Althouse: "'Gone with the Wind' was pulled from HBO Max while the long-running TV show 'Cops' was outright canceled..."

June 10, 2020

"'Gone with the Wind' was pulled from HBO Max while the long-running TV show 'Cops' was outright canceled..."

"... a sign that entertainment companies are re-examining the content they offer in the wake of nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality.... In a statement, HBO Max said '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.' When the movie returns to the platform it will be '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.'... On Monday, John Ridley, who won an Oscar for the adapted screenplay for the movie '12 Years a Slave'... call[ed] for 'Gone With the Wind' to be taken off HBO Max.... 'Cops,' once considered a groundbreaking look at the day-to-day life of police on the beat is now also out of fashion. Featuring the song 'Bad Boys'—with the lyrics 'Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?'— ... 'Cops' presented a very positive look at policing, showcasing officers handling everything from domestic disturbances and drunken driving to robberies and sex crimes...."

The Wall Street Journal reports (and this was not behind a paywall for me).

76 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...: communists like to erase history.

history is uncomfortable. We should provide padding & the delete key, so no one need think. The ugliness of Antifa is our future. Obey.; 6/10/20, 8:02 AM
rehajm said...: There's no sports and we refuse to watch the woke stuff so the only thing left are a couple of period dramas and some reruns of sitcoms dramas over 15 years old.; 6/10/20, 8:04 AM
Kevin said...: “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” — Ray Bradbury; 6/10/20, 8:06 AM
Wince said...: The other night the Final Jeopardy! question noted MLK as a 9 year-old child sang in his church choir at the 'Gone With the Wind' premiere in Atlanta (Dec. 15, 1939).; 6/10/20, 8:07 AM
Birches said...: Does anyone who watches GWTW think that Rhett and Scarlett are people worth emulating?

Cultural revolution.; 6/10/20, 8:08 AM
traditionalguy said...: The holdover Obama Generals also plan to eliminate Ft. Bragg and Ft Benning names from our culture. Something about honoring southern soldiers displeases now our politicians. Grant and Lincoln never did that.

GWTW and Driving Miss Daisy are local history here. They can blow up Stone Mountain if they want to, but leave the Oscar winning history records alone.; 6/10/20, 8:08 AM
Sebastian said...: First, the cultural cleansing. Then, the deplorables cleansing. Result: heaven on earth.; 6/10/20, 8:11 AM
rhhardin said...: No historical imagination. In fact no imagination for anything but the single fantasy freaking out the mob these days.; 6/10/20, 8:12 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Our culture needs drastic reform, because Black men are being executed on our streets by white policemen.

Nobody needs to watch Gone With the Wind, because instead they can watch John Ridley's movie 12 Years a Slave.; 6/10/20, 8:13 AM
Temujin said...: The book burning piles are beginning to mound up in cities and states all across this country, and across Western Civilization. Though the mob does not see themselves as either censors or fascists, they are well on the path to being both. Many of them long ago jumped ahead and are already well into CCP level oversight of every one of us.

You can look at "Gone with the Wind" and think or say, man...that's so out of time for today. It's cringe-worthy in many parts. But it's also part of who we were and are. Hiding it doesn't change that. Books, movies, tv shows (now Cops), plays, news & opinion articles, who gets to speak at a university, who gets to host TED talks, who gets hired at Google or Twitter or Dropbox or Facebook, or any of the hundreds of tech companies, who's science is acceptable and who's science is not (so the very concept of science is put to a slow death), and what you can wear, speak, think- all are under scrutiny now and for the most part, have been unofficially, but officially (wink, wink) declared outlawed. We allowed this.

We watch as bits of it started happening years ago and said to ourselves, 'man, that's crazy'. We saw it more. We saw outrageously contorted faces of college kids, spewing hate and spittle at conservative speakers trying to give a point of view on their campus. And we said to ourselves, 'Well...they'll grow out of it. Beside, it's just a few college kids.'

