Gone With the Wind Publisher Slaps 2022 Editions With ‘Trigger Warning’
“We want to alert readers that there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this novel was written and which are true to the context of the historical setting of this novel.”
Pan Macmillan, publisher of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, placed a trigger warning on the “problematic” book.
HBO pulled the movie adaptation of the Civil War movie in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.
The Telegraph published the warning in the book:
“Gone with the Wind is a novel which includes problematic elements including the romanticisation of a shocking era in our history and the horrors of slavery.
“The novel includes the representation of unacceptable practices, racist and stereotypical depictions and troubling themes, characterisation, language and imagery.
“The text of this book remains true to the original in every way and is reflective of the language and period in which it was originally written.
“We want to alert readers that there may be hurtful or indeed harmful phrases and terminology that were prevalent at the time this novel was written and which are true to the context of the historical setting of this novel.
“Pan Macmillan believes changing the text to reflect today’s world would undermine the authenticity of the original, so has chosen to leave the text in its entirety.
“This does not, however, constitute an endorsement of the characterisation, content or language used.”
It gets better. The Other Boleyn Girl author Philippa Gregory, a historical novelist, wrote an essay for the book. Gregory is white. Pan Macmillan said she wrote the essay since “we believed it was important that no author from a minority background should be asked to undertake the emotional labour of being responsible for educating the majority.”
I cannot believe this:
This essay argues that Mitchell intended her novel to support the romantic Lost Cause view of a Confederacy that was fighting for freedom, and that the work “effectively promoted the racist planter view of the history of the South”.
Gregory writes that the problem of the novel is that “it tells us, unequivocally, that African people are not of the same species a white people”, adding “This is the lie that spoils the novel”.
She further argues Gone with the Wind “defends racism” and “glamorises and preaches white supremacy”, while also writing that Mitchell herself undermines this aspect of the work.
In the book, Scarlett O’Hara tries to hold onto her family’s property as the North invades the South. Then she enjoys a romance with Captain Rhett Butler.
If anything, the book needs a warning like The Great Gatsby. You’re not going to like the main characters b/c they’re awful people.
At least the publisher isn’t rewriting it? Agatha Christie books received that treatment.
Penguin tried to do that to Roald Dahl’s books. Instead of reversing course, the publisher also published the books in their original form.
Remember all of this when the left and Democrats scream about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banning books!! We all know he isn’t but the truth never wins.
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I don’t like this trend. I had a devil of a timing getting a first edition of Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None.”
How many were even published under the original title?
‘Fiddle de Dee, I’ll worry about tomorrow’. /s
Personally I never understood the hype. The female protagonist is a sort of beta test for 3rd wave feminism. She doggedly pursues Ashley despite his promise and marriage then when rejected she uses the ‘bad boy’ Rhett as validation to stroke her massive ego. Then her narcissism runs him off. All the while she treats everyone around her, even those of her family and social caste, much less the slaves, as expendable. Everyone not directly stroking her narcissism and demand for validation is treated as a disposable prop.
Personally I never understood the hype.
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your viewpoint is perhaps more accurate for the story itself, for the novel
the film however, is a work of art
The film is fantastic and most definitely a work of art. I hope the Smithsoneon isn’t defiling it with voice overs for “sensitive” audiences. What a travesty that would be!
Too many books and movies are “disappearing.” If you have purchased a digital copy, they can update it. HBO/Max and Amazon are the only places I could find online or for sale DVD. Disney’s Song of the South is just gone. 3 Nominations and 2 Oscar wins.
I prefer the label to removal.
Glad I picked up a copy of SotS on DVD a couple of years back.
And around that same timeframe, my daughter got me GwtW on DVD for my birthday.
I have GwtW (the book) in Norwegian. I haven’t read it in English so I don’t know how it compares, but I remember there were quite a few scenes that were never in the movie – Scarlett had a baby with the first guy she married when she found out Ashley was going to marry Melanie, and then there was a scene where Scarlett was assaulted by a black man and Frank Kennedy (who was part of the Klan) went with some others to “fix” things… those two scenes stick out to me as notable departures from the film.
