Gentility and Injustice in “Gone with the Wind” (1939)

On the moors of medieval Scotland, three witches hail Gone with the Wind— adjusted for inflation, the highest-grossing film in American history— has undergone several critical reappraisals in the 82 years since its production and release. Certainly the film romanticizes the Antebellum South and the Confederacy while glossing over the evils of slavery and stereotyping many of its black characters. Yet it may also provide a sharp critique or even satirization of its white characters— the ambivalent, arrogant, and deluded plantation owners who fail to acknowledge that their so-called “fairy-tale kingdoms” are built on the backs of slaves. What can we make of Rhett Butler’s characterization of the Confederate “Cause” as the “Cause of Living in the Past”? And why does even the modern, adaptable Scarlett O’Hara remain in thrall to a childhood dream that, like the “gallantry” of the Old South, was nothing more than a fantasy? Wes & Erin analyze. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:09 Erin: Gone with the Wind, adjusted for inflation, the highest grossing film in American history has undergone several critical reappraisals in the 82 years since its production and release. Certainly the film romanticizes the antebellum south and the Confederacy while glossing over the evils of slavery and stereotyping many of its black characters. But it may also provide a sharp critique or even satirization of its white characters, the ambivalent, arrogant and deluded plantation owners who fail to acknowledge that their so called fairytale kingdoms are built on the backs of slaves. What can we make of Rhett Butler's characterization of the Confederate cause as the cause of living in the past? And why does even the modern, adaptable Scarlett O'Hara remain enthralled to a childhood dream that, like the gallantry of the old south, was nothing more than a fantasy? These are the topics for today's discussion. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. 1:05 Wes: And this is Wes Alwan and you 1:07 Erin: are listening to Subtext. Wes, I am so happy that we are finally doing Gone with the Wind. I feel like I have referenced this film in so many other episodes that we've done. Obviously, this movie has an important place in film history. There's a lot to love about it. There's a lot that's controversial, which I'm sure we'll get to over the course of our discussion. But just to give a little personal background, I think you and I have both talked about how we grew up watching wizard of Oz and we don't remember the first time we saw it. But I really strongly remember the first time I saw Gone with the Wind. It was Thanksgiving. I was 6 or 7 years old. And as the family was gathering around the table, they were talking about how Gone with the Wind was going to be airing on TV that night. And maybe that was something that we could do later, was watch it. I had heard of this movie before and I thought it was a James Bond movie based on the title. And I was. 2:07 Wes: It is a good title for. 2:08 Erin: Right. Like it kind of. That kind of makes sense. So I was really confused as to why so many people in my family who professed varying levels of interest in James Bond movies were so adamant about the fact that we should all sit and watch this. Anyway, I was very confused, very curious. And it started, and I obviously soon realized it was not a James Bond movie. And I was so captivated by it. I thought it was so beautiful. And I was just in love with Vivien Leigh. And I thought it was such an incredible experience that I asked for it from Santa for Christmas. And I got the two VHS double set and watched that double set pretty much every Saturday afternoon for the next. I want to say three. Three and a half years until I had worn out the tape. 3:05 Wes: Oh, wow. 3:06 Erin: Yeah. And I had. In my. I just remembered this. This morning in my freshman dorm in school, I had a poster of Rhett and Scarlet embracing over my bed in my freshman dorm room. 3:18 Wes: Wow. 3:19 Erin: Yeah. So this and wizard of Oz were probably urtext of my. Of my childhood and adolescence. 3:26 Wes: Very different. 3:27 Erin: I know. Well, and that's. Yeah. 3:30 Wes: I'm not sure if their relationship is such a good model for a young. 3:35 Erin: I know. 3:35 Wes: For a young mind. 3:36 Erin: I'm. I'm. You know, it occurred to me later how. How dangerous it was for me to be so obsessed with this film. Believe me, I know. But I'm glad we're getting two different flavors here, because you just watched this film for the first time, which I find so sad. Just a couple weeks ago. Right? 3:53 Wes: Yeah. I also vividly remember the first time I saw this film because it was a couple of weeks ago, and my second time was just this morning. So last night and this morning I did my second viewing with note taking. 4:06 Erin: So this is really the two ends of the spectrum in terms of perspective. 4:10 Wes: It is. I was excited to see this just because we were coming out of A Streetcar Named Desire and I thought it would be interesting to see another Vivien Leigh movie. And because I hadn't seen it and it's. It's an important movie to see and I was finally going to get to see it, you know, I honestly didn't think I was going to do two viewings, especially because it's three and a half hours. I thought I would approach this more casually, but I ended up doing the second viewing and taking lots of notes. So I was really impressed, especially by the visual aspect of the film. The cinematography, the use of these often silhouettes against a. So, for instance, Scarlet and her father standing against a red sky. The whole thing with the red sky and people, you know, whether it's a sunset or the burning of the Atlanta Depot and seeing figures cast against that. There's a lot of attention to the aesthetics of the film, which is appropriate to everything that's going on thematically. It's appropriate artistically to think about that. The visual lushness of the film, of course, is also related to the kinds of ideals involved in the Old South. Sort of the notion of gentility and the emphasis on appearances. Scarlet's interest in looking beautiful and wearing beautiful dresses. And hats and living on a beautiful plantation, all of those things. The film leans into all of that stuff, which I think gives it the unfair reputation of actually glorifying its subject matter when there's lots of evidence against that. 5:53 Erin: Absolutely, I completely agree. I think that the film is so much smarter about its source material and about the way that it's portraying certain things than people tend to give it credit for. It's been a long time since I've read the novel, I should say, but I have read it a couple of times. And I think that the novel is also more critical of the south than people give it credit for. And there's a lot in this that is anachronistic, though it does a pretty good job of. In terms of costuming and reproducing everything very meticulously. It does a great job at that. But a lot of people have argued, for instance, that Scarlet is. I think Ebert said this in his review and other people have noted this, that Scarlet is more of a Depression era heroine than a Civil War or Reconstruction era heroine. She gets away with a lot more than she would have ordinarily in that society. We could talk about whether or not that in itself is providing a sort of anachronistic model of an alternative way to be in this particular world. The visual beauty. A couple of times when I was watching this time around and I. I really do have almost the whole movie memorized, I'm sure, even shot for shot in my head. And still I'm just struck by certain moments where you can pause it and it looks like a painting. The one frame of the carriage going on that sort of perilous route back to Tara after Rhett has abandoned Scarlet and Melanie and Prissy and the baby. That shot of them coming through the landscape that's been destroyed by battles and there are all the headstones and crosses of, I'm sure, very shallow graves. It's not red in the backdrop, but a sort of early morning uneasy yellow, misty yellow, with the carriage silhouetted in black against that backdrop. Just reminds me of German Romantic painting. Like, I wonder if they were directly influenced by The Abbey in the Oakwood, which is painting by Caspar David Friedrich, which is just very, very similar and very, very evocative. So there are different shots in the film that seem to be referencing famous paintings or informed by them, at any rate. And it's just truly one of the most beautiful, I think, and very carefully visually constructed. I'm sure our listeners are familiar with a lot of backstory around the making of the film and how they actually had to paint in certain elements of certain shots. So they would take the. The film and they would have something where maybe in the background they wanted a grand house, like, say, Twelve Oaks. And they had physically shot all the stuff that they needed in the foreground. But the background was like Culver City, you know, so they would put one sort of half of a frame on top of what they had shot by painting in a beautiful house and sort of splice the two together and did other various tricks to sort of hide the fact that they were filming on a backlot. Because it really does look in many instances like it's been filmed on location. 