The film critic of The New York Post has called for an end to screenings of Gone with The Wind following last week's shootings in Charleston and the on-going debate about the Confederate flag.
Critic Lou Lumenick argues that the film and the book goes to “great lengths to enshrine the myth that the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery - an institution the film unabashedly romanticises”.
Lumenick added: “If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism, what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture?”
Gone With The Wind is due to be screened on Independence Day in New York’s Museum of Modern Art as part of its centenary of Technicolor celebrations. “Maybe that’s where this much-loved but undeniably racist artifact really belongs,” writes Lumenick.
The 1939 movie was adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer prize-winning 1936 novel and stars Vivien Leigh as the headstrong daughter of a Georgia plantation owner.
Set during the American Civil War and told from the perspective of white southerners, the film won 10 awards at the 1940 Oscars, including one for Hattie McDaniel, the first black person to win an Academy award.
