Theater bans Gone With The Wind for being "Insensitive"

[rukaio101]

Right, so to get this straight, a single private cinema cancelled a screening of Gone with the Wind, which they have the right to do, because they received enough protests about it from people, which said people also have the right to do, who thought it was rather inappropriate in light of recent events in Charlottesville, which is a pretty valid reason.

 

Yeah, I fail to see the problem.

 

Freedom of speech does include freedom to protest, you know? And, despite what some may think, it does not include the automatic right to a platform. There are still plenty of other ways to watch Gone with the Wind out there, there is no government oppression banning the film from being screened, it's just that one particular cinema decided not to show a movie that infamously romanticizes the Confederacy in light of a recent major pro-Confederacy/Nazi rally that ended with a woman being murdered. Not really that difficult to understand. 

 

As for the whole wider discussion on pro-Confederate media/statues/whatever, I agree with the general premise that it is possible to watch something with the context and knowledge to recognise how problematic it is. But, let's be honest here, is that really what happened with Gone with the Wind? Is it really tarred with the same level of stigma as something like Birth of a Nation (a similarly groundbreaking movie which glorified horrendous ideals)? Perhaps this is just my own personal experiences, but it's never seemed to have that same level of stigma placed upon it and its glorifications of the Confederacy are usually looked on as little more than a side note. And the reason that that is problematic is because it's symbolic of a much much wider issue, which I can sum up with one simple question.

 

Is the Confederacy looked upon with the same level of hatred as the KKK or the Nazi party?

 

It's not like it doesn't deserve to be. Slavery was the widespread systematic torture and enslavement of millions of people, a human rights violation on a massive scale, and the Confederacy chose to fight an entire war to keep it around. Yet why does it not garner that same level of instinctual hatred as the Nazis? Well, in large part because of books and films like Gone with the Wind and because of statues glorifying Confederate leaders. When you produce a bunch of media and symbols saying that the Confederacy wasn't all that bad then, believe it or not, people start to believe the Confederacy wasn't all that bad. And as much as we'd like to believe that people will look upon these symbols and recognise them for what they are, the fact is that the human brain has a significant ability to normalise this sort of stuff. It's been seen in cultures and atrocities thoughout history and should never be underestimated. It's not like even America are the only ones to do this. Japan have largely whitewashed their own history in WWII and the less said about colonialism among European countries, the better. Even my own country tends to glorify the British Empire much more than it should.

 

So how do we fight this? Simple. Change the narrative. Treat these symbols with the disdain they should be treated with and relegate them to their appropriate place in the garbage dump of history. If we wouldn't accept a statue glorifying a Nazi figure, why should we accept one glorifying a Confederate figure? Strip it all down and treat it the way it should be treated. You don't have to ban anything, just make certain the label of what it represents is irreparably attached and recognised for what it is. Only then can we start making some actual progress. 

[MOVIEGUY]

5 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

You already have John Boyega trash LOTR for being too white. Nevermind that LOTR was based on Medieval Europe so everyone looking like and living like Medieval Europe add to authenticity and is understood without saying. Same like Wakanda doesn't need diverse residents but only Africans cause it's based on African countries and is in Africa.

 

He and Oyellowo were also trashing GoT for the same reason, uneducated criticism again, cause Westeros is a Europe-like continent set in times that also correspond with Medieval Europe. Essos is the continent that corresponds with Africa (especially Middle Eastern part) and its inhabitants are brown or black (Dothraki, Meereen, etc) but GRRM focused on Westeros characters so main ones are white and that's fitting because of what I've just said. Because of stupid fucks like these two I cheer every time GoT breaks viewing records.

 

I'm so happy that PJ got LOTR made before affirmative action craze otherwise the movies would have been ruined. It's bad enough that someone was tinkering with making Sam a girl back when LOTR was filming, but fandom outcry saved it from disaster. Nowdays, there would be a Twitter outcry if Sam wasn't a girl, and if any the Fellowship member wasn't PoC even though that wouldn't fit with the allegory to Medieval England and WW2 that Tolkien was going for. 

 

 

Why does it bother you that there are people who find fantasy stuff like LOTR and GoT too white? I don't feel the same way, but their statements don't bother me. Also how would affirmative action have "ruined" LOTR?

