I've never had much respect for film critics, who are mostly failed writers, actors and directors, much like the obnoxious late Roger Elbert. They are just flap-jawed flunkey's that produce nothing useful. Film critics are like annoying barking dogs or someone who stands next to you in a art museum and insistently explains the meaning of a painting.
So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that recent discussions of the Confederate Battle Flag and it's perceived racist connotations in today's modern world would also give the political correct film critic a wider opening to go after similar symbols of our traditions in their field of expertize. And Didn't take long at all....
NYP
"If the Confederate flag is finally going to be consigned to museums as an ugly symbol of racism, what about the beloved film offering the most iconic glimpse of that flag in American culture?
I’m talking, of course, about “Gone with the Wind,’’ which won a then-record eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1939, and still ranks as the all-time North American box-office champ with $1.6 billion worth of tickets sold here when adjusted for inflation.
True, “Gone with the Wind’’ isn’t as blatantly and virulently racist as D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation,’’ which was considered one of the greatest American movies as late as the early 1960s, but is now rarely screened, even in museums.
The more subtle racism of “Gone with the Wind’’ is in some ways more insidious, going to great lengths to enshrine the myth that the Civil War wasn’t fought over slavery — an institution the film unabashedly romanticizes.
But what does it say about us as a nation if we continue to embrace a movie that, in the final analysis, stands for many of the same things as the Confederate flag that flutters so dramatically over the dead and wounded soldiers at the Atlanta train station just before the “GWTW’’ intermission...........
The studio sent “Gone with the Wind’’ back into theaters for its 75th anniversary in partnership with its sister company Turner Classic Movies in 2014, but I have a feeling the movie’s days as a cash cow are numbered.
It’s showing on July 4 at the Museum of Modern Art as part of the museum’s salute to the 100th anniversary of Technicolor — and maybe that’s where this much-loved but undeniably racist artifact really belongs." - Read More
The film critic, Mr Lumenick, may be considered brilliant in the world of flap-jawed flunkey's, but misses an important point about the movie. Anyone who's read Margaret Mitchell's book "Gone With the Wind" recognizes immediately this is not a story about the civil war, but a fictional story set during the time of the civil war. And it was also not the days of making movies with explicit violence as is the hallmark of today's cinema.
Perhaps, Mr. Lumenick. you would better service society by pointing your critical views at some of the films littered with unnecessary gratuitous violence that permeates modern film making and sometime influences young unstable minds to kill instead of salivating over the possible shunning of a masterfully made fictional piece from three generation ago.
Make yourself useful for a change, Mr Lumenick.