When the statues began being pulled down in the wake of the Charlottesville demonstration, many of us joked that films and songs featuring the Civil War would be next.
The jokes have morphed into a chilling reality. The Orpheum Theater in Memphis has pulled the iconic American film Gone with the Wind from summer movie series after receiving complaints it was not racially sensitive.
The Orpheum Theatre Group decided not to include the 1939 movie about a plantation in the Civil War-era South in its 2018 Summer Movie Series after feedback from patrons following the last screening Aug. 11.“As an organization whose stated mission is to ‘entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves’, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population,” the theater’s operators said in a statement….The historic theater in Downtown Memphis has shown the movie for decades, but this year’s event “generated numerous comments,” leading to the decision.“While title selections for the series are typically made in the spring of each year, the Orpheum has made this determination early in response to specific inquiries from patrons,” the Orpheum group said.
This move is nearly as disturbing to me as the cancellation of the Egypt-themed fraternity party. Gone with the Wind was my favorite film in my early teen years (right after 1963’s Cleopatra). The book by Margaret Mitchell is one of the few I have read multiple times.
The movie is so much more than a race-based saga. Unfortunately, in today’s progressive fire and fury to tear down American icons, this film has become the celluloid equivalent of a Robert E. Lee statue.
As posted on the Orpheum’s Facebook page event for the August screening, one user called the film “racist.” Another remarked over news of the canceled screening, “slowly but surely, we will rid this community of all tributes to white supremacy.”
While the self-righteous, racialist social justice thugs pat themselves on the back for this “victory”, a glace at social media shows that the theater’s move is very unpopular with regular Americans.
Additionally this move dishonors the first black actor/actress to receive an Academy Award: Hattie McDaniel.
If a young, African-American audience isn’t allowed to see McDaniel’s performance, then they are missing the opportunity to understand a critical part of cultural history and will not appreciate exactly how far we have come as a nation since 1939.
However, for the time being, the cultural purge continues.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY