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Lost cause view of civil war
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The film, Gone with the Wind became a cultural phenomenon after its release in 1939. The Civil War based film follows the storyline of Scarlett O’Hara. The lead heroine is dealt with the hardships of love as well as the destruction of her town. Set in the South, the movie stresses the community’s devotion to the confederacy. After its box office success, many historians believed that the film had a strong influence on America’s perception of the Civil War. That influence being a backing attitude towards the Lost Cause. The term Lost Cause refers to the white southerners admirable view towards the defeated confederacy. In Gone with the Wind, this idea was expressed in several scenes. For example, one of the leading characters, Rhett Butler, joined the confederate army after he witnessed the fall of Atlanta. Aware of the army’s inevitable defeat, he still enlisted to prove his support towards his native soil. However, the classic used the south’s dedication in fighting for their homeland as a backdrop to the plot. The prime angle of the film alluded to the romanticism of O’Hara’s character. With little mention of the war, the plot mainly dealt with her hardships in love. Most of the scenes were comprised with theatrical background music and extravagant acting. Rather than categorizing Gone with The Wind as a civil war film, it is evident that the motion picture belongs in the drama/ romance genre. Predominantly, Gone with the Wind focuses on the life of a southern female woman. The American Civil War is merely discussed when the war affects her personal life. Released in 1915, Birth of a Nation became America’s first full length film. The three hour silent movie reflected on two families, one from the south and one in the north, ... ... middle of paper ... ...ed April 26, 2014). Dances with wolves. Santa Monica, CA: TIG Productions,Inc., 1990. FilmBug. "Movie History." . http://www.filmbug.com/dictionary/moviehistory.php (accessed ). Gallagher, Gary W. 2008. Causes won, lost, and forgotten: how Hollywood & popular art shape what we know about the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. George Mason University. "The Birth of A Nation and Black Protest." . http://chnm.gmu.edu/episodes/the-birth-of-a-nation-and-black-protest/ (accessed April 24, 2014). Glory. Directed by Edward Zwick. E.U.: TriStar Pictures, 1989. Griffith, D. W., Frank E. Woods, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, and Miriam Cooper. 1915. The Birth of a nation. [United States of America]: Griffith Feature Films. Leigh, Vivien, Hattie McDaniel, Clark Gable, and Eddie Anderson. 1939. Gone With The Wind. [United States]: Warner Home Video.
Inherit the Wind. Dir. Stanley Kramer. With Spencer Tracy, Fredrick March, and Gene Kelly. MGM. 1960.
McPherson, James M.; The Atlas of the Civil War. Macmillan: 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY. 1994.
They brought real Natives to play the Natives on the big screen and eventually movies were created by Natives themselves. Around the same time was the Hippie movement; many people wanted to be like the Natives they saw in the films even though it was not an accurate depiction of the Natives. They liked the 'positive stereotypes' of the Natives in the movies, the family unity and their strength as warriors. In the 1960's the American Indian Movement (AIM) also began and in 1973 The genocide at Wounded Knee occurred. Jim Jarmusch says “That is a genocide that occurred and the [American] culture wanted to perpetrate the idea that [the natives] these people are now mythological, you know, they don’t even really exist, they’re like dinosaurs.” This shows just how much Americans wanted to belittle the Natives, and despite succeeding for a number of years, the New Age of Cinema commenced and movies like Smoke Signals began what some would look at as a Renaissance. The Renaissance explained in Reel Injun discusses the rebirth of the Native American in the Hollywood films, and how the negative stereotypes went away with time. Reel Injun also makes a point to explain how it impacted not only the films but Americans who watched them, and ultimately America as a
Wizard of Oz, The. Dir. Victor Fleming. Perf. Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, and Ray Bolger. Warner Bros., 1939.
North by Northwest. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Prod. Alfred Hitchcock. By Ernest Lehman. Perf. Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. Carroll, and Martin Landau. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1959. DVD.
Rebel Without a Cause. Dir. Nicholas Ray. Perf. James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Jim
The Manchurian Candidate. Dir. John Frankenheimer. Prod. John Frankenheimer and George Axelrod. By George Axelrod. Perf. Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and Angela Lansbury. United Artists, 1962.
