Should Gone with the Wind Go Away?

Via Billy

In the wake of increased PC attacks on Margaret Mitchell’s 1937 novel Gone With the Wind, I decided to undertake an ornery, contrarian, and politically incorrect action and plow through the novel’s 1,036 pages just for the heck of it, reacquainting myself with an acknowledged classic (which earned a Pulitzer Prize for the author) and hence be able to reflect on a cultural phenomenon with my own refreshed insights.

It is impossible to reflect on the novel without making some comparisons with its 1939 film adaptation. The film, of necessity, tightens the storyline and deletes certain characters (most notably Scarlett’s multiple children). The movie Mammy is a more dominating presence than in the novel but a similar towering moral force. Also missing from the film is the overt presence of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction period and the participation of Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett’s second husband, Frank Kennedy, in some of its activities. As far as the movie version is concerned, it defies any attempts that might be made to remake it, however uncomfortable some scenes might strike us today (Could anyone play Rhett Butler after Clark Gable? It’s difficult to imagine).