EREN HBO Max Pulls ‘Gone With the Wind,’ Citing Racist Depictions The New York Times, by Daniel Victor, June 10, 2020 The streaming service said it planned to eventually bring the 1939 film back “with a discussion of its historical context.” HBO Max has removed from its catalog “Gone With the Wind,” the 1939 movie long considered a triumph of American cinema but one that romanticizes the Civil War-era South while glossing over its racial sins. The streaming service pledged to eventually bring the film back “with a discussion of its historical context” while denouncing its racial missteps, a spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday. Set on a plantation and in Atlanta, the film won multiple Academy Awards, including best picture and best supporting actress for Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American to win an Oscar, and it remains among the most celebrated movies in cinematic history. But its rose-tinted depiction of the antebellum South and its blindness to the horrors of slavery have long been criticized, and that scrutiny was renewed this week as protests over police brutality and the death of George Floyd continued to pull the United States into a wide- ranging conversation about race. “‘Gone With the Wind’ is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” an HBO Max spokesperson said in a statement. “These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.” HBO Max, owned by AT&T, pulled the film on Tuesday, one day after John Ridley, the screenwriter of “12 Years a Slave,” wrote an op-ed in The Los Angeles Times calling for its removal. Mr. Ridley said he understood that films were snapshots of their moment in history, but that “Gone With the Wind” was still used to “give cover to those who falsely claim that clinging to the iconography of the plantation era is a matter of ‘heritage, not hate.’” “It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color,” he wrote. By several measures, the film was one of the most successful in American history. It received eight competitive Academy Awards and remains the highest-grossing film ever when adjusting for inflation. In 2007, it placed sixth on the American Film Institute’s list of greatest films of all time. There was little criticism of the film when it was released, though in 1939 an editorial board member of The Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the Communist Party USA, called it “an insidious glorification of the slave market” and the Ku Klux Klan. But the world in which it is viewed has changed, and with each decade discomfort has grown as people revisit its racial themes and what was omitted. In 2017, the Orpheum theater in Memphis said it would stop showing the film, as it had done each year for 34 years, after receiving complaints from patrons and other commenters. The president of the theater said it could not show a film “that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population.” Based on a 1936 book by Margaret Mitchell, the film chronicles the love affair of Scarlett O’Hara, the daughter of a plantation owner, and Rhett Butler, a charming gambler. Critics have long said that the slaves are depicted as well-treated, content and loyal to their masters, a trope that rewrites the reality of how enslaved people were forced to live. Ms. McDaniel won an Oscar for her performance as Mammy, an affable slave close to Scarlett O’Hara. The nationwide protests of recent weeks have caused other entertainment companies to reconsider how their content is viewed in the current climate. The Paramount Network said on Tuesday that it had removed “Cops,” the long-running reality show that glorified police officers, from its schedule before its 33rd season. There have also been similar moves in Britain. On Monday, the BBC removed episodes of the comedy series “Little Britain” — which featured one character in blackface — from its streaming service. “Times have changed since ‘Little Britain’ first aired so it is not currently available on BBC iPlayer,” a BBC spokesperson said. The show had already been removed from Netflix and was also taken off the BritBox streaming service. “Little Britain,” which was shown in the early 2000s, was created by David Walliams and Matt Lucas. Mr. Lucas, who was recently named the new host of “The Great British Baking Show,” has said in interviews that he would not make “Little Britain” today. After announcing modest police reforms, Trump pivots quickly to a law-and-order message in appeal to his base The Washington Post, by David Nakamura, June 27, 2020 Over the past week, President Trump has signed an executive order to protect public monuments and statues from vandalism. He accused a Black Lives Matter leader of committing “treason.” He threatened a federal crackdown on protesters and vowed “retribution” against vandals, whom he labeled “terrorists.” And he praised a version of New York City’s “stop-and-frisk” policing strategy that was phased out years ago. Since signing an executive action on police changes on June 16 in the Rose Garden, Trump has shifted almost exclusively to “law-and-order” rhetoric — while dropping almost any pretense of personally addressing the widespread public anger over police brutality that has sparked nationwide demonstrations. The president’s posture comes as he has sought to energize his conservative political base in response to polls that show diminishing public approval over his handling of both the racial justice protests and the coronavirus pandemic. After framing his police executive action as an effort to balance the interests of victims’ families and police officers, Trump has sided squarely with the law enforcement community, reinforcing widespread skepticism about his commitment to addressing complaints of racial bias and systemic abuses in police departments that have harmed African Americans. “There are certain things I’ve accepted about Donald Trump,” said Lee Merritt, the attorney for more than half a dozen black families that met with the president at the White House ahead of his Rose Garden announcement. “Part of it is that he is always going to favor his base, which is law enforcement and law enforcement-aligned individuals.” Amid the nationwide debate that erupted after George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis last month, Merritt added, Trump “needed to be involved in that conversation, but it goes contrary to everything he’s said before with regard to policing.” White House aides insisted that Trump has not given up on the executive actions he outlined to establish federal certification standards on police training, create a national database to track police abuse cases and pair law enforcement agencies with social workers when responding in communities. The administration has been coordinating with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is leading the Senate GOP’s legislative proposals, although that effort has clashed with a competing package from House Democrats that includes more expansive police changes. Ja’Ron Smith, a White House domestic policy aide, said on Fox Business this week that Trump was right to threaten protesters who have torn down monuments because “we’ve got to have a civil conversation and a civil society and a nation of laws. This right here is lawlessness and anarchy, and it doesn’t represent the people in the community.” Smith, who helped develop Trump’s executive actions along with senior adviser Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, said that the administration “will do all we can do administratively,” including using convening power to “bring both sides together.” Trump aides said the president has expressed support for peaceful protesters and empathy for Floyd on multiple occasions, but the most recent example in a list provided by the White House was June 5. Over the past 11 days, Trump has lashed out against demonstrators repeatedly, and he changed a photo on his Twitter profile to one of him posing with 33 uniformed police officers in front of Air Force One. Ahead of a campaign rally in Tulsa last weekend, he suggested in a tweet that “Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes” would be treated more strictly in the Republican-led city than in New York, Seattle or Minneapolis, jurisdictions run by Democrats. He slammed New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to have artists paint “Black Lives Matter” in front of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, saying New York police “are furious.” And after police thwarted an attempt to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square next to the White House last Monday, Trump declared that “numerous people are in jail and going to jail today.” He also said he had authorized 10-year prison terms for “these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and these agitators.” Yet in his eagerness to project toughness, Trump exaggerated the state of affairs. In fact, authorities made a combined four arrests that day — none in direct connection with damaging the Jackson statue. D.C. police arrested two men accused of spraying officers with a fire extinguisher. And U.S. Park Police arrested two others who allegedly punched officers during skirmishes as the federal officers sought to clear the area of protesters. But the U.S. attorney’s office in the District, led by a Trump appointee, did not pursue criminal charges against the latter two men.