Gone With the Hobo-Murdering Wind

[tongodeon]

Recently matrushkaka and I watched "Gone With The Wind". I have no idea how I missed it the first time, and the Wikipedia plot synopsis gives it pretty short shrift, but about two-thirds of the way through the movie Scarlett's husband Frank Kennedy, her longtime crush Ashley Wilkes, and a gang of their buddies totally murder an encampment of hobos.Here's what

Comments

[quercus]

Dick Van Dyke did pause to murder the English language and the cockney accent...

[xiphias]

I don't remember that scene either -- but I do remember that I just didn't like that movie because there wasn't one character who I could even tolerate. Everybody in the entire movie was just too annoying to be borne.

[mmcirvin]

I've never been able to abide Gone With the Wind sufficiently to pay attention to the whole movie, so this was news to me.

The dodgy morality throughout The Wizard of Oz is the subject of many jokes. In the book, there's actually more violence. The funny thing is that there's a preface in which Baum announces that he's trying to write something less disturbing than the Brothers Grimm tales, which admittedly is not hard to do.

No hobos are murdered in Mary Poppins, but the book does have a chapter in which naughty Michael gets frightened into submission by Embarrassing Ethnic Stereotypes from Around the World, including some Africans who mysteriously talk like American minstrel-show characters. I've heard it was changed considerably in later editions.

[tongodeon]

The dodgy morality throughout The Wizard of Oz is the subject of many jokes.

Not to belabor the point, but there's "dodgy morality", and then there's murdering an entire encampment of hobos.

[mmcirvin]

In one of the later books, the Wizard exterminates a whole species of somewhat intelligent (but flammable) monsters, who, as far as we can tell, were only bothering the protagonists in self-defense. (Baum thought something similar should be done to American Indians, actually.)

[neuracnu]

Mass murder of innocents on the still-under-construction Death Star?

[crisper]

The moment you put boots on something called the Death Star, you're no longer innocent.

[tongodeon]

We know that the Rebels called it a Death Star, but that could be nothing more than excellent PR-driven competitive branding. Is that also what the Empire called it?

[crisper]

Wookiepedia seems to believe the closest thing to a canonical answer is that it was the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, with "Death Star" possibly an internal code name on the Imperial project team and "Ultimate Weapon" as its previous designation, when it was still a Separatist project.

[sploof]

Well, most of the story *is* a defense of slavery and the confederacy, after all. The evil northerners came down and destroyed the natural social order. The newly freed slaves had been actually been much better off under the old system; now they were unable to take take care of themselves, and were a threat to everyone else. I don't remember the movie exactly, but in the book the friendly hobo/former slave had been freed more or less against his will. White trash were mixed in there as well but they were mostly just cashing in on the chaos and upheaval.

What else could right-thinking people do but form the KKK to defend themselves?

[matrushkaka]

He's got a point. The entire Southern economy collapsed after the disappearance of free labor.

[tongodeon]

The entire Southern economy became substantially depressed due to a combination of factors including the disappearance of slavery, General Sherman's army burning the means of production, and hookworms.

[grumpymonkey]

All a good illustration why I'll never move south of the Mason-Dixon. this was considered a GOOD thing and justified in the day. It's in the cultural DNA of the south, but unlike the atrocities of other cultures, southern culture seems to be taking it's sweet time trying to put it behind them.

I'm not sure if there are any secret genocides in any classic films that you have somehow missed, but there are some pretty strange messages in a lot of classics.

[grumpymonkey]

I think I liked your original post better. Being called "retarded" showed your true feelings better than insulting my intelligence

[hwrnmnbsol]

Amen, brother. Where else than the south could a public swim club kick a bunch of day-care kids out of their pool solely because they were mostly black