Several weeks ago, in the wake of the Charlottesville tragedy, I offered my opinion on the debate at the heart of it: the presence or removal from public spaces of monuments to the Confederacy and the "Lost Cause" it attempted to protect and vindicate. At the time, I offered the opinion that any so-called "free speech" issue inherently raised by this debate was a matter largely resolvable by the application of the maximum that context is all, especially when the "all" in question consists of cultural artifacts. You can see my post on this subject here, in full.
I'll use a few lines here to expound on my views as expressed in the earlier post.
The purpose of placing a monument in a public space is typically to honor the people, organization or event that forms the subject matter of the monument. A monument may, or may not, be a great work of art, or even a work of art, period. But it is, in fact, meant to serve as an honor. And, like it or not, societies do not build monuments to those who stood in opposition to it, especially through war. The reality of the Civil War is the following: the North won, the Confederate states were re-admitted to the Union as part of the United States of America, and slavery was abolished. Since the end of the Civil War, we have gone forward as one nation. That fact is the true "heritage" to come out of the Civil War, not the attempt of a morally bankrupt kleptocracy to form its own nation.
Having said that, I must also acknowledge the fact that there is a cultural consideration as well. Many of the Confederate monuments in question are statutes and, as such, constitute works of art, however primitive their creation. A large number of the monuments in question were mass-produced from molds and using cheap materials, which might call into some degree of question their merits as works of art. But, for my purposes, I'm happy to waive that point. That is at least in part because there are simple ways of resolving this debate: either move the monuments to private locations at museums or historical societies, where many appropriate ways to provide context exist, or to leave them in place and provide context on the spot, perhaps with signs, additional monuments, or other methods.
Equally important, if not more so, all of us should be wary of any effort to resolve a political controversy by the destruction of art, however primitive or offensive they may be. There is no bottom to that approach once it is taken, and the pursuit of it can lead to the loss of any ability within a society to peaceably communicate about anything at all. Moreover, if progressives go down that route in dealing with Confederate monuments, they would have as little moral standing as did many of the historical despots they rightly protest.
Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to the subject of the 1939 classic M-G-M film, "Gone With the Wind," and this article about it from Slate.com, focusing as it does on the question of whether it deserves to be treated in much the same manner as the statutes that make up many Confederate monuments.
Even accounting for the grosses of modern-day blockbuster films, "Gone With the Wind" is still, when adjustments are made for inflation, still the most successful film of all time at the U.S. box office. That's a fairly impressive accomplishment for a film primarily celebrated as one of the screen's all-time great romances. Personally, I tend to take issue with whether the "romance" itself is truly classic, as it involves two world-class narcissists whose narcissism allows each of them to survive individually, but overpowers any sense of the level of sacrifice needed to make a romance last a lifetime. This is why I believe, unlike most people (I suspect), that when Rhett Butler walks out the door without giving a damn, it is really and truly final, and Scarlett O'Hara finds a way to go on without him.
I'll let that pass, however, and get to the point. "Gone With the Wind" is popular and, as noted in the article, still popular. Yet, like the statues at the heart of the Charlottesville controversy, it is a celebration of a society that existed entirely on the legal ability to import, use, and ultimately destroy human beings as though they were property, simply on the basis of the color of their skin. The film effectively asks us, especially though its ubiquitous title cards, that the destruction of this society was some sort of great tragedy, one to be mourned throughout the ages. Descendents of plantation owners may have one view of that subject; descendents of slaves just might have another one.
And yet, "Gone With the Wind," purely from the production-values standpoint, is without question an impressive film, particularly in the Atlanta siege sequence, where the horrors of war, from an amputation without anesthesia to the burning of a railway depot, were re-created to such a realistic degree that the film as a whole set a new standard for subsequent historic epics, and one that even today is still difficult to beat. William Cameron Menzies, the production designer for "Gone With the Wind," brought the same level of talent and technical ability on display in his 1936 film, "Things to Come," a "future history" of the world by H.G. Wells which is itself tarnished by traces of Wells' anti-Semitism.
Even without those values, the appropriate way to treat the film would be, and is, in the same way that the Confederate monuments are treated--not by a ban or by destruction, but by proper curation with the provision of the appropriate context. If the article is to be believed, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be, that is happening, and hopefully will serve as a guide for resolving similar controversies in the future.*
*Full disclosure: Russ Collins, who is quoted in the article, is a personal friend though our mutual membership in the League of Historic American Theaters (lhat.org).
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