Gone With The Wind: An Upsetting Artifact Of It’s Time
Starship Troopers, like Gone With The Wind before it, is a litmus test for media literacy. The discourse around Troopers has been reignited due to the video game Helldivers 2 having a similar propaganda campaign behind its narrative. The surface-level analysis of Helldivers/Starship Troopers is that ‘it’s fascist/military propaganda’.
True, but what is the game/movie trying to say about propaganda?
The prevailing/reactionary analysis of Gone With The Wind is ‘it’s racist’. Yes. It very much is. Its portrayal of black servants as being nothing but content and happy to serve their white masters is, to put it mildly, extremely racist. But how does it portray one of its main characters?
Rhett Butler (Clarke Gable) is made out to be a Han Solo scoundrel type, with no apparent loyalty to either cause, North or South. “I’m neither noble nor heroic.” He says at one point. “But you are a blockade runner.” Scarlette says back to him. “For profit and profit only.” Rhett retorts. Scarlette then says to that, “Are you trying to tell me you don’t believe in the cause?” Rhett says, “I believe in Rhett Butler. He’s the only cause I know. The rest doesn’t mean much to me.”
What does it say about a country when they’d rather root for a capitalist who will take advantage of both sides rather than support abolitionists?
In addition to the racism and the Bothsidesing, Gone With The Wind is filled to the brim with blatant and rampant misogyny. Pass the Bechdel test? This movie barely has women talk about themselves, never mind each other. Any woman on screen is either a nurse, a wife, or pining after men, or is aggressively, cartoonishly jealous, on the verge of fainting, or panicking.
At the end of the day, Gone With The Wind’s praiseworthy qualities align with the qualities that also won Wings, Cimerron, All Quiet On The Western Front, and Cavalcade their Best Picture Oscar; they’re all grand epics.
