GONE WITH THE WIND

What a load of old Confederate bollocks!!

I'd never really watched Gone With The Wind...until last night.

I'd seen the start, been bored and turned it off. I'd seen clips, and heard the theme tune, but not really sat down and watched it and understood it.

After all the credits have been given at the start, we read this:

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.

Cavaliers?

Knights?

Fair ladies?

A dream remembered?

BOLLOCKS!!

For the slaves it was blood, pain, sweat, punishment, disease and then an early death.

For the master it was easy, rich, bountiful, power, giving orders, lashing.

The plot occurs during Sherman's March to the Sea, when General Tecumseh Sherman was trashing Georgia on his march to Savannah from Atlanta, employing a scorched earth policy, ripping up train lines into "Sherman's neck ties". And while his army destroyed the infrastructure of Georgia and reduced the slaveholders' plantations to waste, the slaves of Georgia were grateful to him. But we don't see this gratitude in the film, and Sherman is portrayed as a terrorising devil. Perhaps he was terrorising the slaveholders, but their slaves were grateful for their freedom.

The film tries to pin the blame for the war on Lincoln.

And in one scene, the Rhett Butler character refers to something I mentioned in teachers yesterday: arrogance.

During a discussion between the slaveholding men on the coming war, Butler says:

All we've got is cotton and slaves...and arrogance.

Butler warns them that the north has cannons, factories, coal mines, and ships to bottle up the ports of the south and starve the south to death.

But the 'cavaliers' and 'knights' of the south, in their arrogance, cannot see that they didn't stand a chance. They were outnumbered 5 to 1. The rebellion only lasted as long as it did because of poor military leadership of the Union. But once Grant, Sherman and Sheridan got it together the war was effectively over (though Jefferson Davis and General Lee made one or two strange decisions which aided their downfall).

Anyway, Gone With The Wind is pro-Confederate bollocks. We are supposed to feel sympathy for the Confederacy through a spoiled, selfish Confederate beauty.