It just won’t stop. Warner Bros. yet again makes changes to their scheduled dates. This time, the Hollywood studios announced “Gone with the Wind” which was scheduled for screening on June 23rd at the Rex Theater will no longer be released.
The Romance-Drama movie was scheduled for theatrical release on June 23 to celebrate the reopening of Cinemas in France after they were all shut down due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Having been scheduled to release in France’s biggest theater, HBO Max temporarily pulled the Oscar-winning movie from their website following John Ridley’s featured article in the Los Angeles Times Newspaper. In the op-ed, John Ridley urged the streaming service to remove the movie from its library due to the way the film “romanticizes the horrors of slavery.
The award-winning classic was released in 1939 and has gone on to win eight (8) Academy awards but has always been partially criticized for its depiction of Slavery and black people as a whole. The movie starred Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, and Clark Gable and tells the story of the love between the daughter of a plantation owner and a southern aristocrat.
Realizing what releasing the movie would mean in light of the ongoing protests, HBO Max, released a statement while simultaneously pulling the movie from its website. In the statement, the streaming service said the Civil war epic would return and be available for people to watch. The service also added that it would be releasing a discussion about the historical context of the movie as well as their opposition towards the racist acts depicted in the movie.
“Gone with the Wind is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American Society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible. These depictions are certainly counter to WarnerMedia’s values, so when we return the film to HBO Max, it will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions but will be presented as it was originally created because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable, and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history”.
The move does not come as a surprise considering the ongoing Black Lives Matter #BLM protests in light of George Floyd’s death. Re-releasing such a movie would only rile more people up.
