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329:question:329--week_6_questions_comments-2026 [2026/10/08 05:32] – [The "So What" Question -- Why should we care about the movie and its version of history?] 76.78.172.73329:question:329--week_6_questions_comments-2026 [2026/11/12 06:29] (current) – 76.78.172.13
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 I think Gone With the Wind works as a secondary source because it shows how people in the 1930s wanted to remember the Civil War and Antebellum South era of American history. The movie does get some parts right, especially with showing how much destruction the war caused and how different the South became after the Confederacy lost.  But honestly, I think the movie is more useful for understanding the people who made it than the actual Civil War because it romanticises the “Old South” so much. It gives viewers this almost “beautiful” version of the South that leaves out a lot of the uglier parts of its history, so I think it tells us more about how history was being remembered in 1939 than what the past actually looked like. ——Cait Edwards I think Gone With the Wind works as a secondary source because it shows how people in the 1930s wanted to remember the Civil War and Antebellum South era of American history. The movie does get some parts right, especially with showing how much destruction the war caused and how different the South became after the Confederacy lost.  But honestly, I think the movie is more useful for understanding the people who made it than the actual Civil War because it romanticises the “Old South” so much. It gives viewers this almost “beautiful” version of the South that leaves out a lot of the uglier parts of its history, so I think it tells us more about how history was being remembered in 1939 than what the past actually looked like. ——Cait Edwards
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 +This film is truthful in terms of events and portrayal of social interaction between the wealthy, plantation-owning elite. It is however, quite inaccurate in it's discussion and portrayal of slavery. Enslaved African Americans are presented as loving and loyal to the families that enslaved them even after emancipation. The film pushes a lost cause narrative that is not truthful to the historical happenings that actually took place. -Leah B.
  
 The film generally sticks to truth with the portrayal of the wealthy white plantation owners, and how they experienced the civil war and reconstruction era. The film really deviates with its portrayal of slavery, and generally ignores the issue as a whole. The reason for the civil war is not really mentioned, it is just a big deal that the south is going to war. The main slave characters never get called slaves, and stick around even after they’re free. While that could have happened, they don’t mention it. Emancipation in general is rarely mentioned, and skirted around whenever possible. Scholarly articles about slaves’ experiences, and their personal letters, share that they always sought freedom, and that emancipation was a really big deal. Not a nuisance. -Katie D. The film generally sticks to truth with the portrayal of the wealthy white plantation owners, and how they experienced the civil war and reconstruction era. The film really deviates with its portrayal of slavery, and generally ignores the issue as a whole. The reason for the civil war is not really mentioned, it is just a big deal that the south is going to war. The main slave characters never get called slaves, and stick around even after they’re free. While that could have happened, they don’t mention it. Emancipation in general is rarely mentioned, and skirted around whenever possible. Scholarly articles about slaves’ experiences, and their personal letters, share that they always sought freedom, and that emancipation was a really big deal. Not a nuisance. -Katie D.
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 While Gone with the Wind includes many historical inaccuracies, especially regarding the nature of slavery, it does contain some accurate depictions of how white southerners felt during the period of Reconstruction. Many of the sentiments echoed by people like Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas on reconstruction are prominent in the latter half of the movie especially. The attitude of southerners toward the carpetbaggers in addition to their disdain for successful freedmen seen in the film mirror many of their written opinions. The extent of the destruction Sherman brought to Atlanta and subsequently towards other parts of Georgia are also portrayed in the film, though only in terms of the side of the war experienced by southerners. Only one Union soldier has a speaking role in the film, and the destruction is otherwise shown only from the perspective of the Confederate army and civilians of Atlanta. Overall, while there is some historical truth in Gone with the Wind, it mostly comes in the form of accurately depicting how white southerners felt about Reconstruction, rather than truthfully depicting it as a whole. - Hunter M. While Gone with the Wind includes many historical inaccuracies, especially regarding the nature of slavery, it does contain some accurate depictions of how white southerners felt during the period of Reconstruction. Many of the sentiments echoed by people like Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas on reconstruction are prominent in the latter half of the movie especially. The attitude of southerners toward the carpetbaggers in addition to their disdain for successful freedmen seen in the film mirror many of their written opinions. The extent of the destruction Sherman brought to Atlanta and subsequently towards other parts of Georgia are also portrayed in the film, though only in terms of the side of the war experienced by southerners. Only one Union soldier has a speaking role in the film, and the destruction is otherwise shown only from the perspective of the Confederate army and civilians of Atlanta. Overall, while there is some historical truth in Gone with the Wind, it mostly comes in the form of accurately depicting how white southerners felt about Reconstruction, rather than truthfully depicting it as a whole. - Hunter M.
  
