I feel like today's Triad was custom picked for me. I'm getting a seat on my town's planning commission so I'm trying to read up on everything housing/urban planning related. But I'm also a huge (its like a shameful secret) Gone With the Wind fan. I know stupid amounts of useless trivia about the film, had the movie poster hanging in my …
I feel like today's Triad was custom picked for me. I'm getting a seat on my town's planning commission so I'm trying to read up on everything housing/urban planning related.
But I'm also a huge (its like a shameful secret) Gone With the Wind fan. I know stupid amounts of useless trivia about the film, had the movie poster hanging in my dorm room closet, and have revised and re-revised my opinion of the film as I've grown up, but I still think it's really important to the American legacy of film, and I love a good nuanced take on the film. You had me at rainbow script.
I have less of an issue with the fact that GWTW exists as a depiction of the civil war, and more of an issue with the fact that Hattie McDaniels and Butterfly McQueen couldn't get better roles after the movie ended. Or that it took decades and decades to make a movie like 12 Years a Slave or Harriet or Emancipation.
Ultimately I think the script accomplished what it set out to do: tell the story of the civil war from the standpoint of white slave owners. The problem is that viewers weren't interested in the other perspectives. But its white slave owners are awful. We root for Scarlett, but she's a selfish and morally bankrupt person, Ashley is a wimp who argues in favor of consanguinity, Rhett is a rapist, Melanie is naïve to the point of idiocy (A dynamic delightfully skewered in Carol Burnett's retelling of GWTW. A must watch for any fan. Or anyone who hates the movie. It's funny either way). I've always gotten the impression that the confederate apologists who defend the movie never actually sat through all 4 hours of it. I mean by the time it ends Scarlett's first 2 husbands and child are dead, her current husband is leaving her, and her lover is mourning his dead cousin/wife. I think it's pretty hard to say Gone with the Wind is a ringing endorsement of any of it's characters beliefs or behaviors...
Have never rooted for Scarlett. There are literally millions of people who have been through worse than she had to deal with and would never stoop to her behavior. She's exactly what's wrong with MAGAs as well - selfish and morally bankrupt. I finally read the book in my 40s. I finished it - that's the best I can say about it. And the movie sanitized a lot of Scarlett's behavior. About the only thing I like about the movie is the music - that might be because one of NYC's old time TV stations (Channel 9? Or 5? - I wonder if they still exist!) that showed old movies used it as its theme song.
Well, I wouldn't root for her to win what she's fighting for, I meant root for her to wake up and start fighting for the right thing! To give up on Ashley and end up with Rhett. To stop her ruthless pursuit of wealth and be content. But the film doesn't give it to her. Neither does the book, if anything the book makes it explicit how utterly alone she is. She loses her mother, then Mamie, and Melanie, each time not realizing how important each woman was to her until the person is irretrievably gone. And then Rhett walks out on her.
There's a lesson there for MAGA. Too bad they are too dim to pick up on it. But that is the central problem of the book and the movie, is it's not made explicit enough for the audience.
In those intervening decades there was a movie called Nothing But a Man (1964). As a girl I happened upon it on tv. It 'woke' me up and left me feeling desolate for days. It was about a black man in Alabama. Then, later,(1974) I also saw on tv The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, the fictional story of a girl who began life as a slave and lived to see the civil rights movement of the 1960's (based on a novel by Earnest Gaines), which was slightly more hopeful but still disturbing and reinforced my 'woke'. I am not a big movie buff, and these are just about the only movies I can vividly recall from my girlhood, along with On the Beach, about nuclear war ending the world as we know it. All 3 were surprisingly influential on my growing up.
I think it’s an important cultural artifact. I’ve used it in history classes to demonstrate how history was misinterpreted to fit contemporary agendas.
I think you'd really like the two videos in this series if you haven't already seen them. The second one has a genuinely funny update to the Ashley Wilkes soundtrack.