8:56 Wes: Right. 8:56 Erin: Which is pretty rare at that time, and obviously it wasn't, but they. They really did a great job of disguising that fact and making you feel as though you're in Georgia. 9:05 Wes: Right. The burning of the Atlanta Depot. Right. That's the burning of a lot of different movie sets. 9:10 Erin: Right. 9:10 Wes: On lot that needed to be gotten rid of. 9:13 Erin: Right? Yeah. The King Kong doors are that big structure that comes tumbling down in that one magnificent shot. 9:20 Wes: That is beautiful. And you watch the movie and you wonder how they did that at the time. You wonder how they accomplished some of these things. Because the special effects seemed quite good. And then. Yeah, it was interesting to read. 9:33 Erin: Culver City Fire Department had a lot of phone calls that night. 9:36 Wes: Right. I saw that you mentioned the Ebert review, which I did read. So this is called. It's just called Gone with the Wind, I guess. So here's the part I had actually remembered and highlighted this part that you mentioned about Scarlett as a creature of the 1930s. So here's the way he put it for the story it wanted to tell. It was the right film at the right time. Scarlett O' Hara is not a creature of the 1860s, but of the 1930s. A free spirited, willful, modern woman. The way was prepared for her by the flappers of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, by the bold movie actresses of the period, and by the economic reality of the Depression, which for the first time put lots of women to work outside their homes. Scarlett's lusts and headstrong passions have little to do with myths of delicate Southern flowers and everything to do with the sex symbols of the movies that shaped her creator, Margaret Mitchell. Actresses like Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Louise Brooks and Mae West. The way Scarlet is represented as a protagonist is really important. And Rhett, as well as her antagonist slash lover, which is that it's in direct conflict with her environment, with the old South. I don't think it's any more anachronistic than the strong women of, say, a Pride and Prejudice novel. 10:59 Erin: I agree. 10:59 Wes: Strong women of a Jane Austen novel are anachronistic. But she is not simply the Southern belle in the way in which a lot of other women in the movie fulfill that role to one degree or another, because they are interested in propriety. Right. So she stands out. She's an exception. And this gets us back to the question of whether it's actually glorifying the old South. So to me, the movie feels from the beginning like a satire. You have Scarlett, fiddle-dee-dee, war, war, war. Right. To her, the war is silly. And quickly we get the same sort of attitude from Rhett Butler and a lot of contempt for the impracticality and dreaminess and foolishness of the south and the Southern cause. So glorification is really the last thing that comes to mind when jump into the movie. 12:03 Erin: I totally agree. And I think that what the movie is doing is just extremely subtle. So I think in the first half of the film, what I find really striking is how arrogant the south is and how infantile the south is about itself. I think it does that in several ways. In the first half of the film, I think where the critique breaks down is because the film doesn't follow through with that in the second half of the story. It doesn't maybe recognize the subsequent hypocrisy that the south shows by painting themselves as victims in the aftermath of the war. So you have these people literally asking for it, getting themselves into. Into a war that they can't win. And then in the second half of the film, when you see the aftermath, there's no recognition. There's maybe a little hint of recognition from Ashley, but otherwise no real recognition that they are not the sort of blameless victims suffering from a defeat that has been completely unjust and which has taken away their lives from them. So there's no recognition in the second half of the film. I think to that extent I understand people's problems with the film. I also understand people's problems with the way that the slaves are portrayed. And a few other things, though I think that the best character in the film and the most moral character in the film is Mammy. She really is kind of the moral center and probably the smartest person in the film. Of course, you can argue that that's canceled out by other characters, especially Prissy, though I think that also Prissy is a little bit more intelligent than I think the movie May be implying that she's a little bit subversive. 13:51 Wes: Right. 13:51 Erin: I think that people have a certain idea about this film and if they actually see it, they may be pleasantly surprised. I think especially compared to. And we can, sorry, get into the minutiae. But I think especially compared to other films of this era with black characters, this film is far more nuanced in its portrayals than other films of the period. And therefore, I sometimes feel as though, despite the subject matter and the fact that it directly is reckoning with our country's past and history of slavery and all of these things, I think at the same time, compared to other films of the time period, it's sort of an odd target for that kind of criticism because unfortunately, I've seen other films that are just pure stereotypes of black characters. Really disgusting stuff that I don't care to watch. So I think that this film has the, you know, the name recognition and the fact that it directly deals with the history. But I think that people would be surprised, and maybe not surprised in other ways if they gave the film a watching and saw the critiques of the white characters embedded in so much of the film. 15:02 Wes: Yeah, you know what we get with the text as we fade into the movie? There was a land of cavaliers and cotton fields called the Old South. Here in this patrician world, the age of chivalry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of knights and their ladies fair, of master and slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, A civilization gone with the wind. That account that we begin with seems to buy into the Old south as a romantic ideal. And then we immediately get what I have called the satirical element, which is we get the twin brothers who have been expelled from college and Scarlet's contempt for the war. And we get the sense that the lifestyle that. And there are lots of things that happen in the movie to indicate this, but the lifestyle that they've built for themselves, which, of course is predicated on slave labor and also their own kind of indolence and the fact that they spend all their time is basically leisure time. So they're horseback riding, or maybe they're getting an education of some kind. But if you drop out of school, it's not a big deal. It's kind of impractical. The two most prominent representatives of the Old south are Melanie and Ashley. And those are ambivalent characterizations, I think. So there's a lot to like, especially about Melanie. But Ashley himself is supposed to come across as weak and entranced with a. With this past lifestyle that's now. That's now gone and he's been stringing along. You really don't. You really wonder what's happened between him and Scarlet. You know, he says she cut her teeth on his heart, something like that. Right. But obviously he's kind of strung her along. So his softness and gentility are not without their dark side. And nor is Melanie's desire to see nothing but good in people and ironically to admire Scarlet for being the very opposite, which in her mind is passionate and stubborn, but really ultimately amoral. So anyway, those are a few of the ways in which we get that title card that we begin with very obviously can't be taken at face value, which is not to say there isn't anything glorifying in it. In a way there's an aesthetic glorification, but that's undercut at every point as far as the glorification of the substance of it. So some of Rhett's comments sort of recapitulate that title card, but they're much harsher. Take a good look. You're going to watch the Old south disappear overnight. Something like that. And almost seeming to relish that. 17:55 Erin: Yeah, I agree and I completely agree with everything you're saying, particularly Melanie's delusions about Scarlet I find really interesting. And we can talk more about the nature of that later and whether or not it's a. To what extent it's a willful delusion and how that might tie into the Old South. I think that Ashley is. I've always, because of the charms of Scarlet, defended her wholeheartedly. And I do believe that she is the hero of this film, no matter how bad she is. Somehow the worse she is, the better I like her. You know, the older I've gotten, the more I see Ashley as the villain. I do agree that he is a kind of a representative of the Old South. So we have this confrontation early on in