...I recalled that moment last Thursday when watching the premiere of Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) ill-advised March series Reframed: Classic Films in the Rearview Mirror featuring Gone with the Wind (1939), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), and Rope (1948). With the series, TCM hopes to continue its only raison d’être — presenting screen masterworks — yet protect itself from modern woke vampires bloated with fresh blood — Dr. Seuss’s and Mr. Potato Head’s. Other classics to be deconstructed for anti-wokeness include Woman of the Year (1942), Gunga Din (1939), and The Searchers (1956). TCM declares its intent in a ghastly website statement:
Many of the beloved classics that we enjoy on TCM have stood the test of time in several ways, nevertheless when viewed by contemporary standards, certain aspects of these films can be troubling and problematic. This month, we are looking at a collection of such movies and we’ll explore their history, consider their cultural context and discuss how these movies can be reframed so that future generations will keep their legacy alive.
That the announcement is typical progressive drivel becomes obvious in the first sentence. Because “the beloved classics” clearly “have stood the test of time,” the phrase “in several ways” signifies nothing. Neither does “when viewed by contemporary standards,” nor the utterly insipid “certain aspects of these films can be troubling.” Hey, welcome to art, snowflakes. The sentence ends with the ultimate vague yet loaded word, “problematic.”
The second sentence is even more offensive to TCM viewers. The last thing they need is liberal movie hosts explaining the “cultural context” and “refram[ing]” these films to “keep their legacy alive.” They tune into TCM instead of modern cable dreck precisely to escape politically correct propaganda and spend a couple of hours with a story, time, and place they can appreciate, and as a break from their day-to-day labors. They don’t need to be told that slavery was bad to enjoy Gone with the Wind, or that kidnapping women is an improper way to provide Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And they just might enjoy how the lumberjack brothers try to gently romance their abductees with song and dance until the women reciprocate, without feminists blaming Stockholm Syndrome.
Almost everything Stewart said about the film was wrong. The movie does not support a white supremacist view or “a fantasy of the slave system” but accurately reflects the historic tragedy of one race “owning” members of another. As for “a long lost world of chivalry,” the hero of the story, Rhett Butler, harpoons the Confederacy as a fools’ paradise early on (“All we’ve got is cotton, slaves, and arrogance.”) And the South pays a heavy price for its hubris in the same movie. Again, great art cannot be deconstructed to politically correct bullet points. Yet TCM felt the need to deprive them of these pleasures by throwing its cinematic treasures under the bus, beginning with the first film on the program, Gone with the Wind. Reframed cohostess Jacqueline Stewart explained why TCM’s sister network HBO Max had recruited her to make the perennial favorite acceptable: “HBO Max was concerned, like so many organizations, so many media companies, about what it would look like for them presenting a film that so obviously was supporting a kind of white supremacist view. It’s a film that celebrates the Confederacy as this kind of long lost world of chivalry associated with a fantasy of what the slave system was like in the pre-bellum South.”
Almost everything Stewart said about the film was wrong. The movie does not support a white supremacist view or “a fantasy of the slave system” but accurately reflects the historic tragedy of one race “owning” members of another. As for “a long lost world of chivalry,” the hero of the story, Rhett Butler, harpoons the Confederacy as a fools’ paradise early on (“All we’ve got is cotton, slaves, and arrogance.”) And the South pays a heavy price for its hubris in the same movie. Again, great art cannot be deconstructed to politically correct bullet points.
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