And now they are your Journalists!, your Professors and high school teachers, your news readers, your Congresspeople, your 'experts' in any number of fields. And whatever their degree was in matters for nothing now. What matters is that everyone think and speak alike and that no one strays off the path or they will have to be silenced. That is today. Silenced today, taken away and disappeared tomorrow.

Think I'm wrong? We have an entire 20th century that just happened in which this exact playbook was used multiple times. It never died. It just moved into our institutions and grew, with our money and blessings.

Now...what do we do about this?; 6/10/20, 8:13 AM
wendybar said...: Happy now?? They won't stop until we stop them. Lock and load time yet??; 6/10/20, 8:16 AM
Yancey Ward said...: I am guessing you won't be able to fastforward through the "discussion" when the movie returns to the platform.; 6/10/20, 8:27 AM
Ralph L said...: Wasn't it in GWTW the book that the masters should treat the slaves like children?; 6/10/20, 8:32 AM
Rory said...: "some reruns of sitcoms dramas over 15 years old."

The co-creator of Friends has culpa'd that it wasn't enough:

https://pagesix.com/2020/06/07/marta-kauffman-tears-up-during-atx-panel-i-didnt-do-enough/; 6/10/20, 8:35 AM
Yancey Ward said...: How long, do you suppose, before the movie is simply remade with complete political correctness, and the old version never seen again?; 6/10/20, 8:38 AM
Fernandinande said...: 'Gone with the Wind' was pulled from HBO Max

Does it feature racist scenes of fentanyl overdoses?; 6/10/20, 8:40 AM
ExplainMeMore said...: Consider the irony of HBO censoring a work of art.; 6/10/20, 8:42 AM
ExplainMeMore said...: Consider the irony of HBO censoring a work of art.; 6/10/20, 8:44 AM
Oso Negro said...: One of my favorite movie experiences was seeing Song of the South at Mann's Chinese on Hollywood Boulevard will tripping on LSD in 1980. I was singing Zippa Dee Do Dah in the shower for a month. It's sad to think that future generations will not have such opportunity.; 6/10/20, 8:45 AM
mikee said...: As long as "Hell Comes to Frogtown" is still available, we're good.; 6/10/20, 8:45 AM
ExplainMeMore said...: Consider the irony of HBO censoring a work of art.; 6/10/20, 8:48 AM
Dude1394 said...: The taliban democrat party work continues apace.; 6/10/20, 8:48 AM
tcrosse said...: They might as well burn the book while they're at it. GWTW is a real doorstop, and would burn a long time.; 6/10/20, 8:53 AM
rhhardin said...: It's a good thing I've already bought a lot of DVDs and not some cloud entitlement to them. Amazon is sure to cancel stuff you own on the cloud.; 6/10/20, 8:55 AM
n.n said...: Unfortunately, systemic diversity (e.g. racism) is a progressive condition.; 6/10/20, 8:57 AM
tjl said...: No more COPS? This is a precursor to no more actual cops. Those police departments that aren't actually defunded will be as inactive as possible.

Minneapolis residents in particular will have little recourse other than to buy guns and ammo to tide them over while they search for a new job elsewhere. Unless they are willing to take one for the team as recommended by their city council.; 6/10/20, 8:58 AM
Birkel said...: Nobody tell Freeman Hunt.

The people leading this purge want to cancel all the things.; 6/10/20, 9:00 AM
Geoff Matthews said...: I have a copy of "Song of the South", a Disney movie from the 50's, and I finally watched it last week. Disney isn't providing it on their streaming service, and it is difficult to find DVD copies.
While Uncle Remus is presented as obsequious to the white adults, he's also shown as caring and wise to others. He's the moral center of the show.
But he would be easy to imitate, in a mocking way, and with the plethora of a$$hole$ around, I can imagine blacks being annoyed/angered by it. Much like the brouhaha of Apu in the Simpsons.

