Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Gee LP (A) on October 20, 2006 at 23:23:29

In Reply to: Anyone see "Gone with the Wind* RECENTLY? posted by .Guy on October 15, 2006 at 22:43:50:

Today in class I was gruffly barking at a student to remain "on task." Imagine my shock when I looked down to see that this 12-year-old boy was reading Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind"! He is the son of a white mother and a black father (who has had no contact with his father and is being raised quite happily by his mother and white stepfather). I asked him what he thought of the book and he said, "I like it." I can't wait to ask him for a more in-depth opinion after he has finished it. I was so slack-jawed I forgot to tell him to "finish that worksheet!"

While the War Between the States (to use the Southern title; I do live in the last city the Confederate flag was finally lowered in during April 1865) is not what "Gone With the Wind" is about, I think it is more than a backdrop: Margaret Mitchell was raised in a house full of veterans of the war and their children, heard stories about the war and Reconstruction all the time, and was 12 or 13 before she realized the South had lost the war! This post-Reconstruction Southern view of the war is part of the warp and woof of the story; IMHO the specific events of the war and Reconstruction are as necessary to Scarlett and Rhett as the layout of Dublin is to the wanderings of Bloom and Dedalus. Not that I would compare GWTW to Joyce!

But it is a fun story, and I recommend you watch it in a theatre one day. It is a real hoot to hear women's reactions to that first shot of Clark Gable at the base of the stairs....the only time I've heard more moans is when Baryshnikov was dancing onscreen (at least, in non-X rated cinemas)!

Glad the ending surprised you. Wouldn't you agree that, sometimes, you just get tired of putting up with someone else's nonsense and decide to do something else? It took my sister three hours to tell her soon-to-be-ex husband the same thing that Rhett Butler says so succinctly. And it was just as big a shock to him!