Now for a review of the worst movie I have ever seen, Gone With the Wind. GWTW is not the worst movie in terms of production quality; that would probably be Plan 9 From Outer Space, in which strings are clearly visible supporting the attacking alien spacecraft, and the “plot” and “writing” are LOL terrible. It’s also not the worst movie in terms of bad writing/acting/directing, yes, a trifecta of failure, aka Racing Stripes, a movie which proves that adults can suffer lifelong trauma from watching extremely awful content created for children; I did. I do.

GWTW may not even be the worst movie in its category, which I might dub Propaganda for Satan. I don’t watch those movies, and can’t even come up with the name of an example, so as a virgin in this category I was easily shocked.

Nothing in this movie is accurate. Yes, it’s a fictional story based on a novel, so why should it be accurate? Well, because it’s historical fiction, includes many real persons and events, and is clearly fabricated to convince its audience of things that are False. Other works in this genre might include Tales From the Flat Earth: What Are Stars, Really? and Childhood Corporal Punishment: The Key to Lifelong Mental Health.

From the first chords of the theme through the hysteria of the ending, I was aghast, agape, gobsmacked. Actually, that was only true while I was watching it, which took three days. It’s a lot to swallow even in smaller chunks, and from the relative safety of the 21st century Bay Area.

Here are a few of the low-hanging fruit examples, because the list of misleading items would be almost as long as the book:

• Plantation owners were bereft of basic skills, unable to feed, dress, or clean themselves or their stuff or their domiciles; ignorant of any understanding of agriculture; the opposite of intellectuals; disorganized; and completely unaware of the customs and religions of any other part of the world or the country, other than to disparage those without basis. Successful working people of the region–who are rarely depicted– must have had some knowledge, but slaveowners were haughtily dismissive of anything outside their idiotic world of duels and debutantes, proud men and degraded women.
• Enslaved persons were threatened, beaten, raped, separated from family, deprived of education and freedom, impoverished, and imprisoned. They did not on any level enjoy this, just as humans today do not like being controlled by others, even in minor ways.
• Homo sapiens are all the same. “Race” is an imposed construct that can’t be recreated from DNA, which is 99% the same in all humans, with more genetic variation with one “race” than between any two.

To be fair, the first point above is actually made by GWTW. A lot of what the slaveholder class do therein sparks the reaction, Wow, they are so <shallow trivial stupid clueless>. Choose your own answer; I sort of rotated among those. The contrast between their expectations of the experience of Civil War (quick victory) and what actually transpired (definitive defeat after long conflict) is starkly drawn though not a major component.

I was re-shocked to learn that in a 2014 Harris poll, the movie was still America’s favorite while the book was second only to the Bible. Presumably a poll using landlines? Still a bit of a hangover after outrage.

Or is it? Data dive reveals GWTW was the favorite movie of women but not men, republicans and independents but not democrats, boomers and matures but not any other generation. GWTW was the 2nd choice for dems; for men and younger generations it did not make the top three. So perhaps not complete dominance of the cultural landscape, just another misleading poll. That’s a sign of our times.