HBO Max removes classic film "Gone with the Wind" due to racial discrimination

At the time of the "Black Lives Matter" campaign, HBO Max, a streaming platform owned by Warner, removed the classic film "Gone with the Wind" from its platform. John Ridley, the black screenwriter of "12 Years a Slave", called on the "Los Angeles Times" to remove the film from HBO Max, saying, "This movie either ignores the horror of slavery or creates the most painful stereotypes of people of color." HBO Max silently did so.

The film "Gone with the Wind" tells the love story between the stunningly beautiful but selfish Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and the scandalous and charming Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) during the American Civil War in the 1860s.

Opposition to Gone with the Wind began more than 80 years ago. In 1940, theaters showing the film were condemned by the National Black Congress. "This is a weapon of terror against black Americans," critics wrote in the Chicago Defender, a mainstream black newspaper. The content of the film they complained about in 1939 is even more unacceptable to audiences today - the film's glorification of slavery, its kindness to the KKK, the narrow setting of black character types, and the idea that "being a good slave is the true destiny of black people" runs through the entire film.

In the current era, many online television and streaming services are re-examining their own content. For example, when "The Help" became the most watched movie on Netflix, they were criticized because netizens believed that there were better films that respected black voices. And many American dramas about police have been taken off the shelves in recent days in response to public protests against police violence.

Last year, Disney+ also announced that it would not release its own extremely racist 1946 animated film "Song of the South"; they also deleted the passages about the crow named "Jim Crow" (the name of the American racial segregation system at the time) in the animated version of "Dumbo".

John suggested that the film be put back on the shelves in the future "to allow more people to see the true face of slavery and the Southern Confederacy."

Here is a statement from Warner Bros.: "The animations you are about to see are products of their time. They depict racial prejudice that was very common in American society at the time. These depictions were wrong then, and they are wrong now. The content in the cartoons does not reflect Warner Bros.' views on today's society. They are broadcast as they are, because if they are not (such as censoring or deleting), it would be like saying that these prejudices have never really existed."