SOTS is still available online.
https://archive.org/details/SongOfTheSouth_Disney
Ditto for the Carol Burnett parody.
There are a couple/three very nicely shot scenes from a visual standpoint but the accents were phoney as hell and the protagonist just as flawed in the film.
I can understand why women like it. I suppose for the same reason they flocked to Twilight; they can pretend they are the female protagonist and fantasize about being the object of desire and/or center of attention. Note I am not comparing the quality of the two films just the reasons why women like both.
Your comments remins me of a bunch of lefties today!😄
How so?
1939, “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!”
2023, “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout arithmetic, algebra, history, SATs, and stuff like that.”
Glad I bought my copy of “Gone With The Wind” before all of this BS. Now I have to find a copy of the book.
try ebay. That is where i buy any book written before 1960. I have found some beautiful bound copies of classics that are in better condition than the one printed last year.
That’s what I’m doing. Currently bidding on an October 1936 printing of the book.
For the film to even be produced, slavery and all it entailed was a necessity. Without the slaves present on Tara, there would have been no point to the book and especially the film. It would have just been rich plantation whites, white trash, Rhett, Yankees and scalawags. GWTW was the title for a reason as many things were ‘Gone’.
“we believed it was important that no author from a minority background should be asked to undertake the emotional labour of being responsible for educating the majority.”
So they engaged in blatant race discrimination in dealing with the racist elements in Gone with the Wind.
I loved the movie, but I never understood it to be supporting slavery or white supremacy–I found it to be more a description of people clinging to a way of life that was no more, and how the main characters developed. I wonder if Ms. Gregory thinks her book about Henry VIII’s relationships with women over whom he had power and control somehow glorifies that.
Heh heh.
Librulz inflating the used book market, just like everything else they touch.
I wonder what the publishers are doing with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The words used in these books would cause a snowflake to melt.
Here is Carol Burnett’s parody of Gone With the Wind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8wVvGQ0P4Y
Still one of the funniest things ever. That whole show.
“Gregory writes that the problem of the novel is that “it tells us, unequivocally, that African people are not of the same species a white people”, adding “This is the lie that spoils the novel”. ”
I don’t think she bothered to read the book. Nothing in Mitchell’s writing tells the reader “that African people are not of the same species of a white people.” There are race based depictions of character flaws, and both vices and virtues are viewed in relationship to the whites they live among. Scarlett is angered by a Yankee woman who insults “Uncle Peter” calling him a Ni***r. Scarlett tells the woman that “Uncle Peter” is family. Uncle Peter has been elevated to that status because of his loyalty (especially serving in the Mexican War with Melanie’s father.) He holds freed slaves in contempt. It is made pretty clear in the story that blacks depend on benevolent slave owners to keep them from straying into the vices of sloth, drunkenness, gambling, and ill company. That is a racist view but not one that suggests they are another species.
Carpetbaggers on the other hand. Well!
The irony is none of the people involved read the book.
Everything is not as it seems and is gone when a burst of wind exposes it.
Ashley is unaware of how plantations are actually run and the true face of slavery and to judge by his relationship with Rhett Butler may have hands as dirty as any northerner.
Scarlet is a narcissistic psycho
Rhett Butler is one of the few good guys in it and he is very clearly hated and ostracized by a hypocritical Georgian upper class.
I could go on but when you see a southerner is a good person they are people being ostracized by society for one reason or another, or are utter hypocrites, or are there to highlight the disfunction society has and on the other end of the spectrum you have Scarlet.
To put historic novels into perspective someone that Gregory likes to write about (King Richard III)…I do not think there is anything Gregory would have liked about how he would have referred to “Saracens” or Turks, neither do I think she would have liked seeing his reaction if a papal legate had handed him a list of heresies he was to crackdown on (remember the burning of heretics under Henry VIII or Mary I?).
I really don’t see how she could write about the English Renaissance/late medieval period of England if she has such an allergy to seeing the prejudices of the past (and by the way any CRT based thing of the in crowd is as racist as any comment in Gone with the Wind).