Racism: Queen Latifah Calls for Removal of ‘Gone With the Wind’
Dana Elaine Owens, American actress and singer has called for the permanent removal of HBO Max’s Gone With the Wind from its streaming service.
HBO Max had come under intense criticism amid protests in the United States over the movie’s “racist depictions.”
Due to the backlash that trailed the epic historical film, HBO Max pulled it from its streaming platform and announced that when the 1939 Civil War drama becomes available this time around, it will include an Introduction by African American Scholar, Jacqueline Stewart.
However, Oscar nominee Queen Latifah says good riddance.
“Let Gone With the Wind be gone with the wind,” she told the Associated Press in a recent interview.
The 50-year-old actress recently starred on Ryan Murphy‘s Netflix show, Hollywood, as Hattie McDaniel, who portrayed Mammy in Gone With the Wind and became the first black woman to win an Academy Award. Queen Latifah notes that McDaniel’s win was not as celebratory as some believe.
“They didn’t even let her in the theater until right before she got that award,” the actress said.
“Someone came outside and brought her into the auditorium. She wasn’t even allowed to sit in there. And then she had to read a speech that was written by a studio. You know that’s not what the hell she wanted to say.”
Queen Latifah added, “Then after that, all she could do was play the same kinds of roles. …So the opportunities at that time and the way that those in power in that business were relegating us and marginalizing us and not allowing us to grow and thrive after that was just terrible. And a lot of that is still around today.”
John Ridley’s opinion on Gone With the Wind
Gone With the Wind — which has long been revered by film critics and is the highest-grossing movie of all time when adjusting box office totals for inflation — was recently decried in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, penned by 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley.
Ridley called on HBO Max to pull the film — which tells the story of a tumultuous love affair between two wealthy Southern aristocrats and is set against the backdrop of the end of the Civil War and the destruction of the Confederacy. he argued that the movie “doesn’t just ‘fall short’ with regard to representation. It is a film that glorifies the antebellum south.”
Ridley recently spoke with ET about Gone With the Wind, calling it an “historical fiction.”
“The fact that it represents something that really never existed. …People talk about, ‘Well, if you take away the film you’re erasing history, making history go away. This is not history!” he said.
“Saying it’s history is kind of like saying, well, Spider-Man was set in New York so it must be real. The Civil War happened. Yes, there were plantations but this is as removed from history as any science fiction film or man on a high castle.”
While Ridley isn’t in support of the film, he is not saying it should be banished altogether. “I don’t want it to go away. I don’t want its Oscars taken away or anything like that,” he explains. “But if we have to change our viewing habit to accommodate something that sentimentalized a past that never was, then to me, that’s a good thing.”
