What ‘The Help’ and ‘Gone With the Wind’ (don't) tell us about Hollywood's racial progress

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As civil rights protests sweep the country, both 'The Help' and 'Gone with the Wind' have resurfaced as Hollywood talking points. They each say something different about the long, slow march for progress.

and proceeded to recommend several other films directed by and centering Black talent.)

There is something instructive, I think, about McDaniel’s defense and Davis’ regret. One reason “Gone With the Wind”is that it’s so defiant, so unrepentant about what it is. Perhaps the most galling thing about its rosy depiction of the Old South is that, while far from accidental, it feels curiously incidental to the movie’s only real concern, which is to make Scarlett O’Hara the greatest American heroine ever to grace the silver screen.

It’s a complicated text, in other words, a repository of strange, contradictory meanings that — as the critic Angelica Jade Bastién pointed out in herfor New York magazine/Vulture — cannot be reduced to something as single-minded as a Confederate monument. “If ‘Gone With the Wind’ were consigned to the past,” Bastién wrote, “it would make it easier for many to forget how indicative it is of our present.

Comfort, in other words — or at least, comfort as a lot of white viewers might define it. We’ve happily seen some powerful correctives to that approach in recent years. We’ve seen, among others, “Moonlight” and “Mudbound” and “Black Panther” and “BlacKkKlansman” and “Get Out” and “12 Years a Slave,” all artful films that put Black individuality and experience powerfully front and center.

It’s hard not to keep returning to the Oscars, whose choices are easy to scoff at but have, for better and often for worse, shaped the lens through which we view Hollywood history. The academy has of course made progress — a diversifying membership and the president’s displeasure are both good signs — and it has, one that will more accurately reflect the demographics of the world at large. This too might be a performative gesture.

 

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Yes please alienate Holly-wierd from the election cycle

My favorite part of your articles is the first two paragraphs. They aren't behind a paywall so if I find the story interesting enough I Google the topic and read it on a newspaper that understands how the internet works... for free! Thanks! getwiththeTimes SeeWhatIdidthere

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