Watchable movie, but please don't forget it's propaganda

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2011)

It was the best of films; it was the worst of films.
The good: GWTW is long but mostly engrossing. Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler are not always sympathetic or even likable, but there is something about them that does draw you in to wonder what they could possibly say or do next. This is an old-fashioned epic, and it certainly shows the perspective of the Old South toward the Civil War. In that sense, GWTW is educational and instructional, and I'm glad I saw it.
The bad: Wow, I was appalled on so many levels by so many things in this movie. I'm equally appalled at how many people seem to love LOVE LOVE it, and who brush off the blatant, egregious dehumanization and racism of this movie. For those who say, oh, but the character of Mammy is strong and likable, and she criticizes "poor white trash" a few times, so how racist could it be? Hello? Wake up, people! This film glorifies slavery, which is the owning and control of certain people by other people based on the amount of melanin in their skin. It does so by suggesting that "darkies" cannot control their own destiny and that they enjoy their position in Southern society and that they do not want to be free. So we're given characters like Mammy and Big Sam, who are just so pleased and thrilled to serve their masters. And the whites who own them are portrayed as benevolent, as if this whole fantasy of plantations and genteel ladies and fancy dresses was not bought on the blood and sweat of people who were forcibly brought over in chains on boats from their homes, their families and children broken apart and stolen from them, their cultures and lives destroyed. Actually, the more I think about this and the more I think of all these glowing reviews of how wonderful this film is, the more livid I become.
I am willing to say that you can separate, at least on some level, the skill and artistry of the film itself from its subject matter, and to that degree I can appreciate GWTW. But if you believe this sentimentalized, one-sided, one-dimensional, totally self-serving (on the part of white slaveholders) portrayal of slavery, then there is something wrong with you. Go see Amistad or Rosewood, go read a book by Frederick Douglass. Educate yourself. Wake up, America.