After watching this film, I realized how little I knew about the American Civil War. The film provided me with more information about how many died as a result of this war and how this changed America completely. The civil war brought horrible modern conformation that included mass slaughter because “nearly two and a half percent of the population would die in the conflict -- an estimated 750,000 people in all -- more than in all other American wars combined” (“American Experience”). Never before, and never since, this war people
On March 3, 1915 the movie The Birth of a Nation was released at the Liberty Theatre in New York City. This film was financed, filmed, and released by the Epoch Producing Corporation of D.W. Griffith and Harry T. Aitken. It was one of the first films to ever use deep-focus shots, night photography, and to be explicitly controversial with the derogatory view of blacks.
The Birth of a Nation (1915) is one of the most controversial movies ever made in Hollywood, some people even consider it the most controversial movie in the long history of Hollywood. Birth of a Nation focuses on the Stoneman family and their friendship with the Cameron’s which is put into question due to the Civil War, and both families being on different sides. The whole dysfunction between the families is carried out through important political events such as: Lincoln’s assassination, and the birth of the Ku Klux Kan. D.W. Griffith is the director of the movie, and him being born into a confederate family in the South, the movie portrays the South as noble and righteous men, who are fighting against the evil Yankees from the North, who have black union soldiers among them, whom overtake the town of Piedmont, which leads the KKK to take action and according to the movie become the savior of white supremacy. During this essay, I would focus on the themes of racial inequality, racism, and the archetypical portrayal of black people in the movie, which are significant especially during the era when the film was released.
Margaret Mitchell's romantic epic, Gone With the Wind, owes its remarkable popularity to the climate of sudden self-destruction and dreariness the Depression created. The Old South's grandeur, coupled with its Civil War-era decadence, provided much-needed escapism for readers, as well as paralleling the U.S.'s own plight in the 20s and 30s. In addition, Scarlett O'Hara's feminist role, her devotion to her land, and her indomitable optimism lent hope to those who had lost faith in the American Dream.
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell was born in the year 1900 to an upper-middle class family of Georgia. She was a bit of a rebel, no doubt the result of a suffragist mother and an attorney father. This tomboyish behavior of her young self matches that of the main character of her novel, Scarlett O’Hara. As she grew up, she was surrounded by stories of the Civil War as told by her ancestors. This inspired her setting of the Civil War for Gone With the Wind. Her major interest began under the advisement of her beloved English teacher Eva Paisley. While in Paisley’s class, Mitchell wrote her first attempt at a novel titled The Big Four, which was about a group of four girls at a boarding school. Her main character, named Margaret, was an extremely brave and headstrong character that saved her friends from all kinds of things from fires to ruining of a girl’s father. While most who read young Mitchell’s work loved it, she
Although gilded by romance and tribulations, this film has influenced how southern culture is viewed. In Karen L. Cox’s article titled “Gone with the Wind as Southern History”, Margaret Mitchell claimed to be quite embarrassed at some of the film’s repercussions. Mitchell discusses the film saying, “Southerners could write the truth about the antebellum South, but everyone would go on believing in the Hollywood version.” This exploits the idea that films in today’s media-driven country heavily influence the way we think. Some critics refute the film as being one-hundred percent historically correct, while others say the majority is correct, therefore shaping the view of the southern culture during this time period. Mitchell stands behind her film saying, “People believe what they like to believe, and the mythical Old South has too strong a hold on their imaginations to be altered by the mere reading of [my] book.” As the most influential medium of popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century, movies shaped what people learned about history. And during the 1930s, movies set in the Old South were very popular. Yet, African Americans fought back. This film was reviled for its racism. They argued that the film not only damaged their race, but it also damaged the fight over civil
Coppola, Frances Ford. Apocalypse Now. Metro Goldwyn Mayer/ United Artists. Video: Prarmount Home Video. 1979.
“It was better to know the worst than to wonder”(Mitchell 526). In 1936, Margret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” generated mass uproar over its initial release. The racial language and romanticization of its slave-owning main characters continues to cause controversy today. However, while the novel includes racist attributes, it is hardly meant to discriminate. Mitchell was, in fact, attempting to illustrate through the characters the glamorized view plantation owners had of slave’s livelihood under their care. Mitchell later utilizes events of the civil war such as Sherman’s March, in order to give specific examples of how this thought process proved to be flawed and led to many slave owner’s demise. Therefore, the novel “Gone With the Wind”