goodman's book "the team of rivals." this is eminently teachable. this is abraham lincoln bringinh to life complicated, am constitutional arguments. and i've seen historians ngargue thrilled in their reviews of the movie celebrating this, and we should, okay? but that scene, as powerful as it is, that is circa summer of ? '62. do with the politics of the moment in politics of the moment in january of 1965 -- 1865. so what they're talking about ig '62 is what's still controlled by roger tawney and the votes are not clear. but by january of '65, tauney is dead. this is the court they now have the votes to control. they are still worried about the ultimate legality of the emancipation proclamation and the slaves there, but the dynamic has shifted has s dramatically. there is a lot that's changed.3a

for example in january 1865, ab maryland has abolished slavery. bn. the confederates are talking about offering limited emancipation in order for talk service in the army. things have changed. this was not a debate they woult have in the cabinet in the way that tony horowitz or steven in spielberg portrayed. such it's such a wonderful thing to see, a film addressing such a fm complicated issues, but the timing is all wrong.timi ecti from ave dramatic perspective, frostbite an artistic license perspective is totally understandable. they need to create drama and tension. this is act i, right? s screenwriting 101, you set up tension and then you resolve itw i give them all the license they of this conflict between the tw conservatives and the radicals,o

they have to introduce something that doesn't actually appear inc the book that's the basis for the film.'tat's t so the film is supposedly built around "the team of rivals," doris kern goodman's book. but in the team of rivals, so-called seward lobby isn't there. these are the lobbyists who were hired by william seward to help secure passage of the amendment. there is a really terrific, detailed depiction of the seward lobby in an old book by john anf rwanda cox, "politics, principles and subjects."mast it's massive and freely available on line through the internet archive. this lobby was real. the characters that are depictes in the movie are real.vie james spader, the actor, plays d william barbeau, a real person.

these are real figures.obert but the actual story is totally different from what's on screen. these are like shakespearan s characters. they're bribing congressmen. they're the worst kind of seedy, stereotypical obvious. but in reality, bill barbeau, he was known for his elaborate waistcoats, his long sideburns, his elegant manners. #][%qnóvñiñynown for his elaborate waist coats, long side burns and elegant manners. you remember james spader in that movie. he did not have elegant manners. bilbo was this prominent wig attorney from tennessee who switched sides in the mid of the war.

he is interesting and elusive and nefarious in some ways but also not obscure. he knew abraham lincoln. we have letters in the lincoln papers. they had met each other and discussed strategy in november and december of 1864. he didn't live in a squirrel infested hotel. when he was in washington he roomd with another congressman roomed with another congressmane and when he was in new york where he spent most of his time in january 1865, he stayed at sd the st. in this case -- nicholas hotel, the finest hotel in new t york at the time. of robert lathe am and richard sail are old friends. they're prominent businessmen and investors. a little shady, i'll admit, but who in wall street isn't or wasn't?a add nevertheless, they're prominentu familiar guys.r and when they were engaged in th the lobbying effort, you know, the work they did was almost exclusively in new york, not in washington. in

when you read books like mike warrenburg's or the coxes, what they were doing was try to impress the democratic press in new york. if you could influence the democratic press in new york through the operations of the governor, you could affect those swing democratic votes in the at state of new york. it turns out at the end of the day, two-thirds of them are going to come from new york and pennsylvania. and w what they're trying to do in do january 1865 is affect the climate that allows democrats ie states like new york and pennsylvania and connecticut toi switch their votes. now, in the movie, they're ectiu bribing these guys in the worst possible way, you know. james spader says at one point, congressman in chief.he makes congressman come cheap. he makes all these jokes about it. in practice, we don't really out reall if you read scholarship on thisr question, they're very reluctant to draw conclusions.shconclu

at one point robert latham, one of the lobbyists writes in a letter that we actually have, where he says about the passage of the amendment and ths lame ducks, money will certainly do it.g p if patriotism fails. that's a line that should have been in the movie. it wasn't.m i don't understand why not.ov i can tell from the letter whether he was kidding or not. it's quite possible it's tongue in cheek. che it's also possible that he was serious. heu you know, the scholars who looked at this, they'll point out that there is all kinds of evidence that they had moneyat e available, and of course, we e know that there was corruption in the 19th century congress. but at the end of the day, they denied that they were bribing congressmen.e there is this letter from richard shell after it was all s over. he gets approached by somebody

who was sent from secretary of state's seward's office to get i an accounting of their expensese and he responds indignantly in a letter that we have. t he says, a gentleman called to have me give an account of expenses which amount to the nothing, he said.te or at any time that i can be of ll service to the honorable secretary of state or yourself, i will do all i can but at my e own expense. he goes on to talk about the importance of the issue and the patriotism of the moment. it could mean he bribed people out of his own pocket. we don't know. almost all of the stories of the bribery that allegedly occurred in january of '65 are accounts that are recollected years after the fact. i in fact don't give them most credit. it's certainly not clear at all that any of them were apparent to abraham lincoln. the seward lobby that seward had activated is actually in motiond in new york on his own

initiative in many ways.ew york i'm not clear lincoln was involved much at all in that business. he was lobbying border state representatives like james rollins who doesn't appear in the movie but was one of the swing votes. seward is operating in new york at this moment without even the apparent partnership of thurlow weed. m weed thought this was a mistakeg it's not clear that he was involved even in this much of the operation. now, i think there's something else going on with seward, and i'll talk about that a little bit later. but this is not the impression t the lincoln movie gets.latthis n you remember in the lincoln movie, the seward lobbyists ge hired and they operate obbyis independent of lincoln and at a certain point in the movie, he meets with them in their swill infested seedy attic of a hotel room, and he makes a comment on how to get things done, and later when he m hears about their efforts to bribe a congressman from ohio

