Outrage over historical films, TV shows, songs, etc.

[AntsyVee]

Lencoboy, I don't think anyone is going to erase your culture. I say this gently, as something to self-reflect on, but perhaps do you think your fear of things changing, and perhaps others' fear of things changing, has been what's kept some racist cultural items intact?

I can only give an example from my country, as I don't live in the UK, but let's use the movie "Gone with the Wind." It's a movie based on a historical romance book. While the primary story is the relationship of the two main characters, the secondary story is the change in the environment of the antebellum to the post-civil war South. It's this secondary part that's the problem. The change has a negative connotation because it causes the main character to move from wealth to poverty. It's also romanticized. The main character views the past through rose-colored glasses. It doesn't show what it was like for those not in power. Does this mean the movie is racist? Yes and no. The romanticism of the antebellum by the main character isn't really because she would have felt that way. However the black characters that are in the movie are caricatures. They're not really given any depth and we never see truly what they've had to face.

Here's why the movie can be dangerous. If someone who was ignorant and uneducated were to watch this movie, they could easily believe that the antebellum South should be romanticized...they might believe that was actually how things were. They might not believe that slavery was so bad.

I use "Gone with the Wind" in my classroom to explain to students why some people in the South in the US like to keep the Confederate flag up and why many of them say, "The South shall rise again." The kids don't understand why anyone would want to keep symbols that represented slavery. And I have to show them "Gone with the Wind" to explain to them how some of these Southern people have romantic notions of the antebellum. Only after I show the first part of that movie, do they understand how those people think.

So I agree with the decision to take the movie down until a message of historical context and a warning can accompany the movie.