stereotype in the context of fantasy, we should realize that these personalities are likeable in a genuine sense that we do not tend to explore. i'm not a fan of it, but GWTW is indisputably popular -- not just in america but all over the world. i can't explain why, but i'm certain that the reasons for it are not from racism. last but not least on this point -- the civil war is not, among the masses, an event that is understood. i used to be a civil war scholar -- i'd rather not say that i am now, i'm very rusty, i gave it up out of frustration -- but the subject is huge and contains a wealth of information. it is not a subject that one can skirt, but a serious study of it is tremendously valuable.

as far as film is concerned -- we cannot dismiss Birth of a Nation. i'm not a fan of that one either. but any film student has to see it -- the first major popular film that established the film narrative in visual terms that we understand to this day. in other words -- a creative breakthrough in a new medium.

we can't toss these things aside because someone is offended. concering the race issue, we would have to throw away most of american literature for that matter -- to keep from offending. (but most people don't know american literature.) in short -- we tend to think we are more "enlightened" than our historical counterparts, but the truth is we don't understand the places they occupied or the roles they had to play. they did as well as we could have done, considering the realities they lived under.

it might help our understanding to take a truly critical view of ourselves today -- how well do we hold up in the views of those looking at us 50 years from now? i think this is one of those mysteries you find in history....that we repeat ourselves, we don't actually progress as human beings of understanding and ability.

[Davo]

I am an avid fan of GWTW and prefer the book over the movie. I always like to see a movie first and then read the book second. Then I can visualize the characters better. The book fills in all the details and makes the movie feel disjointed. I understand that Selsnick had nearly 9hrs of film and cut it way down for the theatre. Too bad it was thrown out. They could use it and make it a mini-series today. It's easy to judge those in the past by our own standards but harder to realize that things were different, people thought differently as the norm and acted, wrote etc accordingly. I don't see GWTW as glorifying slavery. After all, only 10% of the southerners actually owned slaves and if you paid $500-$2000 for a slave, you wouldn't ususally mistreat them. I'm sure there were a some owners who did but it wouldn't be using common sense. Not that they were coddled but then we look at blacks differently in the 21st century then they did in the early 20th or 19th centuries. I feel she wrote as if she was living in the 1860's and not the 1930's. She was painstaking in trying to get the accents right on the speech for example. So that would explain her seeming racism that others mentioned. To an extent it is an historical novel. I understand Mitchell used composite characters from people she knew and at first didn't want to publish it as she thought her ex-husband would sue her since she based Rhett quite a bit on him. Scarlett was a schemer and manipulator to the nth degree. You have admire her tenacity to better herself. I too have always wondered what the attraction to Ashley was. They were such opposites. Perhaps part of it was the thought of being mistress of his plantation and living in his grand house. I believe she was in love with the idea of being in love and it wasn't until Rhett that she knew what real love was but it was too late. I read the Ripley novel and thought it was awful. She did do a good job of writing in Mitchell's style but I thought the story line to be too far fetched. I read it once and never picked it up again and didn't see the made for TV movie.

[RayS]

...
i'm not a fan of it, but GWTW is indisputably popular -- not just in america but all over the world. i can't explain why, but i'm certain that the reasons for it are not from racism. last but not least on this point -- the civil war is not, among the masses, an event that is understood. i used to be a civil war scholar -- i'd rather not say that i am now, i'm very rusty, i gave it up out of frustration -- but the subject is huge and contains a wealth of information. it is not a subject that one can skirt, but a serious study of it is tremendously valuable.
...

Surely you know that other societies have their exploited peasants and others controlled by the aristocracy of their country?
About 50 years ago I heard a stotr from a neighbor. When she was 16 her parents took her to Warsaw to see the Big Hit GWTW. The next week the Germans invaded. Her family was forced out of their home and became refugees. She never saw her parents again. She did meet her brother after the war. Whenever she saw GWTW she cried altho she never lived in the South.
Europeans know a lot better about the scenes and tribulations recounted in this Hollywood film. The flames of Atlanta could be seen during WW II London and elsewhere. War is hell, said WT Sherman, it is not moonlight and magnolias.

[matt kevin jones]

All slaveholders in the South were not cruel bastards, like many would want you to think. Historians or not.
Many slaveholders were good to their slaves, ( I'm not condonig slavery by any means )
But the general stereotype that all Masters were brutal to their slaves just isint true.
Slavery in many parts of the South was an economic issue, not a Moral one. Slaveholders knew keeping Slaves was immoral, but they were also trying to hold onto a way of life, so a lot of it was economical.
I agree slavery is and was wrong, but we cannot stereotype every slaveholder as a brutal. only Immoral.

[SallyG]

we can't toss these things aside because someone is offended. concering the race issue, we would have to throw away most of american literature for that matter -- to keep from offending. (but most people don't know american literature.) in short -- we tend to think we are more "enlightened" than our historical counterparts, but the truth is we don't understand the places they occupied or the roles they had to play. they did as well as we could have done, considering the realities they lived under.

it might help our understanding to take a truly critical view of ourselves today -- how well do we hold up in the views of those looking at us 50 years from now? i think this is one of those mysteries you find in history....that we repeat ourselves, we don't actually progress as human beings of understanding and ability.

If we want to see how "enlightened" the human race is, take a look at what's going on in the world. Wars are being fought, people are being killed, crime is rampant. Should I go on? Sure, we are being politically correct and trying not to offend anyone, but in the meantime civilization is trying to destroy itself. Worrying about offending someone seems to be a pretty trivial thing.