 +This film does a good job at depicting the war’s impact on southern society through the evolution of characters like Scarlett and Melanie, who begin as symbols of domesticity and marriage-focused society. When their husbands leave for the front, Scarlett is forced to shed her social status to secure survival at Tara, while Melanie embodies the idealized devotion to the Confederate cause, with both ultimately volunteering their time and energy to helping the wounded. Melanie’s attitude specifically, with “this could be Ashley” motivating her to keep supporting the cause, seeming very much like a strong motivator for women at the time. Their characters illustrate the shift from the (in hindsight) superficial expectations of Southern womanhood to the harsh reality that followed, reflecting the broader disruption of traditional gender roles during the war. The film also tracks the South's trajectory from initial, arrogant optimism to the stark reality of what war actually meant. Early scenes radiate a sense of security and inevitable victory, which is quickly dismantled by the scale of death and the economic devastation of their setting. By visualizing the massive loss of life (I’m thinking of the scene when Scarlett walks onto the large amount of wounded soldiers at the train depot) the film characterizes the war as a catastrophic event that shattered their idealistic, simple, and inconsequential way of life. - Izabella M
  
 ======Problems with historical accuracy? Errors in fact?====== ======Problems with historical accuracy? Errors in fact?======
  
 My favorite inaccuracy in this film regards a character that has no physical depiction in it, yet who is just as instrumental to its plot as he is in history. Sherman! We get a good sense with the primary source reading by him, his views on warfare. While initially at the war’s beginning he followed the belief of treating Confederate civilians as a misguided people (even returning captured slaves), his view of war hardened as did most generals as they encountered the popular early support for the war effort even among poor, non-slave holding whites. He began to see the war as not being decided by decisive battle, but rather the elimination of the capacity and will of the enemy to continue the fight. This “hard war” however was not “total war,” in my opinion. Sherman’s epoch March to the Sea, while destructive and devastating, was not indiscriminate and sought only to eliminate targets of industry and infrastructure and requisition supplies and food as a result of cutting his forces off from supply lines, though foraging itself was common for both armies. When viewed from a historical perspective, Sherman’s strategy forms a coherent and calculated military strategy that, while brutal, was undeniably effective in bringing a swift end to the war in concert with the overall strategy surmised by General Grant. To the film, however, Sherman’s name is only mentioned once, only to be replaced by “The Great Invader!” The movie portrays Sherman as an unseen, monstrous, apocalyptic force of absolute destruction, the personification of the Yankee invader tasked with the destruction of a civilization by any means necessary. While historically inaccurate, this certainly is accurate to the Lost Cause perspective this film represents. - Charles Salcedo My favorite inaccuracy in this film regards a character that has no physical depiction in it, yet who is just as instrumental to its plot as he is in history. Sherman! We get a good sense with the primary source reading by him, his views on warfare. While initially at the war’s beginning he followed the belief of treating Confederate civilians as a misguided people (even returning captured slaves), his view of war hardened as did most generals as they encountered the popular early support for the war effort even among poor, non-slave holding whites. He began to see the war as not being decided by decisive battle, but rather the elimination of the capacity and will of the enemy to continue the fight. This “hard war” however was not “total war,” in my opinion. Sherman’s epoch March to the Sea, while destructive and devastating, was not indiscriminate and sought only to eliminate targets of industry and infrastructure and requisition supplies and food as a result of cutting his forces off from supply lines, though foraging itself was common for both armies. When viewed from a historical perspective, Sherman’s strategy forms a coherent and calculated military strategy that, while brutal, was undeniably effective in bringing a swift end to the war in concert with the overall strategy surmised by General Grant. To the film, however, Sherman’s name is only mentioned once, only to be replaced by “The Great Invader!” The movie portrays Sherman as an unseen, monstrous, apocalyptic force of absolute destruction, the personification of the Yankee invader tasked with the destruction of a civilization by any means necessary. While historically inaccurate, this certainly is accurate to the Lost Cause perspective this film represents. - Charles Salcedo
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 +My largest issue with this film is the way it approaches slavery. Gone With The Wind pushes a lost cause idea that is a product of the time, but uses a minimized, inaccurately written image of slavery that turns African American characters into caricatures. In the film, emancipated slaves showed loyalty to their past enslavers. One formerly enslaved character comes running to save Scarlett immediately, his loyalty unwavering. This film showcases a lost cause narrative by portraying characters in such a way that presents them as palatable to an audience that is not ready to or does not want to confront racism and the history of slavery in America.
  