the film between Rhett Butler and Charles Hamilton takes place as the men are sipping their brandy in the study or the lounge or whatever it is while Ms. Scarlet with a revolver is in the hall. No, the ladies have gone. The ladies have gone for their mid afternoon nap. And this is another indication that things in the Old south are not, not quite so great for the people involved and that this is a very infantilizing and oppressive culture. And I think it's symbolically significant that Scarlet stays awake during the time that the rest of the women are sleeping. But anyway, the men are having this argument about the war. And Ashley is sort of being neutral about things and trying to quiet Charles Hamilton, this very young, very immature guy who is trying to assert the power and glory of the south and what it means to be a gentleman in the face of Rhett Butler by launching ad hominem attacks against him when Rhett is trying to bring up the very real disadvantages that the south would have to reckon with in a potential war 19:40 Wes: with the north and trying to start a duel with him. Yep, she would certainly lose. But. 19:45 Erin: Right, Right. And as Ashley says. And Rhett walks away rather than engage with Charles. Because Charles is so young and so ridiculous in this exchange that Rhett doesn't even take him seriously. But this is where we get Rhett's opinion about the war for the first time. And I think it's important to note that this is Clark Gable talking. So if you want to know what the movie thinks that the audience should think about the south, it's whatever Clark Gable says. And Rhett is generous to this kid and really makes him look like a loser. And meanwhile, Ashley is sort of this shadowy figure in the background, sort of advising Charles to not be mean to Rhett and to calm himself down. But we see that Ashley is very entrenched in this culture. He understands all of Rhett's points but doesn't act on them or feel as though this is any real problem that we recognize later. We know that he's taken in all of these criticisms of the south and understands them quite well. But he's extremely comfortable at Twelve Oaks. I think at one point he says that had the war never happened, he would have been happily buried at Twelve Oaks. I think he uses the term bury. And one wonders if he means buried in the life of Twelve Oaks and sort of buried alive or if he means that he would have lived to be buried in the plantation plot. But I think it means both things. So we have all these things converging by the time of this confrontation scene. We have the fact that the women have been sent up to take a nap. We have Gerald O'Hara at Tara being completely oblivious to everything that's going on on the plantation. He even has to hire Jonas Wilkerson, a white field overseer, to actually run the plantation for him. So he does. He's not even. In addition to being sustained by slave labor, he isn't even actively engaged in directing that labor or understanding what's going on in the fields, in the house. His wife is kind of a prototype for Scarlet. She is the one who seems to be taking care of things, though she's taking care of other people outside the house and doesn't understand what her own daughters are doing. We have this little upstart who tries to engage Rhett in a duel over these pie in the sky ideals. And we have Ashley who just sort of shrugs his shoulders and tells Charles to cool it. So none of these men are particularly strong, nor are they particularly capable at what they do. And many of them are kind of idiotic. It's not a flattering portrait. 22:28 Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think there is some ambivalence in the representation. Maybe I feel the need to defend the South. 22:36 Erin: Oh, that's right. Because you are from. 22:37 Wes: From your Connecticut aggression. Because I am from Savannah, Georgia, which 22:41 Erin: I know, I'm a Yankee. 22:43 Wes: I clapped when she mentioned Savannah in the film, even though she didn't want to go. There's nothing to do down there. 22:49 Erin: Seems like it would be more fun than Atlanta, but. 22:52 Wes: But, yeah. So, you know, I read it as ambivalence towards the fantasy element of that lifestyle and genteel values, genteel virtues. But the way in which those things are predicated on. Not just on certain forms of oppression, but on, you know, what people today would call privilege as a kind of obliviousness, you know, which is what you were getting at. The failure to see what's around them, the fail to look things in the eyes. I think that's the way this is what Rhett says at one point to Scarlet. Both of us are selfish and shrewd, able to look things in the eyes and call them by the right names. So this is meant to be the contrast between them and the environment they find themselves in which they stick out. They both stick out like sore thumbs and so are made for each other in that sense, despite the fact that Scarlet. What's odd is, you know, you might call her a Southern belle, but she's not in the same sense of the other women. She's just using that. And she wants Ashley, but in a way, she can admire his gentility, but in a way, as a possession. Right. It's not that she shares those values like Melanie. She wants what she wants, and she's, as Rhett puts it, selfish and shrewd about it. So those two stick out like sore thumbs and in and of themselves amount to a critique of everything that's. Of the impracticality and the dreaminess of everything that's going on around them. They're obviously very imperfect themselves. And I can't say I have a huge amount of Fondness for either of them, really. Yeah, I think Rhett, I think he's the. There are some very likable aspects to him. I wonder if Han Solo is sort of modeled on him. I think so because he's a blockade runner and rebel and he has that same, hey, I'm just self interested. But in the end, he ends up fighting for the south out of some sense of shame and some sense of loyalty. So he's more complicated than just someone who's selfish and nihilistic. And you have to believe that there's an ethical component to how he feels about the south, which was not, by the way, this is not simply fictional. I mean, even Robert E. Lee, right, had contempt for slavery and in a way, for the Southern cause, but felt compelled, right, to fight for the South. And it's very, you know, it's documented in, I think, his letters. But so these are two different components to life. The sort of the gentility approach and the hard nosed practicality approach. They both have their virtues, and then they both, of course, have a lot of vices when taken to their extremes. And the movie's characters aren't simplistic. So even Scarlet is not a just simplistic representation of selfishness, although I think she is very unlikable and selfish. But she, you know, at the point where she's forced to take care of Melanie because she's made a promise to Ashley, there's a transformation there, but it's not an unrealistic and it's not permanent. So there's a kind of realism to her representation. She's not without a conscience in the end. She is capable of taking care of other people when she has to. And she is enamored of people, at least Ashley at first. And I think, you know, she comes to love Melanie. She's enamored of people who put her in the position of having to care for others. You know, so in the case of, you know, Ashley says, please take care of Melanie, and she feels impelled to do that, is not gonna flee Atlanta, but is gonna stay and help Melanie give birth. And then at the end of the movie, Melanie makes her. Has her agree to a similar sort of promise to take care of Ashley, after which her relationship to Ashley and her love, you know, her obsession, romantic obsession with him, suddenly disappears. So what I'm trying to say is that there's a complexity to the characters that reflects an ambivalent critique of any given different position taken to an extreme. And it recognizes the virtues of those positions as well. So it's not glorification, it's not demonization. 27:05 Erin: I agree with you to a certain extent. First of all, I think I seriously overestimated the hold that I thought Scarlet's charms would have over you. 27:16 Wes: I mean, she's delightful. Just. You could watch the film with the sound turned off and just watching Vivien Leigh's. The expressions flit across her face. The raised eyebrow of annoyance and the depth of her passion and desire. That's really what Scarlet is about and that's a winning feature. But I do think she's not a nice person. The guy. 27:39 Erin: Yeah, sure. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful woman captured on film. Like specifically in this film. You know, she's just. I don't know. She's so unbelievably beautiful. Even when she's supposed to be ragged looking and covered in dirt, it somehow highlights it even more. It's truly uncanny. 27:56 Wes: So you, you would. You don't think Grace Kelly is more. I'm just kidding. Sorry. 28:00 Erin: No, no. It's funny. 