It is a controversial movie, true...

Rating: 10/10 (28 August 2017)

Here is how I feel about Gone With the Wind. My mom's side of the family is Southern. They lived mostly around where Scarlett and her gang hung out. Some had plantations and owned slaves. My grandparents were "old fashioned" in the clueless way Margaret Mitchell was. I've heard their side lots of times, and I found it to be wrong. If I were Black, I wouldn't like to pass by statues erected to past oppressors either, nor would I want to have flags in my face constantly reminding me of a sorrowful past.
However, please consider this.
1. If you're going to get upset at GWTW and ban showing it, then you would also want to eliminate the rest of the movies from back then which show stereotypes as well, correct? Unfortunately, ALMOST ALL, probably about 98% of Black roles for the stage and screen pre-1960's were just as racist as in GWTW, many were worse.
The problem is, if you get rid of these movies, you erase the work of any Black actors back then as well. You won't see why Hattie McDaniel won an Oscar for a performance in a land so bigoted, she could not sit in the audience during the premiere. You won't see lots of superb singing, dancing, and acting by any African-American during this time. They will be completely ignored because of the context.
You wind up punishing all these people who wanted to work in entertainment and had little influence over the roles they played as well as those whites who made those movies.
And...
2. Hollywood whitewashes and pretties up EVERYTHING. It always has. Don't get upset because they did it for the millionth time in GWTW.
Consider the movie "300", about ancient Sparta. There was no mention of slaves they owned, or the organized pedophilia that went into the training of boys (Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about).
And yet, there were no mass protests at the rose colored vision in the movie. No one came to picket the film because it omitted a horrendous flaw in Spartan society.
Why? Well, for one thing, that was well over 2000 years ago. What happened in Sparta is no longer directly relevant to anyone. No normal, modern army expects raping young boys as part of their training.
It's no longer relevant.
Unfortunately, GWTW IS STILL RELEVANT. Many of the problems portrayed in this film and any film from back then with Black actors are still haunting the U.S.. Denying that there is anything wrong and everything is just fine and has been fixed is simply denying reality.
Why do I care? Unfortunately, GWTW is one of my favorite books and films. It has a strong, still unique story of feminism I can relate to. That is what is relevant to me in the film. I have tended in the past to brush aside the slave part because it seems surreal to me to own people. I'm certainly not sitting there, hoping the "good ol' days" can come back. I like the modern world with its aim of acceptance and tolerance. I get the feeling the vast majority of viewers feel the same way.
How do we solve this problem? When Blacks are truly integrated, and that day will come, then GWTW will no longer be that relevant. It won't strike any raw nerves. The protests will die down, just as they have for every other hot button issue who's time has come and gone.
True classics never die. GWTW has many redeeming features which have made it endlessly entertaining to me and thousands of other people. Keep talking about it, show the movie now and then with perhaps a short lecture on history and context before, and know that in time, the pain will fade.
ALSO, KEEP IN MIND, when you criticize Scarlett for her actions, there was NO OTHER WAY to survive in the Victorian world if you were a woman other than SEDUCING A MAN. It's not like she could go off to college and get a degree. Women were NOT allowed to own land, have a bank account,vote, hold a job (besides perhaps a hat maker or, much more commonly, a prostitute) etc. If she seems strange for marrying men she didn't love,keep in mind it was that, or be totally broke and homeless.
Much of the criticism of her character comes from total lack of knowledge about this context.
As for the movie itself. I first saw it when I was thirteen. It made quite an impression. Forty years or so later, it still moves me. Some people criticize the main character, Scarlett, because she's "not nice". She's not "typical" of a main female character.
Scarlett behaves in an uncomfortably realistic way. She's not a nice lady, she is a super-rare female anti-hero. She's not comfortingly evil, but she's never going to be a goody two shoes. Some people don't know how to handle that.
Melanie, on the other hand, is criticized for being "unrealistic". I would ask anyone who thinks that to understand the context of the times she lived in. There was no mass media, save for the local newspaper, and that was hardly an international trove of information as they are now. No TV, no radio, no internet. A person could grow up to be innocent in a way we simply don't experience in modern society.
It's a movie about survival. And it's a war movie without battle scenes. I would urge you to watch it.