Gone with the Wind and HBO

I am not as fond of the movie Gone with the Wind as some people are. It is surely an impressive production, and Gable and Leigh do a fine job with their characters, but there are a number of movies from the same year of 1939 that I enjoy more and think are better. Its pro-Confederacy propaganda is not the worst I’ve seen in movies from about that time, but it is bad enough.  (The worst I know about is Curtiz’s Santa Fe Trail with its thesis that things would have been fine if not for those busybody abolitionists. It was part of the political correctness of the day not to offend southerners by saying anything insensitive or divisive about the Confederacy.)  Its at least implied support of slavery is worse.

However it is wrong to judge art solely by political ideology. To cite a couple of extreme examples, Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein were talented film makers whose works promoted two of the worst regimes and ideologies in world history. One worked for the Nazis, and the other served the Soviets. That does not mean that one should not watch Olympia or Potemkin, and it certainly does not mean they should be banned.  It would take a Manichean dogmatist or at least an idealist in Mencken’s sense (a person who observing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, assumes it would make better soup) to think so.  

It was crude and stupid virtue signaling for HBO to pull Gone with the Wind  to return it only with a disclaimer which one presumes will alert those otherwise unable to figure it out that the movie slants things toward the viewpoint of the Johnny Rebs (which may say something about the opinion the bosses at HBO have about the intelligence of their customers).  It was also worrisome. The availability of movies or other works of art should not be  dictated by the  sensitivities and demands of pressure groups – whether Black Lives Matter, the National Legion of Decency, or anybody else.  We are not there yet, but there are people working to get us there.

 I have thought it was a good idea for a person to have his own copies of the books, movies and music he really likes, in his own possession, not in anybody’s cloud, or depending on anybody’s continuing to offer a given product.  I was less concerned about censorship or altering works than about the risk that vendors may just stop carrying some things one might want.  I still think that is the main reason for having one’s own libraries, but the risk of  censorship and/or bowdlerizing seems to be a little higher than it used to be.  

I have read that many vendors of DVDs and Blu-Rays sold out of Gone with the Wind after HBO pulled it. So lots of people may be starting to worry.   It is likely that to the extent that people do decide to buy their own media, their interest in HBO will decrease. That is okay. It would serve them right.