28:03 Wes: I know how much you hate her. 28:04 Erin: That's what my mom said to me the other day. She's like, I still think that Grace Kelly is more beautiful. And I was, I, you know, man. Cut to a shot of the outside of my house with a. My screams ringing through the woods. But sorry to get to the meat of what you're saying. Okay, so I agree with you to a certain extent on another level. I think that there is a clear hierarchy of value in terms of living in reality versus living in this fantasy gentility. I do think that one is superior to the other, at least according to the parameters of this film. I think that for Old south one can substitute a kind of a childhood fantasy and that certain characters preoccupations with this fantasy. It's not morally equivalent to the reality, the hard reality that Rhett represents. Though he has, I think, other flaws. And therefore I think you're right to say that these two portraits. Neither is particularly flattering. I think if Rhett has a virtue, it's the fact that he is the grown up. 29:07 Wes: Yeah. 29:08 Erin: Ashley says at one point that he would have freed the slaves once he took control of Twelve Oaks. And he was. This was something that he wanted to do and that he talked to his father about. Yada yada. 29:20 Wes: Yeah. He's objecting to Scarlet using prison labor. And she's. What about the slaves? And he said, well, we didn't treat them poorly like the prison labor's being treated. And also I was going to free them. 29:31 Erin: Yeah, right. It's important to remember, I think, that at the beginning of the film, Scarlett is supposed to be 16. Ashley is a great deal older. So I think that's where that dynamic comes in, where he must have known her as a baby or a toddler or something, which is a little creepy if you think about it too hard. Leslie Howard was aged down or tried. They tried to age him down and make him look a little bit younger so that he had that slight matinee idol kind of freshness at the beginning and then became more care worn as the movie went on. 30:00 Wes: Yeah, they couldn't get rid of the Englishness though. 30:03 Erin: No, but it's perfect. It's perfect. 30:05 Wes: You just wonder, why is this English guy in a Southerner? 30:09 Erin: This is why I think so many English people have played Southerners so well, because they do say that linguistically or whatever the term is in terms of accents, it's very easy for an English person to do a Southern accent. Easier than to do whatever you would call a Northern accent, a non accent, standard American, whatever. But Ashley's saying that about. About the fact that he would have freed the slaves, whatever. I mean, he's a grown man and he acts as though like, this is what I would have done when I grew up. Of course, based on what we know about Ashley's character, we could safely assume that that would never happen because it would require him actually making a decision and following through on it. There seems to be a clear connection between the realm of childhood fantasy and this idea of the Old south or this desire to stay in one's comfort zone, one's bubble, one's delusions about the safety and security of childhood. Because I'm assuming that for many people who have only pure, you know, fantastic memories of childhood, it's in hindsight, and they are forgetting many of the realities and the harsher truths about how they were feeling at the time and how difficult it was to be a kid. And so it's. It seems as though everyone who glorifies the Old south in this film is glorifying a way of being that absolves them of responsibility. And that requires, as you, as you said at the beginning, no real effort on their part. It's a society built on the backs of other people and it allows them to stay in this extremely comfortable and unchallenging way of life in which they can sort of just coast until they die. So I think, think that Rhett's sense of reality is a virtue. Compared to that, though the characters have Other strengths and weaknesses and other flaws. And ultimately, I think that's sort of what the movie is. Arguing that Rhett is correct and that Scarlet, as modern as she is and as realistic and strong as she is, what this childhood fantasy represents for her is Ashley, who, as you pointed out and I agree, is kind of a symbol of the Old South. Her obsession with him, I think, goes back to something elemental in her upbringing and her sense of security at Tara. All of this is wrapped up in this obsession with Ashley. And so long as she is preoccupied with him, she's not really a grown up in the way that Rhett keeps on demanding that she be. And she can remain childish to a certain extent so long as she loves. I think ultimately the draw of this fantasy becomes something that Rhett actually succumbs to. Ultimately, he retreats because he wants to. He can't take Scarlet anymore and he wants to go to a place where there's still some semblance of grace and charm. He says. So he's lived in reality for too long and he can't take the heaviness of Scarlet's reality anymore. So ultimately he kind of succumbs, maybe not to the Old south, but to some sort of idea of fantasy retreat, not having to deal with the harshness of the world. But I think that different characters are at different degrees of preoccupation with this idea of whatever fantasy the Old south represents. 33:27 Wes: So I don't have as strictly a negative view of those ideals. So, for instance, the south, in a way is representative of aristocratic virtues which are necessarily sort of predicated on oppression. So the aristocratic virtues are all, in a way, about the celebration of power and leisure that comes from it and the celebration of class distinction and the kinds of mannerisms and dress that illustrate class distinction. It's a way of life built on that kind of evil. But that doesn't mean that that way of life is entirely without its virtues. It's a celebration of excellence. Right? It's the kind of thing that Aristotle might have pointed to in some ways as a model for good living and its purity. Now, in reality, even if you're looking at English landed gentry, the reality is always much different than the ideal. And it's even more degraded in the south because in a way, it's like new money versus old people. But it's country people playing at being landed gentry. We discussed some of this in the Streetcar Named Desire episode. They're playing at being landed gentry and they're doing that by use of slavery. So in a way. It's a kind of pantomime. It's not even real. You know, what you've described is clear the extent to which it's a kind of fantasy. And I think, again, that title card makes it clear. They're the land of cavaliers and cotton fields of the old South. That sort of romanticization is being made fun of. And that sort of romanticization is built into the self concept, right, of the people involved in it, including Ashley. You know, including even Melanie to some point. Although she is much more motivated on a personal level by love and by the desire to take care of people. I don't think she's. She's not into the lifestyle per se, let's put it that way. Think of this as a lifestyle. Ashley is into the lifestyle. Scarlet is not so much into the lifestyle as she is into making use of it to get what she wants. And there are certain aspects of it which suit what she wants. So, for instance, dressing up or acting like she's genteel, saying, you know, you say no gentleman or whatever, she's playing the part there. And it's not because she buys into the life lifestyle or is into it. It just. It suits her quest to get what she wants. But someone like Ashley, right, he's bought into it. And someone like Rhett is completely contemptuous of it. I think the whole scene that really gets things moving is that scene, right, with the Ashley and Scarlet, you know, Scarlet, after having escaped her nap and we've overheard some overhoard, overheard some of the war talk with the men. She, you know, she pulls Ashley aside in that room and she is being very passionate and he's being romantic, but fatalistic. You know, you've gathered every other man's heart today. You always had mine. You cut your teeth on it. And she accuses him of leading her on and slaps him, and that's his cue to leave. And then she throws the vase and breaks it. And then there's that wonderful moment. Well, throws the vase and then has that annoyed, raised, single eyebrow look that I think is so great. Then there's that great moment when we hear Rhett whistle, right? And he leans up from the couch. So we are immediately in the position of Rhett as spectators at that point. So if there's any confusion about the satirical nature of the film, it's the fact that this very romantic soap opera y moment has unfolded in front of someone who is so contemptuous of its falsity and says, has the war started? Which is a great line because of the Throwing of the vase and associates the war with love and relationships through the rest of the film. And in a way, love is war for Scarlet. And that's the type of war that she takes seriously, not the kind of war that all the men take seriously. And she says, you should have made your presence known. And as Rhett puts it, in the middle of that beautiful love scene. So he's providing ironic containment there to a scene that by itself, if it took itself completely seriously, would be absurd. The movie couldn't survive without being ridiculous by simply stringing those sorts of scenes together. And there's already an absurdity, right, in the fact that Scarlet and Ashley are at such cross purposes in that scene where he is. They're not speaking the same language. He's speaking the language of gallantry, which in that context is obtuse because he's leading her on. And he seems determined, fatalistically determined, to reject Scarlet in a way where he's not giving her the impression that, okay, you're not a nice person and I need a nice person. He's saying to her, I love you. But what. It's hard to know exactly what he's saying. So there's a fun or satirical asymmetry between them. And then Rhett sort of completes that and ultimately will say, ashley is not good enough for a girl with your passion for living. So we were saying before about the idea of being kind of practical and clear eyed, but it also pits this sort of passion for living against whatever sort of living is involved in living out this genteel fantasy in which a lot of gentility means the curtailment of one's passions. 