When I saw these frosty cabbages hunkered down in rows inside long urns, they brought to mind any number of images, but mostly of the dance scene in the old movie, "Gone With the Wind". It's not one of my favorite films: What with its racist caricature of Black people and the reduction of women to simpering ninnies, the movie now seems like it is a very dated reminder of both how far we have come as a society, and how far we have yet to go.
I long ago became irritated with the character of Scarlett O'Hara until I chose to see her as an intelligent, shrewd woman forced to play a role in a society that seemed to regard females as little more than child-like baby machines; in fact, when Rhett Butler told her he wanted to pamper her as though she was a child, he immediately lost his charm for me. When I saw Scarlett as doing what she needed to protect her family, to put food in their bellies, and keep a roof over their heads, then her actions (and stupefying simpering!) made sense.
If like me, you think the movie is a bit fucked up, I recommend The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind, made in 1988. It seems almost a miracle that the entire production did not suffer a complete collapse.
1 comment:
An apt description.
While I get the acclaim for the film at the time, it has become more problematic by the decade.
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