The show also provides an idealized depiction of race relations during this time. But I can't fault Disney for not wanting to tackle race relations in a kid's movie in the 50s.

Having said all of this, I don't think watching it made my kids any more racist. And we talked about race relations afterwards (and my 23-year old daughter got angry with me for refusing to agree with the notion of white guilt).; 6/10/20, 9:03 AM
I'm Not Sure said...: "If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history."

Who doesn't know about our history? Aren't schoolchildren beaten over the head for 12 years with acknowledgement of the horribleness of America?; 6/10/20, 9:10 AM
MadisonMan said...: Cancel Culture. I am not a fan.; 6/10/20, 9:12 AM
rcocean said...: GWTW is "racist" LOL. There is no "racism" in the movie. There's only an absence of "anti-racism". I don't think black people were demanding GWTW be withdrawn, this is the doing of the rich leftists in Hollywood, who hate America and American culture (such as it exists) and they're using "racism" as an excuse.

Will people ever wake up to that? Another LOL.; 6/10/20, 9:17 AM
rcocean said...: The media will censor and wipe out the past. Just like the USSR. BTW, I wonder who owns the copyright to GWTW? You can be sure that if HBO or Disney or another media Giant did - it wouldn't have gotten pulled.; 6/10/20, 9:19 AM
Gk1 said...: Hasn't COP's been cancelled or on hiatus a few times during its run? I havent watched an episode since the mid-90's. Like most marginal properties its an easy chit to throw into a cancel pile.

Maybe it can get replaced by the new Community Policing Alternatives by a show called "HUGS" as we see a group of ineffectual, chinless, beta males try to talk a screaming meth addict out of a shit smeared Starbuck's bathroom.; 6/10/20, 9:23 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: My wife is Lithuanian, and so I visit Lithuania once in a while.

Lithuanian television broadcasts a Lithuanian version of Cops -- same music, same format, same look.; 6/10/20, 9:30 AM
daskol said...: Gab has yet to take off, but at some point, there is a niche to fill in providing forbidden content. The unz.com of the literary and cultural world, since one of Unz's big projects was digitizing old magazines and other periodicals.; 6/10/20, 9:43 AM
alanc709 said...: Wasn't Hattie McDaniel the first POC to win an Academy Award, for her portrayal of Mammy (sic) in Gone With The Wind? Why would HBO MAX want to disrespect such a cultural achievement>?; 6/10/20, 9:50 AM
William said...: Eisenstein has escaped the downfall of D.W. Griffith. He made a film, Bezhin Meadow, that celebrated the (mythical) Soviet child who turned his father in for grain hoarding. Fortunately for Eisenstein the film was never completed due to cost overruns. Also, fortunately for Eisenstein, Stalin blamed the director of Soviet film making on the problems. According to wiki, Stalin had this person shot.....It is interesting and informative to note that Eisenstein's genius is accepted without reservation and that of D.W. Griffith's is now hedged with a lot of caveats.; 6/10/20, 9:52 AM
Francisco D said...: BleachBit-and-Hammers said... communists like to erase history.

Just as post modernists twist the language to the point that it only has subjective meaning.

Perhaps, the dumbing down and politicization of education and the culture was a primary feature not an offshoot of Leftism.; 6/10/20, 10:00 AM
GingerBeer said...: Well, if we're starting a list may I make some suggestions? "Black Like Me" for appropriating the Black experience, and "Watermelon Man" for erasing Black existence. Anyone else have some suggestions? Critical Race Theory can be fun.; 6/10/20, 10:01 AM
Lucien said...: I hope HBO Max keeps “Superfly”, because that does nothing to foster racial stereotypes.; 6/10/20, 10:04 AM
Just an old country lawyer said...: As Mammy said, "It ain't fittin'. It jes' ain't fittin'.; 6/10/20, 10:13 AM
ALP said...: I always wondered about the appeal of "Cops". Having watched a few episodes, it struck me as a way for financially comfortable and educated people to be entertained by the antics of the poor and stupid. The class/IQ divide on display seems kinda...porny to me. Hard pass.; 6/10/20, 10:23 AM
Krumhorn said...: Live PD has been one of the most successful series on cable and has spawned a number of spin-offs will likely not return anytime soon...if ever. From every angle, there is nothing but intolerable risk at the hands of the shrieking leftie mobs.

