As the "Black Lives Matter" campaign continued to ferment and calls for police reform grew, the anti-racist wave began to spread from the streets to more areas.
Yesterday, HBO MAX temporarily removed the epic film "Gone with the Wind", which reflected the American Civil War, causing a sensation. You know, Gone with the Wind was listed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as one of the greatest films of the 20th century. Just in February this year, US President Trump also mentioned at a rally that he was dissatisfied with the results of this year's Oscar for Best Picture and should let movies like "Gone with the Wind" return.
How did it suddenly come that the famous "Gone with the Wind" was removed from its own platform?
Removed, and then what?
Filmed in 1939, Gone with the Wind, starring Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and Heidi McDaniel, is a love affair that reflects the United States during the Civil War and post-war Atlanta. The film has won eight Oscars, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, including the first-ever Oscar awarded to a black person.
The removal of such a world-famous film is not without warning.
On the 8th local time, John Ridley, the screenwriter of the Oscar movie "Twelve Years of Slavery", published an article in the Los Angeles Times, asking HBO MAX to remove "Gone with the Wind". "The film is either ignoring the horrors of slavery or creating the most painful stereotypes of people of color," he wrote.
Ridley is referring to the historical limitations of Gone with the Wind as an adaptation of the film. The 800,000-word novel is condensed into a film of about 4 hours long, even if compared with many movies now, 4 hours is already a considerable length, but the choice and abandonment of the plot, the shaping of the character image, and the transformation of the medium from text to image will make the film more dramatic than the original to a certain extent.
Scarlett's suffering as a result of the Civil War is "romanticized" in the film, while the slave is portrayed as a "happy man" who is satisfied with most of his possessions and loyal to his master. Ridley said the film "glorifies the pro-slavery South and masks the brutality of racial discrimination."
"Until now, no one has even given a warning or statement about this movie before the main film." "Removing a classic Hollywood movie sounds like a big deal, but it's not a big deal compared to kids asking you if you want to go on an anti-racism march and asking if you've done anything about creating a better world," he said. ”
After the film was removed, an HBO MAX spokesperson also gave an official statement, acknowledging that "Gone with the Wind" contained racist depictions and that it was irresponsible for the platform to continue to play the film without providing explanations and criticisms. HBO MAX said that the film will be re-launched after a short takedown, and when the film returns, it will add annotations to the historical background at that time and criticism of the depiction of black life in the film, but the film itself will not make any changes.
hbomax declaration
The anti-racial wave is pouring into the film and television industry
The recent situation in the United States has affected more than just the work "Gone with the Wind".
The 2011 movie "Help" has skyrocketed since its launch on Netflix on June 1. But as more and more people watched it, netizens, represented by protesters, questioned whether the film about racial reconciliation "could not afford such a high rating" and was not suitable for such attention at this time.
In addition, cops, a reality show that premiered in 1989 about the toughness of the U.S. police, was scheduled to air its latest season on June 1, but has announced an emergency suspension and will not continue production. The American detective documentary "Straight to the Hunt: Live pd" was suspended, and the well-known British comedy sketch series "Little Britain" was also removed from the shelves because the white actors in the play painted "black faces" when playing black characters.
Film and television works have fallen into a whirlpool of racial issues, some because of the content of the work and the theme itself, and some because of the words and deeds of the participants.
Leia Michelle, a Jewish actress who plays Rachel Berry in the American drama Glee, posted on social media on May 29: "George Floyd has suffered injustice. This is not an isolated case, and it must be completely ended to this kind of thing. The life of a negro is also a fate. Unexpectedly, the post was "overturned" soon after the post was issued, and the African-American actress Samantha Marie Weir, who had co-starred with "Glee", replied that she would never forget the painful memories that Michelle brought to herself during the filming of the play.
"Do you remember? You told everyone that if you get the chance, you'll have to pull a inside Samantha's wig. Samantha's name-calling reveals Michelle's bullying behavior. At a time when contradictions are intensifying, this bullying is labeled "racial discrimination".