I feel like today's Triad was custom picked for me. I'm getting a seat on my town's planning commission so I'm trying to read up on everything housing/urban planning related.
But I'm also a huge (its like a shameful secret) Gone With the Wind fan. I know stupid amounts of useless trivia about the film, had the movie poster hanging in my dorm room closet, and have revised and re-revised my opinion of the film as I've grown up, but I still think it's really important to the American legacy of film, and I love a good nuanced take on the film. You had me at rainbow script.
I have less of an issue with the fact that GWTW exists as a depiction of the civil war, and more of an issue with the fact that Hattie McDaniels and Butterfly McQueen couldn't get better roles after the movie ended. Or that it took decades and decades to make a movie like 12 Years a Slave or Harriet or Emancipation.
Ultimately I think the script accomplished what it set out to do: tell the story of the civil war from the standpoint of white slave owners. The problem is that viewers weren't interested in the other perspectives. But its white slave owners are awful. We root for Scarlett, but she's a selfish and morally bankrupt person, Ashley is a wimp who argues in favor of consanguinity, Rhett is a rapist, Melanie is naïve to the point of idiocy (A dynamic delightfully skewered in Carol Burnett's retelling of GWTW. A must watch for any fan. Or anyone who hates the movie. It's funny either way). I've always gotten the impression that the confederate apologists who defend the movie never actually sat through all 4 hours of it. I mean by the time it ends Scarlett's first 2 husbands and child are dead, her current husband is leaving her, and her lover is mourning his dead cousin/wife. I think it's pretty hard to say Gone with the Wind is a ringing endorsement of any of it's characters beliefs or behaviors...
All I could think of when reading the GWTW part of the triad was Carol Burnette's skit. Not the movie, just the skit.
Ah, yes. The famous curtain rod and drapes.
I saw it in a window and I just had to have it!
I found a video of the skit and Burnett explaining the origin of how it got written.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8wVvGQ0P4Y
This is the original skit
Have never rooted for Scarlett. There are literally millions of people who have been through worse than she had to deal with and would never stoop to her behavior. She's exactly what's wrong with MAGAs as well - selfish and morally bankrupt. I finally read the book in my 40s. I finished it - that's the best I can say about it. And the movie sanitized a lot of Scarlett's behavior. About the only thing I like about the movie is the music - that might be because one of NYC's old time TV stations (Channel 9? Or 5? - I wonder if they still exist!) that showed old movies used it as its theme song.
Well, I wouldn't root for her to win what she's fighting for, I meant root for her to wake up and start fighting for the right thing! To give up on Ashley and end up with Rhett. To stop her ruthless pursuit of wealth and be content. But the film doesn't give it to her. Neither does the book, if anything the book makes it explicit how utterly alone she is. She loses her mother, then Mamie, and Melanie, each time not realizing how important each woman was to her until the person is irretrievably gone. And then Rhett walks out on her.
There's a lesson there for MAGA. Too bad they are too dim to pick up on it. But that is the central problem of the book and the movie, is it's not made explicit enough for the audience.
In those intervening decades there was a movie called Nothing But a Man (1964). As a girl I happened upon it on tv. It 'woke' me up and left me feeling desolate for days. It was about a black man in Alabama. Then, later,(1974) I also saw on tv The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, the fictional story of a girl who began life as a slave and lived to see the civil rights movement of the 1960's (based on a novel by Earnest Gaines), which was slightly more hopeful but still disturbing and reinforced my 'woke'. I am not a big movie buff, and these are just about the only movies I can vividly recall from my girlhood, along with On the Beach, about nuclear war ending the world as we know it. All 3 were surprisingly influential on my growing up.
I think it’s an important cultural artifact. I’ve used it in history classes to demonstrate how history was misinterpreted to fit contemporary agendas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDkwGQFLcjE
I think you'd really like the two videos in this series if you haven't already seen them. The second one has a genuinely funny update to the Ashley Wilkes soundtrack.