UPDATE: HBO Max has reintroduced Gone With the Wind, this time with a new introduction and panel discussion aimed to address the film’s complicated legacy.
“Watching Gone With the Wind can be uncomfortable, even painful,” film scholar Jacqueline Stewart says in a video that precedes the movie. “Still it’s important that classic Hollywood films are available to us in their original form for viewing and discussion.”
She adds, “The film presents the Antebellum South as a world of grace and beauty, without acknowledging the brutalities of the system of chattel slavery, upon which this world is based.”
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HBO Max has made a major change to library.
The streaming service announced that it has removed Gone With the Wind from its offerings. According to CNN Business, a spokesperson from HBO Max explained that the Oscar-winning 1936 film, which takes place during the American Civil War in the South and features portrayals of slavery, is “a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.”