[FantasticBeasts]

3 minutes ago, MOVIEGUY said:

Why does it bother you that there are people who find fantasy stuff like LOTR and GoT too white? I don't feel the same way, but their statements don't bother me. Also how would affirmative action have "ruined" LOTR?

It bothers me because it is nonsensial and it is undermining an important issue.

[Zakiyyah6]

I couldn't finish Gone With the Wind because the black characters were so...ugh. I have no opinion on one theater banning the film. I mean it's just one theater, who cares? It's not like the government banned it.

[Valonqar]

3 minutes ago, Webslinger said:

Its depiction of its setting hasn't aged well, for sure, but I'm willing to give it a pass for the fact that it's a well-meaning sweeping drama rather than a piece of objectively hateful propaganda. There are plenty of race-related items far worthier of outrage in America today.

GWTW the movie is straight up romance with a historical backdrop. But the movie focused on romance much more than the book where real un-PC stuff can be found and I mean REAL. Yet strangely enough, nobody is going after the book but after the movie that considerably beefed up romance and considerably filtered out uncomfortable race-related stuff. 

 

[Barnack]

24 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

Nevermind that LOTR was based on Medieval Europe so everyone looking like and living like Medieval Europe add to authenticity

Not sure if I would agree with that, LOTR is a magical setting even thought there is some england/europe geography and climate here, most of the inhabitant looks and lives nothing like Medieval Europe, the elves/dwarf/hobbits/orcs for example, not sure who the Elves represent in medieval europe or the hobbits or the dwarf but it is hard to imagine how some phenotype like red hair or skin color for the Elves could have made it less authentic than it was.

 

24 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

I'm so happy that PJ got LOTR made before affirmative action craze otherwise the movies would have been ruined. It's bad enough that someone was tinkering with making Sam a girl back when LOTR was filming, but fandom outcry saved it from disaster. Nowdays, there would be a Twitter outcry if Sam wasn't a girl, and if any the

 

I remember having Liv Tyler playing a bigger role scandal, not the Sam shifted to a girl (and cannot find anything about it online), but I'm really not sure I agree with your twitter outcry, sure everything would exist online and every sentence possible can be find, but in term of significant outcry of more than 0.01% of the 800 million western population.

 

What huge successful and respected property adaptation had some outcry to change gender of is characters ? Even the Mag 7 kept the 7 men without raising issues and that was the remake of a remake (that has a nice live but not that high of a classic you cannot touch, it was a remake after all), would not imagine a giant classic like Lords of the rings having that issue.

 

Quote

 

Fellowship member wasn't PoC even though that wouldn't fit with the allegory to Medieval England and WW2 that Tolkien was going for. 

 

WW2 allegory was something readers projected on is work according to Tolkien preface of the book later release, he started writing it year's before WW2 started and pretty mush finished before the war ended. Having serve in WW1 I would imagine that conflict must have influenced all he did too:

Tolkien, however, repeatedly insisted that his works were not an allegory of any kind.^[76] He states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.^[77] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.^[77] Tolkien had already completed most of the book, including the ending in its entirety, before the first nuclear bombs were made known to the world at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

 

"An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience," Tolkien acknowledged, but he strongly denied that his story was an allegory for World War I or II.* Although The Lord of the Rings was written during World War II and follows the rise of a great evil threatening to envelop the world, the ring was not meant to symbolize the atomic bomb. Likewise, the characters Sauron and Saruman, although both tyrants, are imaginary characters and are not meant to represent Hitler or Stalin.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Barnack

[Valonqar]

9 minutes ago, MOVIEGUY said:

Why does it bother you that there are people who find fantasy stuff like LOTR and GoT too white? I don't feel the same way, but their statements don't bother me. Also how would affirmative action have "ruined" LOTR?

Like I said, LOTR is based on medieval Europe which lands authenticity to the fantasy world. Fantasy is the best when it's based in reality. Adding Latinos (a race that didn't even exist in those times), Africans (within Euro-centric culture, not fantasy culture based on African), Asians (ditto) would not feel authentic but forced. Whether you like it or not, people understand the metaphor and that is why those stories work. They feel real because they are based on something familiar and they look familiar. The same goes for MNS ruining Avatar the Last Airbender with culturally misplaced casting. Why was Fire Nation whose ruler sat on the freakin Dragon Throne populated by Indians and Maoris? Eveyrone and their mother understand that Dragon Throne = China or at least Asia and Fire Nation was obviously a fusion of Chinese and Japanese cultures. Everything about them screamed Asians yet MNS cast Indian and Maori actors and they felt un-authentic and miscast. And don't get me started with white Inuits Katara and Sokka and white-ish or whatever Tibetan Aang. They could have cast authetic but they didn't and the mistake wasn't just in white-washing 3 characters but those Indians and Maoris were just awful too. When something doesn't fit everyone's gonna see it doesn't fit. 