- Krumhorn; 6/10/20, 10:41 AM
Krumhorn said...: Trading Places had an intolerable scene with Dan Aykroyd in blackface aping an African exchange student. Someone must be cancelled for that. I expect a heartfelt apology soon.

- Krumhorn; 6/10/20, 10:46 AM
William said...: Isn't Scarlet some kind of feminist? She starts a business and keeps the family farm intact. Rhett or, anyway Clark Gable with his leer, is the very personification of the male gaze. She tries to escape this subjugation by escaping into the arms Ashley Wilkes.....I don't agree with southern writers, but it must be said that they're very good at their craft. Southern fiction writers and historians did a fine job for presenting the case for the planter class. In their time, the propagandists for British imperialists and southern whites had a leg up on their opponents. (As a general rule though, those writers who take a hard left stance are more compelling than those who are pro west or pro capitalism.).... Kipling and Margaret Mitchell were great writers. I can't think of any novel told from a northern standpoint of the Civil War that matches the narrative drive and appeal of GWTW.; 6/10/20, 10:53 AM
William said...: After WWII, GWTW was a big best seller in Germany and Japan. The subtext of the book and movie is that after conquest by Yankees life goes on and you can find a way to make things better. The movie and book are about survival in hard times. The survival of Scarlet is not based on her racism but rather on her will and drive....The lessons that people get from movies and books is sometimes very different than the lessons preached by leftists.; 6/10/20, 10:59 AM
~ Gordon Pasha said...: If GWTW has fallen, and Undercover Brother be far behind?; 6/10/20, 11:00 AM
D.D. Driver said...: Bonfire of the Privileges.; 6/10/20, 11:23 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: “Cops” made a concerted effort to highlight white perps, but they still ended up showing a lot of Blacks. You work with what you have.; 6/10/20, 11:28 AM
PM said...: Every day, Turner Classic Movies proves Hollywood's full reponsibility for perpetuating the role of blacks as America's handy underclass - the maids, chauffeurs, dishwashers, gardeners, shoeshiners and butlers of superior white citizens.; 6/10/20, 11:31 AM
stlcdr said...: re. 'cops'. It tends to show a large disproportionate number of black people committing crimes, and it's cops doing the arrestin'.

Definitely want to suppress anything which can anger the woke crowd.; 6/10/20, 11:33 AM
Scott said...: Although I support the First and Second Amendments, it's depressing to me that so many TV shows and movies are police procedurals or storylines that weave murder into the plot. We have become inured to the banality of violent crime. That's why Antifa fascists who set fire to stores, cars, and police stations elicits a shrug from politicians. Why should it be so hard for them to say violence is wrong? Maybe it's baked into our culture. And that is what needs to be addressed.; 6/10/20, 11:35 AM
William said...: Further thoughts on GWTW: This was the most honored and celebrated movie of its time. It seems that Hollywood got several key facts about slavery wrong. I wonder if it occurs to the more introspective Hollywood types to wonder what they're getting wrong this time around. Maybe they believe that this time they're on the right side of history, and they've got everything right.; 6/10/20, 11:45 AM
Big Mike said...: Time to drop HBO. I hardly ever watch it anyway.; 6/10/20, 11:53 AM
Sam L. said...: Ve musssssswt eraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase our hisssssssssssssssssssssstory!!!111!!!
Vass double-plus UN-GOOD!!!111!!!!!; 6/10/20, 12:01 PM
William said...: Even more thoughts on GWTW: To her credit, Margaret Mitchell gave the black characters speaking roles and impact on the drama of southern life. Compare her to that celebrated leftist Lillian Hellman. In Lillian Hellman's drama about southern life, The Little Foxes, black characters serve as dignified coat holders and play no bigger part than that. Scarlet certainly wasn't woke, but she was alive. In both the novel and the movie, she got vivid presence that jumps off the page and the screen. The challenge to woke filmmakers is not to obliterate Scarlet but to create some character with Scarlet's complexity and indomitable spirit.; 6/10/20, 12:05 PM
Temujin said...: I wonder if they offer the original Fahrenheit 451?; 6/10/20, 12:07 PM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: The time thus vacated will be filled with music videos rapping on badass niggas, the abasement of their ho's, and exploits in offin' pigs. Also reruns of such classics as "Superfly" and "Shaft."