39:11 Erin: So, yeah, just to push back once more against your reading of Ashley a little bit, though, I, you know, I do agree with you, but sort of by a matter of degrees, I do think that in this scene, what you call gallantry is actually a false gallantry. So if he was really gallant, if he was really a quote unquote man or an adult, he would not be leading her on like this. And he says things like, you know, why do you make me say things that hurt you? 39:36 Wes: Yeah, yeah, I was basically. I was trying. I was trying to say that. Yeah, right, he's speaking that language, but it's. Yeah, it's. It's hurt. 39:44 Erin: There's a sense in which he's dragged along by whatever current he's in. You know, he even thinks that he might go to New York and make his living up there in the hopes of finally standing on his own two feet and not relying on Scarlet. But this idea that this 16 year old girl is forcing him to say things that he doesn't want to say, I mean, he's just. This is incredibly cruel in a way. I mean, he's never honest with her and just says things outright or even in a way that she's capable of understanding without nuance. And her pursuit of him really does kind of flip the traditional gender roles. I mean, he is leading her on and he is playing the role of a coquette to a certain extent, or at least of a reticent female while she pursues him sort of voraciously throughout the film. I do think that there is a theme, even when it comes to Mr. and Mrs. O'Hara, of sort of emasculated men or men who. And I know that this connects to gentility and what you've been talking about rather well with aristocratic values, but there's something about the slave doing the work for you and the lack of engagement with the reality of what goes on, which is, first of all, I think, allowing these characters to romanticize this in their own minds. And second of all, which is taking away, I don't want to say feminizing because it's too. That's too gendered. But divorcing them to the degree that they can be as shy and retiring and disengaged as the traditional Southern belle would be, forcing the women often to fill the void of the person in charge or the person who sort of directs, as women often do in courting situations where a woman is, you know, in relationships with men is often far more in control than one might think. Or traditionally, you know, there are all these stereotypes about women have to sort of manipulate men into proposing to them. You know, women have always held a tremendous amount of power in that relationship, but here the power is very naked. And the shy and retiring elements of Ashley are, I think, very sinister. 41:58 Wes: Yeah, I agree, it is a sinister element. I mean, I actually think it's kind of. There's a kind of comedy skit element to that scene. That's what I was trying to get at by saying that they're speaking different languages. It's as if you took Ashley and it could be a Saturday Night Live skit where he's time traveled and he's trying to function in the contemporary scene that we're familiar with. He's trying to speak the language of gentility to someone who's trying to speak a different language. And it's funny in a way because he's caught up in his own little dream. World and doesn't see what's going on around him. So, yeah, technically, Scarlet is the one who's kind of out of place there. But Scarlet is closer to us in a sense. Right, because she's not speaking that fantasy language entirely. She's more practical and more focused on reality. So we identify with that. And it's Ashley that feels out of place. And again, Rhett sort of brings that home. 42:57 Erin: Well, and this, I think, brings us to Melanie, who I really like also, when Scarlet leaves the library and is hiding under the stairs as the women come down after their nap. And we realize maybe for the first time that we've gotten hints of this when Melanie was introduced to Scarlet, that Melanie is reading Scarlet in a very different way from the other women of Scarlet's acquaintance, none of whom like her, including her own sisters. 43:22 Wes: She's just high spirited and vivacious. 43:24 Erin: Right, right. Well, and we get a sense too that Melanie's reading of her, though extremely generous at times, is often accurate and maybe more accurate than we realize and certainly more accurate than Scarlet realizes. So, for instance, India Wilkes, Ashley's sister, who is really not a sympathetic character. So we're given a lot of these rivals of Scarlet and they are so unsympathetic that it really makes us. At least for me, makes me. 43:51 Wes: Well, why is she not sympathetic? 43:53 Erin: She's harsh. She has no personal charm. I think we're not supposed to find her sympathetic. She advises or tries to advise Melanie not to trust Rhett Butler when he's trying to save the men from the situation that they've gotten themselves into. And I think that kind of shows what we're supposed to think of her. How dare she not trust Clark Gable? She's a little viperish. And we do get the sense that she's very jealous of Scarlet, I think, and rightfully so. She's speaking badly about Scarlet and certainly Scarlet deserves it, but she's saying things that are just demonstrably untrue. She accuses Scarlet of. Of making a fool out of herself by running after all the men at the barbecue. That's just not true. The men. Melanie says she's. She's so attractive, the men just naturally flock to her. And that is true. 44:38 Wes: Well, she is and she isn't. You know, she's not really throwing herself at, but she's using men. She's. She's manipulating men and getting their attention and. 44:46 Erin: Right. I think that Melanie is more right than India is. And I guess what I'm interested in is whether or not Melanie's Overly generous readings of everything that Scarlet does. If those readings are actually always accurate 45:00 Wes: on a certain level, I think they're deluded and they're accurate at the same time, which is what makes them so interesting. 45:05 Erin: Yeah, right, right. 45:07 Wes: She seems completely naive to Scarlet's. The flaws of Scarlet's character. And yet what she's really. She's focused on things that are real. And that's just what Melanie focuses on, the good things in people and the ways in which they're good. And when she ignores the rest of it, you get the sense that that is an ethical choice for her, that she's decided to do that and she understands that she's doing that at some level. 45:33 Erin: No, I agree. And I think you can even argue. I mean, there's a reading of this where Melanie is just trolling Scarlet throughout the entire movie, you know, that she knows all along and is just sort of getting the better of Scarlet. 45:45 Wes: Well, she's trolling her into being a better person. 45:47 Erin: Right, right. Or how much Melanie understands about Ashley and Scarlett's relationship is, of course, open to questioning. And when Scarlett marries Charles, for instance, and Melanie comes over to her and says, you know, we thought of you during our wedding the day before, or whatever, you kind of wonder, like, what is. She's being kind on the one hand, but she has to know. And it's almost like she's flaunting the fact of her marriage to Ashley the day before. Right. To Scarlet, in order to get her goad in a way. I don't know. There are certain things that she does that moment and a couple of other moments in the film where I question her motivations, and I think that's kind of what makes her so interesting in a way. I mean, I don't think that Melanie is being portrayed as a troll to any degree, but I do think that Olivia de Havilland is really smart about the way that she's playing this character as being way more complex. And you suggested that Olivia de Havilland's performance is the strongest, you think? 