One of my favorite movies of all time is Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. It is a timeless classic of what life was like in the south during the American Civil War. For someone who was born more than 100 years after the end of the Civil War, this film provided me some insight to slavery as well as women and men's gender roles during the 1860s. However, after reading Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin's book, America on Film: Representing race, class, gender and sexuality at the movies, I realized my once firm views of a historical time in our nation's history may have been more of a manipulation of the Hollywood film industry. This blog will tackle some of the issues I discovered in my readings.
The first issue I would like to address is the role males played in 1930s movies. Because of the Great Depression, Benshoff and Griffin state that men were becoming emasculated due to the inability to provide for their families as they wanted. For this reason men were generally portrayed as more violent and abusive toward women. This was a very evident component in Gone with the Wind. As you can see from the clip below, Rhett Butler, played by Clark Gable, not only threatens violence on Scarlett O'Hara, played by Vivien Leigh, but also whisks her away to the bedroom to have his way with her.
Although Scarlett does fight back a bit in this segment, ultimately Rhett wins out, taking her against her will. What I find the most disturbing, though, is that toward the end of the clip you can see Scarlett the next morning with a smile on her face thinking back on how she actually enjoyed the experience. To me, this tells the audience it is alright to treat a women this way because she secretly wants it. Meanwhile Rhett comes to apologize to Scarlett for his behavior, like somehow that will make it all okay. Benshoff and Griffin write, "Male filmgoers looked to these male stars to learn how to talk, to walk, to handle women, to handle other men -- in other words to learn how to perform masculinity successfully in their own daily lives" (p. 264). I shutter to think violence against women may have increased because of this film and the Hollywood film industry.
The second issue I would like to discuss with Gone with the Wind is the way women were also portrayed in this movie. Since this movie was filmed and released in the late 1930s, influences of the Production Code were still very evident. According to Benshofff and Griffin, "Most Hollywood genre films of the 1930s, both pre- and post-Code, were still centered on men and tended to simplify female characters into basic types drawn from the virgin-whore dichotomy" (p. 228). Notice in the clip below there are four different female characters who fall into different places in the virgin-whore dichotomy spectrum.
The first two female characters shown are Belle Watling and Prissy. Belle, as you may be able to tell, is an uneducated prostitute and Prissy is a slave child. Even though this image of a slave child may not seem very virginal, she still knows better than to associate herself with the whore figure in this movie. Although bad things never happen to Belle, she is always looked at by Scarlett and many of the other female figures as a bad person. Also I would like to point out the differences between Scarlett and Melanie Wilkes, the very weak woman seen at the end of the clip. Although Scarlett is portrayed much more virginal than Belle, she is still considered quite whorish compared to Melanie. In fact, throughout the whole movie Scarlett is consistently trying to gain the love and affection of Melanie's husband, Ashley. Her efforts are fruitless, though, as Ashley would rather be with his more frail, virginal wife than with a strong willed, flirtatious woman like Scarlett. Although these differences would not necessarily be noticed by the casual viewer, they become quite evident when you know about the Production Code's influence on movies in the 1930s.
The last subject I would like to talk about with the movie Gone with the Wind is the way the African-American characters were portrayed in this film. Since this is a movie about the south around the time of the civil war, it seems appropriate to include slaves as part of the story line. However, nearly all of the black characters seem to fit into one of the stereotypical Hollywood roles, as outline in America on Film. The clip below shows Mammy, who in fact fits the Mammy stereotype to a tee.
Benshoff and Griffin describe the Mammy character as "an overweight black woman who took care of the white master's children without concern for her own" (p. 79). As seen in the clip above, Mammy not only helped to deliver Scarlett's daughter, but also Scarlett and Scarlett's mother. However, you don't hear much about Mammy's children if there are any. It seems that Prissy may be her child, but I don't believe it is ever really stated that she is. In other parts of the film you will also see Uncle Tom characters as house servants, and a Black Buck character who works in the field and saves Scarlett when she is living in Atlanta.
Even though there are many stereotypical Hollywood influences at work in this film, Gone with the Wind will continue to be a timeless classic and one of my favorite films to enjoy on a Sunday afternoon.