In addition, the company announced a boost in resources devoted to the next generation of violent urban warfare video games.; 6/10/20, 12:17 PM
Kate said...: At 12 I saw GWTW for the first time on that brand new cable service, Home Box Office. I watched it endlessly and read the book multiple times. It was the first romance story I'd discovered, I think, so it really impacted.

Now, it's unwatchable. It just is. Black people are portrayed (except for Mammy) as children. It's to our credit that we have moved on as a society. Show it, put it in context, let others judge for themselves. They have the right plan.; 6/10/20, 12:19 PM
John henry said...: Hattie McDaniel not only won an Oscar, she was also a lesbian and crossed the color line by getting it on with Tallulah Bankhead.

Tallulah, daughter of hard line racist alabama senator.

John Henry; 6/10/20, 12:22 PM
John henry said...: Thanks to whoever recommended elia Kazan's "a life"

Excellent book and those are a couple of titbits I've learned so far.

John Henry; 6/10/20, 12:24 PM
cubanbob said...: Unbundle cable. Let the subscriber chose the internet service they from which ever provider they want and whichever channels they want including over the air channels. And eliminate net neutrality. Give the people their choice.; 6/10/20, 12:50 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: After they defenestrated Elmer Fudd's shotgun, nothing was safe. Good-bye Blazing Saddles. So long, Jack Benny and Rochester. Bye-bye, Hattie McDaniel's Oscar. I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles, but you are no longer needed.

Don't get too comfortable, Spike Lee, creator of "Jungle Fever", "Do the Right Thing"", "She's Gotta Have It", "Bamboozled", "Mo'Better Blues", etc. You have a lot of questions to answer about how you see black folks.; 6/10/20, 12:54 PM
Rory said...: "Happy now?? They won't stop until we stop them. Lock and load time yet??"

"Now...what do we do about this?"

Lock and load still leaves us with tens of millions of crazy people within the borders. I think that the best thing to do is to move forward on Constitutional reform, to buttress individual rights and federalism. We have to do that with full expectation that most of the East and West Coast, and possibly a few other small areas, will not come along, so we might lose parts or all of a dozen states. Once the New York and California crowds are gone, we start to teach rule of law and equality before the law again.; 6/10/20, 12:58 PM
ccscientist said...: When your criterion for art is offence, you must eliminate all historical depictions because none of them are PC. Huck Finn is bad because the N word is used, even though it is a very early depiction of the evils of racism. Gone with the wind realistically (and hollywood style) depicts civil war society--has to go. Paintings/murals of historical scenes, even ones that depict mistreatment of Indians, have to go. It is an erasure of history justified by squeemishness. An erasure of Indians and slaves. People even object to depictions of the Holocaust.; 6/10/20, 1:20 PM
Aggie said...: The revolution isn't being fought by the heroics of the brave, it's fought with ambushes of the unaware by creeps, and then defended by the cowards in middle management - like HBO and Dick's and Nike, all of them on the advice of the marketers and lawyers. It won't end until people say 'No' and back it up with force in anger. There is really no peaceful option.; 6/10/20, 1:20 PM
Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...: We're to expunge all Confederate figures, forts, statues, highways, etc. That way, we'll know the Civil War never happened.