46:42 Wes: Yeah, I do think her performance is the best. de Havilland's role is a harder thing to pull off. It's easier to be mischievous and irate and dissatisfied than it is to pull off that kind of selfless, loving kind of person, to give that feeling. Right. It's not going to come out in the dialogue necessarily. It does a little bit, but it's a vibe, you know? And I don't think it's just the actress's character. Apparently, she wasn't really like that. 47:11 Erin: So no, no. I think few people are, but yeah, yeah, yeah. 47:16 Wes: One of the things I'm curious about in the film is what it is that Scarlett actually wants. We know she's passionate, but we don't get a clear idea of why she's passionate about Ashley in particular, for instance. And I don't think it's. It's not about status. It's not about wanting what she can have. That doesn't seem to have a lot of pull with her, actually, with Rhett. The way I put it before is that her relationship to her genteel environment, like Rhett, they are sort of outside it in a sense, but in the figure of Ashley, in a way. It's almost like she wants to possess it. Or maybe it's more inexplicable than that. It's just she wants what she wants and she got the idea that she wanted Ashley and therefore that's it, that's what she wants and nothing else is gonna do. 48:07 Erin: I think you're right. I think there's a strange and very deeply buried strain of self criticism in Scarlet. I think Ashley represents an ideal for her also expressed in her mother. And this is something that I also remember in the book being much more fleshed out, which is the mother was always very calm and very genteel. And you get this in the very brief glimpses that you get of Barbara O'Neil. 48:34 Wes: Very unlucky, very much so. 48:36 Erin: Yet at the same time serving, as I think I suggested before, as a kind of a prototype for the girl boss, taking care of things and being very self sufficient and capable, unlike many of the other women of the era, I guess. I think that that desire to be good sets up this conflict with Melanie because this is why Scarlet hates Melanie so much and of course also loves her in a weird way. I think it's what makes her want to have Ashley because that would give her the satisfaction or sort of reassure her maybe of some sort of goodness in herself and some idea that she is actually a proper, even, you know, moral, virtuous, genteel lady. But I think that her self hatred, if you will, comes out in the fact that she knows that she can't have Ashley and she only wants what she can't have. And it's a kind of a built in punishment for herself. And I of course, know a lot of background information both about the film and about all the. All the real life actors. And one really interesting element that I remember reading about a while ago when Vivien Leigh's letters to Laurence Olivier were made, they were bought by the Victoria and Albert Museum. I think she, of course, was having an affair with Olivier during the filming of Gone with the Wind. And he was, he had just finished filming Wuthering Heights. I think there was some overlap, but the two were kept apart in Hollywood because they didn't want any scandal attached to Vivien Leigh by living with this guy while he was married to someone else, she was married to someone else. So they had to communicate through letters and he had to give her support and advice through these letters. And in one of them, I remember he wrote something to the effect of, you know, you do realize that the only thing that makes possible Scarlet's admission of love for Rhett at the end of the film is because she knows that she's lost him. So on some level she knows that she's pushed him too far. And that is what allows her to finally see Ashley's flaws and open up to Rhett once she's become an object of rejection for Rhett. So there must be something there. I mean, there must be. She continually pushes it down and buries this self critical reflex in her, right, pushing it off until tomorrow, not dealing with it. And that makes her a survivor, of course, and it makes her capable of overcoming obstacles better than anyone else because she doesn't get distracted by morality, self criticism, questioning her own motives, questioning anything that she's doing to succeed. But it does come out, I think, ultimately in a kind of an essential dissatisfaction with whatever her state is. Maybe assuming that she's not lovable. I don't know, I don't want to go too far here, but I don't know what you think about that. 51:32 Wes: So you're suggesting that her obsession with Ashley has something to do with, on the one hand, wanting what she can have in part because she is masochistic, 51:44 Erin: she doesn't feel as though she's worthy of it. 51:46 Wes: Yeah, I don't know, I didn't, I was trying to suggest that it wasn't simply that she couldn't have him. Although I think that is the more plausible in a way, interpretation that she wants what she can't have, it's much more plausible. But I was, I was entertaining the idea that it was more inexplicable than that and therefore I can't explain it. 52:07 Erin: No, I know what you mean. I, yeah, I agree with you. I think it is more mysterious than I'm making out and I think any effort to play psychiatrist, well, just inexplicable 52:17 Wes: in the sense that, you know, it has Something to do with her relationship to gentility. And therefore, it's a. Her obsession with Ashley is in some way. Right. A comment on fascination with that fantasy. Although, as I've said, she's not within it. So her love of Ashley is not. It's not that she shares those values in a way, but it's more of a fascination with it from the outside. And again, I think the idea that she wants what she can't have is much more plausible in a way. And it's consistent with her character and her sense of pride and all of that. So what I'm saying is it's kind of. I'm trying to give it some thematic heft, which may be a bridge too far. 52:59 Erin: Well, I think that works really well thematically. And I think that this childishness and this. This ambivalence in her is part of this larger structure that we've been talking about. I think to a certain extent, this self criticism is true for Rhett also. Why does Rhett like Scarlet? One can argue that he likes her because he can't have her and doesn't like her when she does finally come around on him. 53:24 Wes: Well, his theory is that they're kindred spirits. 53:26 Erin: Right, Right, right. I think there's a lot of things that they like about each other and even that Scarlet likes about him that she doesn't recognize. But I think that ultimately this butting of heads between them is because they're. I think his attraction to her is predicated on her unavailability. Maybe he keeps wanting her to fully engage with him and to give up Ashley. I think at the same time, in the same way that he is intrigued by gentility and has these sort of warring. Warring elements within himself of this sympathy for the south, but a, you know, a recognition of the reality of the situation. And we know that this is borne out by his background. He's from a very genteel Charleston family. He is impressed by Melanie, though he says that genteel women don't hold much charm for him or something like that. Ultimately, he does, as I said earlier, desire to retreat from Scarlet's harsh realities and go to find some place of grace and charm. So I think this push pull is very evident in Rhett as well. Even the childishness of Scarlet in her intractability and her unwillingness to let go of Ashley is something that Rhett likes for some reason. And I think that to a certain degree, Rhett wants to baby Scarlet and likes what is childish in her. Not in a creepy way or in a way that's wrong. Not in the childish way that women are typically treated in this society. Having to take naps and stuff like that. But I think he wants to do things for her and provide things for her. And we see this with Bonnie, where he can be a provider and a source of comfort for her. But that nurturing, that childishness comes with all of the bad things about Scarlet, which is her childish preoccupation with someone who is not Rhett. So I don't know if she had gotten this childish fantasy of Ashley out of her head. Which is something that I think Rhett suggests to her in so many words early on when he comes with a bonnet or at some other point early on in the film. I don't know if completely eliminating that and becoming the woman that Rhett wants her to be would have made her less attractive in his eyes. And if somehow I'm trying to connect his sympathy for the south with her sympathy for Ashley. And all of it being a kind of engagement in fantasy in a way that is. That makes life and reality very difficult for people. Even the people who we associate most closely with living in the quote, unquote, real world as opposed to the Old south world. I think that the childishness and the fatalism that you talk about in Ashley associated with the Old south ultimately like the undoing of all the major characters. And there's even a kind of sterility, ultimately, in what happens at the end. Right. The children and life renewing itself. As Melanie says, it ultimately kills her, though Scarlet has more children in the book. She has a child with each of her three husbands. Those are cut out. And it's just Bonnie, which I think works really well in the film. Bonnie, of course, dies doing Mr. O'Hara's