Hollywood's "white" monopoly
The 2014 film "Selma" has recently regained the focus of the news as a wave of protests. Shot by African-American female director Ava Duvernay, the film, with the theme of the black civil rights movement, received a lot of media acclaim at the time, but eventually received only two nominations for the Oscar for Best Picture and Best Original Song. Such a result directly led to the 2015 Oscar being criticized as "too white".
Djoole said she used to work as a cast publicist, and at the time, she was often the only black person on the crew. In Hollywood, she stressed, there is still an "invisible barrier" between whites and blacks, but it is rarely mentioned.
According to The New York Times, more than 70 percent of the characters involved in the most popular American films of 2017 were white, with blacks making up 12.1 percent of them. Hollywood has always been a white male-dominated place. In Hollywood, some ethnic minority workers are reluctant to even enter their racial information in the film and television industry union system for fear of losing potential job opportunities. In order to increase the racial diversity of Hollywood film practitioners, the union has launched a number of programs for minority members, some of which have been successful, but the status quo is still considered to be far from enough effort in the industry.
A similar phenomenon occurs in Europe. In 2018, four young Members of an organisation called Legally Black replaced the characters on well-known movie posters with blacks and posted them on the streets of London, England. "From 2006 to 2016, of the around 45,000 roles played by British actors, only 218 were played by black British actors, meaning that only 0.5% of the roles were starred by blacks." In this way, they hope to appeal to people's attention. "We're not saying you have to hire black actors to remake Harry Potter, but that [poster of the black actor version] highlights a problem — the lack of black characters other than athletes, drug dealers, or 'symbolic' black friends."
Face up to history, face up to the issue of race
On June 6, Richard Newby, a veteran black film critic at The Hollywood Reporter, wrote an article reflecting on the superhero films that dominate the global box office. "We hype up heroic stories in masks, but we still don't understand justice." He wrote that black Americans are not aliens or robots, they take to the streets just for the right to survive, but this behavior has been labeled "criminal", "thug" and "terrorist". "I think a lot about what justice means in this country, how it's perceived, how its power is harnessed, and it leads me to believe that America's commitment to superhero films ultimately betrayed us."
In recent years, the Academy Awards, hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, have been criticized for being too "white" and therefore boycotted by black actors. To that end, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences launched the A2020 Program, which aims to double the number of women and people of color among academy members. In the midst of the nationwide wave of protests sparked by Floyd's death, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has rethinked how to keep racism out of the film industry.
Recently, "Friends" co-producer Marta Kaufman also tearfully apologized for the lack of racial diversity in the show when she attended an event. The show has reportedly been criticized for all 6 starring characters who are all white. The actor of one of the show's male protagonists, Ross, has also previously reflected on the diversity problems of the show, and said that he has fought for many years to add a black female date to ross in the play.
Returning to "Gone with the Wind" at the center of the whirlpool, regardless of race issues, this film that is recognized as excellent has been removed from the shelves, and a logical dilemma is also placed in front of people--the history of slave trade and discrimination against blacks exists objectively in the United States, and the literary and artistic works born in this context, as products based on real life, may involve racial issues even if they are not deliberately insulted. So what should be done with these works?
Works born in the new era have learned to circumvent red lines. Like "Gone with the Wind", which was temporarily discontinued this time, some movies will add prompt subtitles at the beginning to express their position in advance on the sensitive issues in the film. In 2019, Black Panther, starring black people, won the Best Costume Design Award and Best Art Direction at the 91st Academy Awards; it was also in this year that "Green Book", which denounced racial discrimination, also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Despite the fame, the two films also do not cater to everyone's tastes, becoming "mediocre superiors" in the eyes of critics.
Currently, there are signs that the film and television industry is re-examining what it produces in the wake of nationwide protests against racial justice and police brutality. If the racial problem continues to exist as a wound in the United States and even in the entire Western society, perhaps the film and television industry will continue to grope on the edge of "allergies".
Source: Phoenix Satellite TV News, Cover News, The Paper, Global Times, New York Times, British Radio and Television Network
Edit: Li Wei