Reply to Why is "Gone With the Wind" considered offensive?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's definitely about an offensive topic, but it does such a remarkable job illustrating the fact that the world isn't as neatly split into "good guys" and "bad guys" as we'd like to believe.[/quote]

Who are the “good guys”?[/quote]

The "good guys" are supposedly the yankees, while the "bad guys" are supposedly the confederates, but it's really not as simple as that. Humans are complex.[/quote]

No, in this case, slavery is bad, anyone fighting to maintain is bad, glorifying slavery is bad. Not to mention all the other things it glorifies (violence against women, sexual assault etc). Might these things have been acceptable back then? Maybe, but that doesn't make less problematic. [/quote]

So don’t read it because our delicate sensibilities can’t handle the “problematic” truth of history?

What else should we cut out? The Crusades, ww2, the French Revolution, the entire Roman Empire? Do you think it was all sunshine and roses? [/quote]

NP. It is not an accurate portrayal of history when there is not ONE savage beating or rape of an enslaved person or even a reference to those actions. It is not an accurate portrayal of history when there is not ONE instance of an enslaved person’s resistance or running away or helping others to escape. It is not an accurate portrayal of history when there is not ONE reference to a speech, article, argument or oration by an enslaved person or a free Black person, speaking out for justice. It is a highly romanticized version of slavery where each and every slaves just loves their captors, just wants to stay on the land where they have been forced to work, and is blindly loyal to their captors and the system. In fact they look down on freed enslaved peoples and jeer at them. So there’s that. [/quote]

I understand what you are saying. But there is no one narrative for any time in history.

If your setting is the home of a happy family in WW2 Germany...it doesn't negate the fact that Jews were being slaughtered at the same time and that happy family was probably complicit.

This idea that there is only one lens in which to view history is nuts. Yes slavery was an abhorrence. But does it follow that any fiction novel set in that time MUST be historically accurate, reflective of political movement at the time and acceptable by our 21st century standards?

Humans are complicated. Memories and emotions and time muddy the waters of what is "truth." I don't know enough about Margaret Mitchell's background, but I imagine she is channeling the perspectives of people she knew who lived in the South around the Civil War. Don't make her responsible for fact checking their narrative. As much as I hate the terms "my truth" and "my lived experience"...maybe it was theirs. We don't have a time machine to get the view of the slaves in those same stories...and thats true for most of history.[/quote]

But the problem with GWTW specifically is that large amounts of white people still believe this version of history! If there comes a time when Americans know that this was a worldview that existed but that it was incorrect, then, by all means, I hope GWTW is read and enjoyed as the sweeping epic story it is. But, again, there are way too many people who BELIEVE it and want to go back to that way of life and idealize white Southern aristocracy and everything vile it was built on.[/quote]

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