favorite activity. And again, a kind of symbol of the aristocratic lifestyle that you talked about. The marriage is broken between Melanie and Ashley because of her death. And the marriage of Rhett and Scarlett is broken up. And basically everybody just ends up being very, very unhappy. And there doesn't seem to be a way forward. And I wonder if that's because of each of those four main characters. Preoccupation with fantasy and with an older way of life that can't be carried into the future. Even Scarlet, who is very modern in the way that she's made her money and the way that she lives, seems to be hobbled by that in the end. I don't know if you'd agree with that. 57:19 Wes: Yeah. So I think we see some of that preoccupation in Scarlet for the old ways that you were talking about with the significance of Tara to her. You know, this is obviously a theme that's repeated in the movie in the explicit content of it, but also visually, so early on, when we're being introduced basically to Tara and to the parents and to that little schemer Scarlet, we see her father riding and jumping and of course, foreshadowing how he's gonna die and how Bonnie's gonna die. But we also get that great scene where father and daughter are silhouetted against the sky. And he says, land is the only thing worth working for, fighting for, dying for, the only thing that lasts. Then she accuses him of talking like an Irishman, very racist of her. That silhouetting against this guy is repeated at the end of the movie when she gives the famous speech, as God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again if I have to lie, cheat, kill, steal. Sorry, lie, steal, cheat or kill. And then I think it happens again at the very end of the movie, right? When she realizes that Tara, in a way, is the way out and she's hearing the voices of Ashley and others, you know, so Ashley himself has said that Tara is the one thing that's important to her. And she's going to deal with the loss of Rhett by going back to Tara, although she's not going to give up, right? She's going to try and get him back because tomorrow is another day. But Tara becomes the focal point again, and that becomes the thing that rejuvenates her, this idea of the permanence of the land. And the land being a thing that's worth dying for or fighting for. I don't know how that fits in exactly. Right. Because it's not, per se, an obsession with the Old south or the lifestyle. Right. Because Tara is transformed after the war. It's not going to be a plantation with slaves. It has been renovated with Rhett's help and all his money. But it's never going to be the same thing. And the land is never going to be the same thing exactly either. And yet it's supposed to be something that joins the past and the present and will survive the loss of the south and loss of that way of life. And I don't know how that works thematically or how it fits with Scarlet's character in particular. 59:44 Erin: I agree, because I think that Scarlet's mother represents one thing or a couple of things, as I've said, both a woman in charge and also a kind of ideal woman in terms of her behavior, while the father represents Something wilder and more passionate. And that's the link to the land. It's these two forces joining together to create the character of the south, in a way. And then it's never the same, as you say, mostly because there was a kind of a soiling that happened, not in terms of getting the actual soil tampered with, maybe to a certain extent, but because the Yankees used Tara as their headquarters. Scarlet gets this real look of disgust on her face when she realizes that the Yankees have penetrated Terra and have used it, have soiled it, defiled it in some way by setting up camp there. It's a strange hybrid, as you say, because we have these slaves who have chosen to stay on and continue to work. Some of them continue to work for the family. So there's a kind of suspended animation going on at the house. And it's also. 1:00:52 Wes: Which is very common historically, but yeah. 1:00:55 Erin: And there's also a sort of false perpetuation of the estate that's been enabled only by the wealth of. Well, first, the wealth that Scarlet amasses through Frank Kennedy's store and then through Rhett giving her the money to make it as grand a house as it ever was, as he says to her. So it's gotten this infusion of cash that we can imagine not many other estates have had. I mean, you know, Twelve Oaks is completely. It's just the staircase at a certain point. So I'm sure that Twelve Oaks was ultimately just knocked down in the universe of the film. 1:01:30 Wes: You're helping me understand this, actually, because this is one of Scarlett's strengths, is that she's a very shrewd businesswoman and she seems to like to work. And there's even an element in her that she seems to like to survive. And maybe she likes to be down and out. And maybe that's the point of the infatuation with Ashley, is that it puts her always into this mode of struggle. I mentioned before about her love. Relationships are actually her war. Right. She likes to be at war in a way, because she likes to be active. And the transformation of the land that's happened is actually, it's been transformed from something that the slaves are going to work and the leisurely upper class are going to live off of that work. It's been transformed into something that she can work herself. So she's losing rent, she's losing the person who sort of propped up the fantasy for her for a while by, as you put it, infusing cash into it. And she's imagining going back to the land and it sounds like to actually. To work, to turn Tara into an actual project and not just a project in which she's trying to make money, is with the lumber business and Frank's store. Because she's fearful, right. Because she feels insecure and she thinks money is the only way to survive. Not in the sense at the end of the first half, in which it's about never being hungry again and lying and cheating and stealing, but a much more completed and more mature sense of what work means. Right. And so she's come into her own in that sense in which she can just embrace the land and embrace Tara, the estate, for the sake of becoming someone who's devoted to actual work. And it kind of helps you see the demise of the old way of living, of the old south, as a liberation of the master from the masters, from their indolence or from their passivity or from the fantasy that we've talked about. And, yeah, so I think what you were saying brought that out. 1:03:32 Erin: That's really good. It helps me understand more of what that draw is for her. And, yeah, I really like that. I think that cycle of struggle and reward is something that has to be sustained for her, too. So it can't be too much struggle. She has to enjoy a certain reward out of it. I mean, the happiest, I think, that we see her in the film is when she's on her honeymoon with Rhett and she gets to just totally indulge herself eating desserts. 1:03:56 Wes: And yeah, yeah, the look on her face when the dessert tray goes by, it's almost like an Eliza Doolittle moment. And where she's, you know, she's just voraciously eating and. And Rhett's like, don't scrape your plate. I'm sure they have more in the back. 1:04:14 Erin: It says a lot about me that. I thought that was the best part of the movie. That was the height of luxury. Get to eat as much dessert as you want. But then that very quickly is punctured by the nightmare that she has of. So she's not able to enjoy the reward after a while, or if we can call this a reward. Hopefully listeners will know what I mean by this. In other words, struggle and enjoyment. So she's not able to enjoy herself for long before this nightmare creeps back in. And what does she want to do but go back to Tara? So she's uncomfortable enjoying it for very long, which means that, I don't know, maybe there's no way that she could have had a satisfying marriage with Rhett. I Mean, the honeymoon stuff seems, seems pretty good to me. And they could, if they wanted, just be two people enjoying their largess. And I mean, obviously even the nightmare scene has a very sweet element of their relationship in it, in which he's comforting her because of the horrors that she's seen. But it seems like that enjoyment can only last so long for her before she has to go back to the struggle, otherwise she's not satisfied. And I think this might also be what makes her a bad mother or a disinterested mother, which is because there's no cycle involved there. Maybe, you know, raising a child is just. Well, first of all, I don't know how she would know how to be a good mother, seeing as her own mother didn't raise her. I mean, Mammy is her mother, but with none of the real. 1:05:37 Wes: The power. 