[Cmasterclay]

37 minutes ago, Water Bottle said:

@Cmasterclay

 

I think your taking things a bit far by the way. Gone with the Wind was very much a product of it's time, yes, but there is artistic value in that as well.

I mean it obviously has artistic value. Birth of a Nation is one of the most important blockbuster films ever. Triumph of the Will is onr of the best shot and staged docs ever. I'm not saying that GWTW is that bad obviously, but artistic value does not preclude hateful ideas.

 

Basically, my friend @rukaio101 summed it up. The Confederacy wasn't just the losing side of the war. What they believed in was evil. My mom's entire extended family was murdered in the Holocaust for being Jewish, and I am 1000 percent ready to put the Confederacy on the same level of evil when my dad's entire family fought for them. Historical estimates put 25m+ black people who died in slavery easily. That's the biggest mass genocide in history. So celebrating the Confederacy is the same thing as celebrating Nazism, in terms of death and evil wrought.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Cmasterclay

[Cmasterclay]

I don't really pick into LOTR or Thrones for being too white and I obviously enjoy them, but I will say that someone who is actually upset about those movies potentially featuring black people because it will be "forced" in our silly medieval dragon fantasies is def way way worse than someone being upset about lack of representation.

[Mulder]

Here comes Valonqar's #HotTake that everyone loves. How long until he starts saying Finn was the worst thing to happen to SW since Jar-Jar.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Mulder

[4815162342]

5 hours ago, CoolioD1 said:

vivien leigh is really great in this movie. all-timer performance. a shame her list of film credits is so small. one of the best actresses of that era. street car is also up there as incredible work.

 

  

 

 

I find it a movie that is less than the sum of its parts. Leigh and Gable are great, the production values are great, etc., but it feels a bit too staid and the writing isn't anything to write home about.

[MOVIEGUY]

6 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

Like I said, LOTR is based on medieval Europe which lands authenticity to the fantasy world. Fantasy is the best when it's based in reality. Adding Latinos (a race that didn't even exist in those times), Africans (within Euro-centric culture, not fantasy culture based on African), Asians (ditto) would not feel authentic but forced. Whether you like it or not, people understand the metaphor and that is why those stories work. They feel real because they are based on something familiar and they look familiar. The same goes for MNS ruining Avatar the Last Airbender with culturally misplaced casting. Why was Fire Nation whose ruler sat on the freakin Dragon Throne populated by Indians and Maoris? Eveyrone and their mother understand that Dragon Throne = China or at least Asia and Fire Nation was obviously a fusion of Chinese and Japanese cultures. Everything about them screamed Asians yet MNS cast Indian and Maori actors and they felt un-authentic and miscast. And don't get me started with white Inuits Katara and Sokka and white-ish or whatever Tibetan Aang. They could have cast authetic but they didn't and the mistake wasn't just in white-washing 3 characters but those Indians and Maoris were just awful too. When something doesn't fit everyone's gonna see it doesn't fit. 

 

Too many darkies, got it. Look I know you included the whole Last Airbender thing that I gave up on two lines in to show that you're not a racist and I believe you, I think your gripe is that you just take this fantasy shit too damn seriously and the more you try and elaborate on it the more coo-coo/borderline racist you sound. It's fine, these stories are make believe, they can be whatever we want them to be. I would love an all-black LOTR, that would be fucking badass.

[Cmasterclay]

Man oh man when they remake Lord of the Rings in 40 years they need to cast John Boyega as Gandalf.

[rukaio101]

11 minutes ago, Valonqar said:

Like I said, LOTR is based on medieval Europe which lands authenticity to the fantasy world. Fantasy is the best when it's based in reality. Adding Latinos (a race that didn't even exist in those times), Africans (within Euro-centric culture, not fantasy culture based on African), Asians (ditto) would not feel authentic but forced. Whether you like it or not, people understand the metaphor and that is why those stories work. They feel real because they are based on something familiar and they look familiar. 

