"Birth of a Nation" is such a caricature I don't think it needs any explaining or context.
SPOILER ALERT The final scene where the father is ready to club his daughter to death with a pistol that has no ammunition rather than let her fall into the hands of the lecherous black aggressors, and then the Ku Klux Klan heroically rides to the rescue, is disturbing. "Gone With the Wind" is beautifully shot and epic in scale, even by today's standards. It could be easier to hide the racism in there. In the 1970s, "Gone With the Wind" topped many best movie lists, ,but has been in decline. The AFI best movie list after 100 years lists it as sixth. It is much lower on many others. And awareness of racism had little to do with it, I think. People just developed more sophisticated tastes. The picture book quality of "Gone With the Wind" is less impressive. "Birth of a Nation" was fantastically profitable for DW Griffith. It was shown before they had formal movie theaters. Frequently they just set up a tent, put in seats and charged admission. It played for years. It has the distinction to be the first movie screened at The White House, in 1915. It was based on a novel called "The Klansman," which, as racist literature goes, was not a poorly written book. I'm not calling it a good book. But compared to say "The Turner Diaries," the writer had storytelling skills. "The Turner Diaries" was written like you'd expect an associate professor of physics at a community college to write a novel. On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 4:35 PM PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote: > So, the subject header here is somewhat misleading. They are not removing > it, they are taking it down until they can replace it with a version that > is not censored or bowdlerized, but includes critical commentary and > historical context. See WaPo piece linked below. > > I think this is appropriate and long overdue. I grew up watching GWTW and > Birth of a Nation. Both films have value, both in terms of the craft of > film making and as artifacts of their prior in social history. Neither > should be censored, and I have argued against doing that over and over with > my liberal friends. But neither should they just be released to free range > in the culture, shaping assumptions and attitudes uncritically. Nobody will > be forced to view the new material, but everybody will have it available as > the default option. > > I agree with the comment that many corporations are engaging in shallow > performative and ultimately meaningless gestures of support for BLM. I > don’t think this is an example of it. > > > > https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hbo-max-isnt-censoring-gone-with-the-wind-its-reframing-it/2020/06/10/d78544ec-ab3e-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html > > > On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 11:14 AM 'Bob Jersey' via TVorNotTV < > tvornottv@googlegroups.com> wrote: > >> >> >> Moi, this morning (6/10): >>> >>> Temporarily, the streamer told Variety, until a discussion about its >>> historical context and a denouncement of its biased depictions can be >>> offered with it. >>> >>> >>> https://variety.com/2020/film/news/hbo-max-gone-with-the-wind-removed-1234629892/ >>> (link) >>> >>> >>> Thank this op-ed in the LAT (possible $) by Oscar®-winning screenwriter >> John Ridley for WM's decision... >> >> >> https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-08/hbo-max-racism-gone-with-the-wind-movie >> (link) >> >> B >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "TVorNotTV" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/bfafe532-719f-45c2-b078-abc8749e0c50o%40googlegroups.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/bfafe532-719f-45c2-b078-abc8749e0c50o%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > Sent from Gmail Mobile > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJSTUNbEHYSZiOuyZSK3af-yzyBkLA2gHndjObN_DqTKA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAKGtkYJSTUNbEHYSZiOuyZSK3af-yzyBkLA2gHndjObN_DqTKA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAH5J8yx%2BasSVNJDYYoepuDhbkaoSu%2BN6b9bq1m%3Dd6B3C8vtBTQ%40mail.gmail.com.