There, now... feeling much better. Now, where did you say the Ku Klux Klan came from?

These sanitizing efforts reduce the clutter of collective guilt so we can reboot for Civil War II.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.; 6/10/20, 1:37 PM
Titus said...: Christopher Columbus was beheaded in Boston.; 6/10/20, 1:53 PM
William said...: How about those Shirley Temple movies? I don't think The Little Colonel passes muster. It needs context. Shirley looks way too happy and insufficiently guilty about the way poor Bill Robinson is treated.....Incidental note: I read somewhere that Robinson and Shirley actually liked each other and remained lifelong friends. Imagine that! A story involving a child star and a black performer that doesn't have a subtext of pedolphilia or racism. You don't see that very often, but maybe the real truth was suppressed by Hollywood publicists.; 6/10/20, 2:17 PM
Unknown said...: Ironic that the entertainment moguls who want to highlight black achievement have now banned the film in which the first African-American to win an Oscar appeared; 6/10/20, 2:27 PM
William said...: I saw Spielberg's Lincoln. As I remember it, there's a scene where two young black soldiers with amazingly modern and woke attitudes towards race question Lincoln about some of the iniquities in the Union Army. The soldiers are educated, skeptical, and the real moral witnesses to the Civil War.....I'm not so sure if such people existed at that time. After Richmond fell, Lincoln took a trip there. He was greeted by some newly emancipated slaves. They rejoiced at seeing Lincoln. They fell to their knees and some attempted to kiss his boots. This happened. I would defy any filmmaker to ever film such a scene. Hollywood and militant blacks like to think that Nat Turner was typical of the enslaved population but that's not who they were. Twain's Jim might be more typical than Nat Turner, but who knows. People take on roles and then the roles they play take on people.; 6/10/20, 2:30 PM
Amadeus 48 said...: "People take on roles and then the roles they play take on people."

The past is never dead. It’s not even past.

Who can know what any man or woman then living thought about Lincoln? Maybe they thought different things at different times about the same events. The question always should be, where were we then and where are we now?

The current disturbances are not about justice: they are about power.; 6/10/20, 3:20 PM
Drago said...: William: "After Richmond fell, Lincoln took a trip there. He was greeted by some newly emancipated slaves. They rejoiced at seeing Lincoln. They fell to their knees and some attempted to kiss his boots. This happened. I would defy any filmmaker to ever film such a scene."

School children today are being taught Lincoln was a "democrat" and the Confederacy was run by "conservatives".

Literally.

This is in addition to the lefts 1619 project.; 6/10/20, 4:02 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: daskol said...
Gab has yet to take off, but at some point, there is a niche to fill in providing forbidden content."

Taboo in 1920: nude photos.

Taboo in 2020: GWTW, Yosemite Sam

Imagine a group of little kids huddled behind a garage, shocked and giggling. In 1955, it's because they were looking at boobs in a National Geographic. In 2025, it'll be because they're watching an old Loony Tunes cartoon and Elmer Fudd is carrying a rifle.; 6/10/20, 4:10 PM
KellyM said...: Blogger Titus said...
"Christopher Columbus was beheaded in Boston."

It's not the first time that this statue has been vandalized; usually around the holiday in October. And now the mayor has indicated that it may not return to its spot. Not because he's especially concerned about it, but because he'd rather virtue signal. He's even tossed around the idea of changing the name of Faneuil Hall. It was founded in 1742.; 6/10/20, 4:24 PM
ken in tx said...: GAB hasn't taken off because it is too hard to use. When you comment on a post, your comment disappears. You don't know if anyone saw it or not. It may show up later on your home feed or maybe not. It combines the disadvantages of facebook with those of twitter. The only advantage being it does not censor for politics.; 6/10/20, 8:19 PM