Abstract
The American Civil War is best thought of as two conflicts. The first, lasting from 1861 to 1865, was political and military. During this war, 620,000 men died — more than were killed in all other American wars combined, from the War of Independence to the two Iraq wars. The second, beginning almost as soon as the other ended, was cultural and intellectual. It focused on the struggle to define the war itself in terms of collective memory and meaning. The first Civil War ended in the complete victory of the North, an outcome most graphically demonstrated by Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox court-house in April 1865. The second in a number of respects still continues but, for much of the period since 1865, it has just as clearly been ‘won’ by the South.1 Much of the reason for that victory has been the birth, growth and dissemination of the ‘Lost Cause’, a romantic myth revolving around the ‘Old South’ and the way in which it fought the Civil War. One film, in particular, has been widely regarded as responsible for much of the enduring success of the Lost Cause legend: David O. Selznick’s production of Gone With the Wind (1939). Yet, as this chapter will argue, although Gone With the Wind did indeed embody essential ingredients of the Lost Cause, there are shots and scenes in the film that contradict — either subtly or directly — essential ingredients of the Lost Cause. It will suggest, indeed, that it may be time to reappraise the view of Gone With the Wind as a typical ‘moonlight and magnolias’ treatment of the South.
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Notes
On the ‘continuing’ Civil War, see David Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), pp. 1–2, 9, 299, 302–4.
David W. Blight, Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War ( Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002 ), pp. 102–3.
Also see Thomas L. Connelly and Barbara L. Bellows, God and General Longstreet: The Lost Cause and the Southern Mind ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982 ), pp. 1–38.
Bruce Chadwick, The Reel Civil War: Mythmaking in American Film (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), pp. 189–90
Edward D. C. Campbell, Jr., ‘Gone With the Wind: The Old South as National Epic’, in Richard Harwell (ed.), Gone With the Wind as Book and Film ( Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992 ), p. 178.
Tara McPherson, Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South ( Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003 ), p. 44.
Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American in Image and Film ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993 ), p. 10.
Rudy Behlmer (ed.), Memo from David O. Selznick ( New York: The Modern Library, 2000 ), p. 251.
L. D. Reddick, ‘Educational Programs for the Improvement of Race Relations: Motion Pictures, Radio, the Press, and Libraries’, The Journal of Negro Education, 13:3 (Summer 1944 ), p. 377
Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1993 ), pp. 20–1.
Leonard J. Leff, ‘David Selznick’s Gone With the Wind: “The Negro Problem,”’ The Georgia Review, 38:1 (Spring 1984), p. 149
David O. Selznick to Sidney Howard, 6 January 1937, in Behlmer (ed.), Memo from David O. Selznick, p. 162.
Alan T. Nolan, ‘The Anatomy of the Myth’, in Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan (eds), The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History ( Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000 ), p. 17.
Melvin B. Tolson, ‘Gone With the Wind Is More Dangerous than Birth of a Nation’, Washington Tribune, 23 March 1940
reprinted in Robert M. Farnsworth (ed.), Caviar and Cabbage: Selected Columns by Melvin B. Tolson from the ‘Washington Tribune,’ 1937–1944 (Columbia, MS, and London: University of Missouri Press, 1982 ), p. 214.
See Leonard L. Richards, ‘Gentlemen of Property and Standing’: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970 ).
James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton, Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America ( New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2001 ), pp. 130–1.
On the issue of honour, see Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1982 ).
See, in particular, Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1937 [1927]).
Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones and William N. Still, Jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986), p. 16; Nolan, ‘The Anatomy of the Myth’, pp. 22–4.
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001 ), pp. 259–60.
Anne Edwards, The Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, The Author of ‘Gone With the Wind’ ( London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983 ), p. 287.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, ‘Scarlett O’Hara: The Southern Lady as New Woman’, American Quarterly, 33:4 (Autumn 1981), p. 399.
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Stokes, M. (2007). Gone With the Wind (1939) and the Lost Cause: A Critical View. In: Chapman, J., Glancy, M., Harper, S. (eds) The New Film History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/9780230206229_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/9780230206229_2
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