Funnily enough, this is actually a pitch-perfect argument for why we do need more diversity in films and portrayals. Why? Because there were black people and people of other races in Medieval Europe. Loads of them. Traders, workers, even a few minor nobles and knights here and there. They're not exactly pushed front and center in the history books, but they were there.

 

So how come nobody ever brings them up? Well, it's quite simple. The major reason that the general view of Medieval Europe as being whites only is because almost every piece of media produced about said era chooses to portray it as being whites only. Which is kinda the problem.

 

 

 

[Zakiyyah6]

5 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:

I don't really pick into LOTR or Thrones for being too white and I obviously enjoy them, but I will say that someone who is actually upset about those movies potentially featuring black people because it will be "forced" in our silly medieval dragon fantasies is def way way worse than someone being upset about lack of representation.

I always find it strange that people say that dragons and Magic were more likely to exist than black people in that part of the world. That's always a deeply disturbing comment to me and shows how vehemently some white people just don't want to see non-white people in the media they consume. I always hear how non-white characters are forced into this or that movie. I mean the uproar about the Force Awakens co-starring a black actor was bizarre because why can't a black character have an actual lead role in a Star Wars movie? And yes some argue it was because all the Stormtroopers were supposed to be clones but they aren't and yet you see people call him an affirmative action hire? I think a lot of the people complaining just didn't want to see a black actor in a lead role in Star Wars. They were fine with Lando Calrissian standing in the background and whatever the heck Samuel Jackson was doing in his small pointless role.

 

Lord of the Rings came out a ton of years ago I don't care to litigate whether that should have had black people and or people of color or not but something like Game of Thrones definitely could have. See I don't care to put too much energy into what Hollywood was doing 10-15 years ago but I want them to change now. We can't change the past but we can change the future. I mean Lord of the Rings is not a statute celebrating evil slavery loving traitors. I don't think it should be torn down and I don't feel bad for loving the film series. Criticism is of course always fine with regards to films and Lord of the Rings is no exception.

[grey ghost]

1 hour ago, James said:

Overreacting much? Where did I say anything about lgbtq people or poc particularly? It is just a general truth that there needs to be a balance between respecting your fellow man and having freedom of speech. In today's world anything can be interpreted in a negative way. What's next? Banning LOTR because it's too white? My point was: this is a movie. A movie made tens of years ago. Why the sudden interest in crucifying it? 

 

1) In case you didn't know, political correctness usually addresses bigotry. 

 

2) I support the freedom of speech but that doesn't mean freedom from criticism. You can say ugly and nasty things. The government can't prevent you from doing so but society has the freedom to point out how ugly and nasty your words are. The whole backlash against political correctness is what got Trump elected. The backlash against political correctness is far more dangerous than political correctness itself which is simply an effort to keep bigotry taboo.

 

3) This whole LOTR nonsense is silly and being used as a strawman against valid concerns about society glorifying slavery and the defenders of slavery.

[4815162342]

6 minutes ago, Zakiyyah6 said:

They were fine with Lando Calrissian standing in the background

 

Since when was Lando a background character? In ROTJ he's the face and hero of the space battle.

[DAR]

8 minutes ago, rukaio101 said:

Funnily enough, this is actually a pitch-perfect argument for why we do need more diversity in films and portrayals. Why? Because there were black people and people of other races in Medieval Europe. Loads of them. Traders, workers, even a few minor nobles and knights here and there. They're not exactly pushed front and center in the history books, but they were there.

 

So how come nobody ever brings them up? Well, it's quite simple. The major reason that the general view of Medieval Europe as being whites only is because almost every piece of media produced about said era chooses to portray it as being whites only. Which is kinda the problem.

 

 

 

 I don't if someone makes a movie a white Irish albino family I'm not exactly going to be looking for diversity

[cookie]

12 minutes ago, DAR said:

 I don't if someone makes a movie a white Irish albino family I'm not exactly going to be looking for diversity

Extreme examples like that aren't exactly comparable to broad fantasy.

[MOVIEGUY]

17 minutes ago, DAR said:

 I don't if someone makes a movie a white Irish albino family I'm not exactly going to be looking for diversity

4 minutes ago, cookie said:

Extreme examples like that aren't exactly comparable to broad fantasy.

No he's right. I hate how liberal Hollywood is always shoehorning minorities into movies about white Irish albino families. It makes me sick.

Edited August 28, 2017 by MOVIEGUY