The Gone With the Wind controversy and 4 contemporary films that challenge its context
For anyone who thinks that there are no racist movies in the US or that they aren't a “real” problem, I have compiled a list of movies whose main purpose is far from white supremacy propaganda, and where the African-American minorities don't play a supporting, dispensable or dangerous role - exceptions that until recently wouldn't have been possible. With that in mind, let's get back for a moment to the days when American fiction film has triumphantly emerged with Birth of a Nation (dir. David Wark Griffith, 1915), a racist work (more than 3 hours in length) where, following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, white, helpless and innocent women would be threatened with rape by some now free African-American brute. For any such act or whenever a white man felt threatened by a black man, white men hung their inferiors on their own estate. This film, which has been highly praised for its aesthetic execution, led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan three months later. 24 years later, racism stands strong on its feet with the release of another iconic American film, Gone With the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, after an adaptation of the homonymous novel written by Margaret Mitchell).
Journalist and film critic, with a master's degree in film critics. Collaborates with Scena9, Acoperișul de Sticlă, FILM and FILM Menu magazines. For Films in Frame, she brings the monthly top of films and writes the monthly editorial Panorama, published on a Thursday. In her spare time, she retires in the woods where she pictures other possible lives and flying foxes.
