Inaccuracies In Gone With The Wind

In 1939, Victor Fleming directed one of the most influential films of the 20th century. While Gone With The Wind serves as a time capsule for southern lifestyle in the antebellum period, the film’s narrative delivers a great deal of social and political implications toward the 19th and 20th century. When first released in 1939, the film was a major turning point in the motion-picture industry; Audiences were dazzled by both the grand scale of the film, and its portrayal and idolization of the American lifestyle in the South. But while the film’s commercial success secured its categorization as a classic, it contains many historical inaccuracies and racist narrative elements. Gone With the Wind delivers an inaccurate depiction of the Southern

However, the narrative fallacy with nostalgia is that it surrounds the notion of glorifying the most positive aspects of the past, and disregarding the negatives. In the case of Gone With the Wind the film glorifies the American spirit of the plantation lifestyle without acknowledging the presence of slavery. It is within this facet of the films narrative that its racism is exposed. In order for the audience to identify with the struggle of Scarlett O’Hara, the film must first present her surroundings and lifestyle as being both elegant and in tune with the spirit of America. The film’s opening credits achieve this effect in its flowery display of southern landscapes, including the images of slaves working in the cotton fields. This imagery, which is set to an emotionally orchestrated score, prepackages the narrative as being honorable and patriotic even through the explicit portrayal of slavery. The audience’s loyalty to the characters and lifestyle is purchased though the noble portrayal of the Old

In the first scene that depicts slaves working, the two men argue over who is in charge of calling “quits” for the day. While this may appear insignificant, it illustrates the notion that the slaves are both enjoying, and taking pride in their work. When the slave yells “quitting time” he does so with a sense of accomplishment, as if completing an honest days work, one that was “graciously” given to him by his master. The convention of nostalgia is deeply embedded in the film, and as a result, acts as its greatest racial vice. Gone With the Wind is a heavily distorted view of the past. Its narrative takes the Americanized spirit of plantation lifestyle and uses it as fuel to the characterization of Scarlett as being a strong, independent, woman, rather than an instigator of slavery and age-old lifestyles that have truly “gone with the wind,” as the film poetically expresses. But the film’s deeper fallacies lie within the ignorance towards slavery as a whole. The backdrop of the film is the civil war, and the fight for emancipation, but the narrative very seldom makes implications on the moral nature of