1:05:38 Erin: Yeah, without the power. Exactly. Without the power that it would actually take to reign Scarlet in and to raise her properly. So Mammy has sort of been defanged in the way that parents need to have fangs. I mean, in order to properly raise their children. So Scarlet doesn't know how to be a mother, but it also, that kind of interest in a child implies a sort of a longer term struggle with little reward or enjoyment that Scarlet doesn't seem to know how to handle. It seems like she has to go through these real difficult trials and then get some sort of monetary compensation for them. And a child just isn't the kind of project that she's interested in. So I don't know how long a relationship between Scarlet and Rhett could conceivably be sustained. Even if Scarlet was into him from the beginning, I don't know what their future would look like if she were to win him back. And if the movie is saying that it's impossible for her to get him back, I don't know if that is. If his stance on this is permanent and he wants nothing to do with her forever or what the movie seems to imply that what Scarlet wants, she gets ultimately sort of never really gets. Ashley. 1:06:46 Wes: Yeah. I have the feeling they'll get back together. 1:06:49 Erin: You do? 1:06:50 Wes: Okay, yes, because they've done it before and usually people do what they've done before. Well, let me, let me say a few things about that. You're talking about her the dynamic of struggle and enjoyment. The struggle occurs within the context of the relationship and the enjoyment is kind of extraneous to it. Right. So she enjoys the food, she enjoys being rich. Right on there. He's like, what are you thinking about? And she's like, how rich we are. 1:07:15 Erin: Yeah, that's awesome. 1:07:17 Wes: And before they get married, you know, they admit to each other, say, you're going to marry me. And she says, yes. And then, is it because of my money? And it's a rare moment of honesty where she says, yes, partly. Money does help. I'm fond of you. You'd know I'm lying if I said I was madly in love with you. And he says, I'm not in love with you any more than you are with me. 1:07:37 Erin: Which, not true. 1:07:38 Wes: Turns out not to be true. Or maybe at that moment it's true. But obviously he does love her at various points and by the end of the movie, totally and abjectly is in love with her. 1:07:49 Erin: Well, Belle will describe it as being poisoned with her, which I think is pretty good, right? 1:07:54 Wes: Yeah, that is really good. As for her, what Melanie says at some point is that she's always been in love with you. She just doesn't know it. She says this to Rhett, and I think that idea occurs at a few points. Scarlet will say that at the end she says, I've loved you for years. Something like, I'm a stupid fool who didn't know it. So that actually is one of the things that interested me. So I wanted to relate that to our final question of whether they're going to get back together, but whether you can love someone without knowing it. Because I think whether they're going to get back together sort of depends on this question. Is it really the case that she loved him without knowing it and now she realizes it, or is that just a silly idea of hers? I'm inclined to actually believe it through the movie. I badly wanted that transformation of Scarlet. Right. I wanted that climactic moment where she comes to see the error of her ways and grows up a little bit. And this seems to provide it. Although there's ambiguity about whether it's real. And I think that ambiguity is related to the question of whether they will get back together. Can we love someone unconsciously and not know it and then realize it? I think yes, but I don't know if I can justify that. 1:09:05 Erin: I think it's obvious, too, that she loves him without knowing it. And I think that the subterranean element of that is even a necessity for her. I don't think that she's capable of outwardly loving anyone or sort of. That she has to sort of love someone against her own will because her actual means of loving people are so warped and thwarted, in a way by her own selfishness. Or her own fantasies that it's not really possible for her to love someone properly. That's why I'm not sure about what that relationship with Rhett would look like once she loves someone and. And is conscious of it and then enters into a relationship because I don't know how she would be under those circumstances. We never see her express that love for someone in an. Actually in a healthy relationship. And we can argue that her relationship with Rhett was never healthy. And that they recognize that. That he recognizes that. Another thing that always bothers me in the film are the miscommunications that arise between them. So even though, for instance, Ashley and. And Scarlet are not caught many times having romantic scenes with each other India, I think it is, and Mrs. Meade see them embracing in the mill in an actually innocent moment and interpret that as being an affair that's going on. As Rhett says, you know, Ashley can't be faithful to his wife mentally but won't be unfaithful to her technically. 1:10:31 Wes: Right. 1:10:31 Erin: So, of course, what they're seeing is just some sort of reality even if in that moment it isn't real. Also, Rhett makes the same error of interpretation when Scarlet comes out of the room in which Melanie is dying and comforts Ashley. 1:10:48 Wes: Right? Right. 1:10:49 Erin: And Ashley breaks down. But there have also been, of course, many miscommunications between Scarlet and Rhett when she's calling for him after she's miscarried and he doesn't know it and says later, if you had only wanted me. If you'd only called for me. And she says that she had. So I don't know why, but I feel as though this is fundamentally related to this question of whether or not they can be together because of the hidden nature of their love for each other to themselves. Also because of this continual misinterpretation. It seems important to me. And the fact that the misinterpretation with Ashley happens twice. Once by the sort of larger society and once by Rhett. I think that's important too. I don't know why that is, but it seems to strike at the heart of the relationship dynamic being somehow permanently broken. I, as a kid, always was so frustrated by those scenes because I would think, you know, they do love each other. But as an adult, I realize that that inability to communicate that love means that there's something wrong there that probably can't be overcome. 1:11:55 Wes: So they're never gonna get back together. 1:11:59 Erin: I don't know. I don't know. I hope that they are. I mean, sometimes As a kid, I would be so upset over everything that happened that I would stop watching after the honeymoon scene and just imagine that they were happy together for the rest of the movie because their breakup was so painful for me to watch sometimes. 1:12:17 Wes: Wow. 1:12:17 Erin: Yeah. 1:12:18 Wes: You know, I didn't know where the frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn line came in the movie, and I kept looking for it, waiting for it, hoping that that was not the last line. And it's not, because it was a very depressed. That would be very depressing last line. And. Yep, it's not. So they give you just enough hope. Tomorrow is another day. There is a sequel. Right. That was written by someone else called Scarlet. 1:12:43 Erin: Yeah. But that's supposed to be pretty terrible, I think. Right. 1:12:46 Wes: I think they do get back together in that. Right. 1:12:48 Erin: Yeah, I'm assuming they would have to, but in order to. I mean, I'm assuming the appetite for their reunion is what caused the thing to be written. 1:12:56 Wes: Yes, but that's an alternate universe. We don't know what happens in the real Gone with the Wind universe. 1:13:03 Erin: Right, right. But maybe, you know, her ultimate comeuppance, or whatever you want to call it. We've been thinking that Ashley is the figure of the Old South. Maybe it's Scarlet, you know, and maybe this gesture at the end of tomorrow is another day, is like saying the south will rise again. You know, it's ultimately. 1:13:22 Wes: That's hypnot. 1:13:23 Erin: Right, Right. It's ultimately foolish and hopeless and sad and sinister. I don't know. One thing that we haven't gotten to really, that we've skimmed it, are examinations of the black characters. I don't know if we want to cover that or. We've talked about Mammy, but I guess there's Prissy. We've kind of glossed over Prissy. And who's the house servant? Pork and Big Sam. No, there's so much more to talk about with this movie because it is so big and so long and contains so many interesting characters. Some of it maybe we can get to in the postscript. So maybe that'll be a little teaser for our regular listeners. 1:13:58 Wes: Yeah. 1:13:59 Erin: But otherwise, I think now's a good place to end. 1:14:01 Wes: All right, thank you. 1:14:03 Erin: Thank you. 1:14:06 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. I just wanted to say that if you're listening to this on the feed of the Partially Examined Life, you're not yet subscribed. And if you like us a rating or review would help a lot. You can also find [email protected] [email protected] Sometimes we'll continue talking about the topic for that week. Sometimes we'll discuss what else we've been reading, writing, and thinking about. When the time comes, we'll be responding to listener emails, and sometimes we'll talk a little bit about ourselves. 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