Not Gone with the Wind

The movie Gone with the Wind has recently sparked controversy.  The 80-year-old film depicting slavery and racism in the South was previously considered a masterpiece of cinema. Now it is at the heart of a debate about whether the movie should be viewed ever again. I am here to argue to include GWTW in our movie repertoire.

Also of note in the news is that Olivia de Haviland, who played the painfully sincere Miss Melly, died at the age of 104. It was her character of Miss Melly that inspires viewers and deserves to be seen again and again.

As you may recall, the scheming Scarlett O’Hara of the Tara plantation and the rapacious Captain Butler who supplies the Confederacy are the films’ lead characters. Miss Melly is a moral grounding for the story. She demonstrates loyalty, caring and optimism in the face of duplicity, greed and destruction.

If cancel culture bans Gone with the Wind to the ash heap of movies, we lose the story of Miss Melly. Few movie characters of the golden age are as wholehearted; good for the sake of being good. If any character of Gone with the Wind embodies Torah values it is she.

At parshat Shoftim, we learn “You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God.” Wholeheartedness is committed, positive, devoted, and dedicated. How can one be wholehearted with God? By being the best person we can be even when no other person is looking. While no other person may be in view, we should always act as if God is watching.

Cancel culture would ban Gone with the Wind. If that happens, we lose the story of the wholehearted woman who sits at the moral fulcrum in a world literally burning and crumbling around her.  Sometimes the stories that best inspire and instruct are couched in a story of avarice and self-interest.

As the High Holidays approach, we are poised to find the moral fulcrum of our lives. We are guided to act wholeheartedly under the presumption that God is watching.  And we learn that cancel culture does not help us to redeem the virtues that sustain the world. The Jewish approach is to seek and embody goodness even when all seems to be collapsing around us, just like Miss Melly.

Evan J. Krame