 There is no doubt Gone With the Wind is a product of its time period; it is intrinsically shown in its overt sugarcoating of the horrors of slavery and perpetuating racist stereotypes, such as the explicitly displayed ‘Mammy’ archetype portrayed by Hattie McDaniel, and other ‘happy slave’ archetypes displayed liberally throughout the film. One such scene shows Scarlett O’Hara, now the widowed Scarlett Wilkes, reuniting with enslaved men she had previously overseen during the height of the Confederate War, each greeting her kindly and positively as she does in turn. The reality was vastly different, as seen in Judith Cocks, Emily, Susan (Sukey) & Ersey, Harriet Newby, and Louisa Alexander’s Letters from Slaves, which detail the separation of families through the international and domestic slave trade, as written by Emily upon being forcefully separated from her husband by his master: “O! Mother, what shall I do? A time is fast approaching when I shalt want my husband and mother, and both are gone!” - Bailee E.  There is no doubt Gone With the Wind is a product of its time period; it is intrinsically shown in its overt sugarcoating of the horrors of slavery and perpetuating racist stereotypes, such as the explicitly displayed ‘Mammy’ archetype portrayed by Hattie McDaniel, and other ‘happy slave’ archetypes displayed liberally throughout the film. One such scene shows Scarlett O’Hara, now the widowed Scarlett Wilkes, reuniting with enslaved men she had previously overseen during the height of the Confederate War, each greeting her kindly and positively as she does in turn. The reality was vastly different, as seen in Judith Cocks, Emily, Susan (Sukey) & Ersey, Harriet Newby, and Louisa Alexander’s Letters from Slaves, which detail the separation of families through the international and domestic slave trade, as written by Emily upon being forcefully separated from her husband by his master: “O! Mother, what shall I do? A time is fast approaching when I shalt want my husband and mother, and both are gone!” - Bailee E. 
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 ======How does this movie work as a primary source about the time in which it was made?====== ======How does this movie work as a primary source about the time in which it was made?======
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 +Gone With The Wind works fairly well as a primary source. There were many aspects of the film that were very much of its time, including but not limited to the pervasive gender roles and sexism of the 30s, caricatures of black characters and blatant disregard for racial sensitivity, old film tropes that would certainly be considered problematic today (i.e. noir style male love interest who doesn’t know how to take “no” for an answer and a dramatic female love interest who constantly seems to switch  from “I love you” to “I hate you.”), among other things. It’s also a good secondary source for the civil war if one is trying to research the heavily flawed perspectives of the privileged white southern slave owners of that time. - Leo Tooks
  
 Gone With the Wind was released nearly right smack-dab in the middle of the Jim Crow era, as depicted by the rampant utilization of racist archetypes, such as the aforementioned ‘Mammy’ portrayal and character that appears throughout the film. However, another major event that occurred during this time period, and reflected deeply in Scarlett O’Hara’s own drastic economic instability, was the Great Depression, with the film released near the end of that time period. While not exactly a one-to-one portrayal, the decimated land and production value of Scarlett O’Hara’s beloved Tara likely resonated deeply with the American populace still healing from the wounds of high unemployment rates and their correlating consequences: a substantial amount of physical and emotional loss. - Bailee E.  Gone With the Wind was released nearly right smack-dab in the middle of the Jim Crow era, as depicted by the rampant utilization of racist archetypes, such as the aforementioned ‘Mammy’ portrayal and character that appears throughout the film. However, another major event that occurred during this time period, and reflected deeply in Scarlett O’Hara’s own drastic economic instability, was the Great Depression, with the film released near the end of that time period. While not exactly a one-to-one portrayal, the decimated land and production value of Scarlett O’Hara’s beloved Tara likely resonated deeply with the American populace still healing from the wounds of high unemployment rates and their correlating consequences: a substantial amount of physical and emotional loss. - Bailee E. 
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