‘Gone With The Wind’ Dropped From HBO Max Over Racial Prejudices

HBO Max has pulled the classic 1939 movie “Gone With The Wind” from its streaming content less than a day after “12 Years A Slave” screenwriter John Ridley encouraged the platform to do so.

In an op-ed entitled “Hey, HBO, ‘Gone With the Wind’ romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now,” John detailed the movie’s history of glorifying racism and slavery. The movie has long been criticized for its portrayal of slaves during America’s Civil War.

“(‘Gone With The Wind’) doesn’t just ‘fall short’ with regard to representation. It is a film that glorifies the antebellum south. It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday.

“It is a film that, as part of the narrative of the ‘Lost Cause,’ romanticizes the Confederacy in a way that continues to give legitimacy to the notion that the secessionist movement was something more, or better, or more noble than what it was — a bloody insurrection to maintain the “right” to own, sell and buy human beings.”

The 54-year-old also clarified he does not believe in censorship, but asked for the movie to be removed from HBO or “re-introduced to the HBO Max platform along with other films that give a more broad-based and complete picture of what slavery and the Confederacy truly were.”

Later the same day, HBO confirmed the company’s plan to remove the movie in response to the article in a statement to Deadline.

“’Gone With the Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society. These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible,” the statement read in part.

“These depictions are certainly counter to WarnerMedia’s values, so when we return the film to HBO Max, it will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions, but will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history.”