I agree, we just repeat ourselves...and history repeats itself.

(excuse the rant...2 of my sons are in the military and have been back and forth to Iraq, and I worry on a daily basis, and I'm afraid at times I'm not always a politically correct person)

[Davo]

Yes and it's interesting that the Apostle Paul in the Bible CONDONES slavery and tells the slaves to be obedient to their masters! So we have the religious thing coming into play here in early America too. They were saving the slaves by bringing them Christianity too (in their minds). People were more religious then and more literal in their interpretations of the Bible then today as a norm. So it was a host of things, economic, religious, social etc. with the slavery issue. I can understand your concern for your sons in Iraq and will say a prayer for them. My godson just returned from 2 yrs in Afghanistan and is home for good. We are thankful. It's so interesting to read everyone's viewpoints on this. Thanks for letting me contribute.

[RayS]

Yes and it's interesting that the Apostle Paul in the Bible CONDONES slavery and tells the slaves to be obedient to their masters! So we have the religious thing coming into play here in early America too. They were saving the slaves by bringing them Christianity too (in their minds). People were more religious then and more literal in their interpretations of the Bible then today as a norm. So it was a host of things, economic, religious, social etc. with the slavery issue. I can understand your concern for your sons in Iraq and will say a prayer for them. My godson just returned from 2 yrs in Afghanistan and is home for good. We are thankful. It's so interesting to read everyone's viewpoints on this. Thanks for letting me contribute.

Yes, I'm sure your quotes are accurate.
But historic Christianity believed that only pagans should be slaves, it was uncool to enslave a Christian. COnveting to Christianity (or Islam) was the first step to emancipation.
But the religious authorities are always subject to the civil authorities.

[Davo]

I hate to contradict you but Paul was speaking to a Christian convert slave in the book of Titus. But GWTW is a great book/movie. In fact I think of the movie as the Reader's Digest Condensed version of the book. Ha!

[RayS]

I hate to contradict you but Paul was speaking to a Christian convert slave in the book of Titus. But GWTW is a great book/movie. In fact I think of the movie as the Reader's Digest Condensed version of the book. Ha!

The others often contradict me; that's what makes this board interesting.
While its not in the Bible, I'm pretty sure that slavery became extinct in the Middle Ages due to Church influence. That is why slavers sailed to non-European lands to find cheap labor (or oil and other minerals today).

[Davo]

Well, I'm not sure about slavery becoming extinct in the Middle Ages. Great Britain didn't outlaw slavery until 1808. France much earlier. Then we have the "serfs" of Russia until 1917 which I imagine is a sort of slavery. But we have the mental attitude that the slaveowners would teach the "savages" Christianity and save their souls while using their bodies for labor etc. Many an American slaveowner touted the Bible as proof of slavery being OK while in the north they touted other verses of the same Bible to say slavery should be outlawed. The old "pick and choose" method which is still being used today, especially by our politicians and clergy. I just think GWTW is written as things were in the Old South according to the stories told to Mitchell and I cannot judge her a racist for that. It is putting a fictional story into an historical setting. Much like Bertrice Small but without all the spice!

[RayS]

The French Revolutionary Armies and Napoleon eliminated serfdom in France and Europe. I'm sure it was dead by the 14th century in England.
Russia eliminated serfdom in 1863, Sweden in the 1880s (why so many Swedes migrated to Utah and freedom), Hungary in 1913. One reason Metternich hated Napoleon is that they liberated his 5,000 serfs.
But peasants still had to earn a living on the estates of the aristocrats, just like people today have to earn a living.

Serfdom meant the peasants were bound to the soil, their families could not be broken up and sold off as with American slavery. I intend to read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by next year, the book that started the Civil War. Everybody worked hard in those days, but losing parents or spouses or children would make slavery despicable for many. Even today a family break up is a hard thing. Ever read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle"?

[Davo]

Yes I have read The Jungle and the first time it made me cry at the end. I understand that Theodore Roosevelt read it and couldn't eat meat for awhile and as he was president, he started the investigations into the Chicago Stockyards and the meat industry because of it. He is called the Trustbuster but in actuality, William Howard Taft busted twice as many as Teddy. Have you ever read the Mandigo series of books by Carter and Onslott? Interesting twist on slavery as Falconhurst was a breeding plantation.

[RayS]

It was Bismarck who said "those who like laws and sausages should never visit the factory where they are ground out". Even under Kaiser Bill the people had some voice (Socialists, Christian Democrats against the aristocrats).
NO, I've never read those modern novels that are seemingly sensational.

[Davo]

Supposedly from what I've read, the Roosevelt investigation found nearly everything in the novel The Jungle to be true and that is why we have the government inspections etc today for food products. Interesting you mentioning Bismark. I went to Europe for my first trip to stay with friends near Hamburg Germany and they took me to the Bismark Museum and Mausoleum. Quite interesting. Of course we were forced, just absolutely forced to stop a this country restaurant and have tea and a delicious puff pastry filled with whipped cream and drizzled with dark chocolate with cherries on the side! Yes, just absolutely forced to do that! Ha!

[Kat]

Sounds like a Napolean.

[Davo]

Doesn't a Napoleon have different flavors of cake with filling in between? I used to work in a bakery when in High School but that was MANY moons ago! Ha! This was an almost merague type of pastry in the shape of a ball, filled and topped with whipped cream, drizzled with dark chocolate and whole cherries in syrup on the plate. What you would call it I don't know but we were forced to eat it all! Ha!