named clay hawkins, he says, this is the guy who goes bird ss hunting with james spader and he's got this dopey look on his face through most of the movie, sort of young, foolish lissman r congressman from ohio who's bribed with a postmastership from millersberg, ohio. that's the deal, he's going to . be a post master. lincoln says in the movie, he is selling himself cheap, ain't he. selling himself cheap. this is the impression my ain' students are going to have of ao abraham lincoln for years to ith come, but you know, there's no congressman named clay hawkins. there's a congressman from ohio, n wme duck democrat who switched his vote on the amendment. a his name was wells hutchens.asnt he was not a fool. and he wasn't bribed, as far as. i can tell. there's no patronage position for him after he switched.itche this is a very independent minded tough democrat, kind of a

hero in some respects in the wars, from ohio. he's votes to abolish slavery in the district of columbia in 1862., but he supports habeas corpus. that's why he was a lame duck. he had principles and he acted on them and that's why he was leaving office, but he's not a fool who goes bird hunting with james spader or william bilbo i and gets bribed to the post mastership, and certainly nng lincoln knew about, but yet that's the impression the movie leaves them. you know, like i said, it's understandable that they take artistic license and have comic relief. i can appreciate that as long as people realize what it is. it's also true that's why the tension between the radicals and the conservatives is really hammered home with their very memorable depiction of thaddeus andon tmedepicti tommy lee jones. you know, tommy lee jones as thaddeus stevens is one of the

stars of the movie. i in particular was -- have been riveted by the scene you might remember in the middle of the movie, stevens and lincoln end up in the white house kitchen r. after a reception where mary lincoln has a confrontation wit. him. the reception is real. h this is in the middle of january, but the scene in the kitchen is all invented. the scene in the kitchen, the script writer has lincoln and stevens engage in a debate about tactics. for me, this is in a nutshell what you see hollywood do so well and also do so wrong.evgete so in the scene in this debate about tactics, there's a profound insight that lincoln hs offers to stevens, a kind of tt lesson about the difference between pragmatism and radicalism. n and they're debating tactics and lincoln says to him, a compass, i learned when i was surveying, it will point you true north i from where you're standing but it has no advice about the swamps and deserts and the chasms.you

you know, that's true. okay. but i don't think that's anything that lincoln and stevens would have said to each other. you know, we have this cartoonish view of stevens and o the popular culture from movies like the birth of nation and now from lincoln that depict him asw this radical, wild-eyed figure, but he was a pragmatic politician just like abraham lincoln. he doesn't come from the new england states.abraham he comes from lancaster, pennsylvania, where he's representing a congressional district near the mason dixon line that had produced james buchanan. m this is not a place where he's immune to popular pressure. he says, "i shit on the people,. he says that, he wouldn't do that in real life.'t naventh in fact, the movie doesn't have a chance to convey all of this, but lincoln and stevens had known each other for years. i could document that in a way that would be really special at a symposium like this because they first met in the summer ofa

1848, and they met when abrahamt lincoln was a congressman. he served in congress for one term, and during that one term, he spent almost his entire service in congress trying to get zachary taylor elected as president.rv that was his ambition. and he goes to the whig national convention in philadelphia and he meets stevens who had at to e time was a lawyer from at lancaster, but who was about tor become a candidate for congress and about to enter congress as s whig, and lincoln writes him a letter in september, right in before he's about to leave.t it's so revealing and it shows l them, i think, in such a rich re light that it's worth remindingn ourselves about. he writes him on september 3rd, 1848. 3rd he says -- dear sir, you may possibly remember seeing me at the philadelphia convention, introduced to you as the lone whig star of illinois.intr

since adjournment,ong i have remained here so long in the whig document room, now, there are people in the room who know what he's talking about, but this is such an insightful reference.n he's been in the whig document room in the summer of 1848. i what is he doing? he's literally sitting in a he's small room here in the capitol,l signing his name to political pamphlets that they're franking out at taxpayer expense for ther whig campaign operation.or he's the workhorse of the whig e congressional committee which is run by a congressman from connecticut, and lincoln as theo first-term congressman from l illinois, the only whig from illinois, the lone star, he's ,e proving his worth to the national operators by being their workhorse. he sits in the document room and franks out 15,000 pamphlets.w a he's got to sign his name to all of them. he is the most or one of the most frequent users of the ssiof franking privilege during that session of congress. that's why he's rising as a

political operative, because he's a workhorse.pera he's writing articles, correcting mistakes in the rrecg general whig newspapers across the country. tgenera he writes horace greely from the new york tribune and corrects fm one of his mistakes and he's reaching out to people, they hs didn't have rolodexes, but he's working his rolodex, reaching out to people he met. he asks stevens, i'm about to start for home. i desire the experienced opiniok of a politician as to how the o vote of that state for governor and president is likely to go. and listen to how smooth this is. in casting about for such a man, i have settled upon you. and i shall be much obliged if you could write me in u et springfield, illinois. this is abraham lincoln workingh his network, and stevens braham responds just as fluidly. he responds by calling abraham lincoln the wise one and asking for him about information for ot his state, and stevens at that

time was a abolitionist, a supporter of the underground railroad, but his advice was utterly pragmatic. we have to reach out to the know nothings, the nativists, the kw anti-catholics and infuse with them. this is a footnote, but it's worth mentioning.-cat 1848 is this wonderful moment where people like thaddeus stevens, abraham lincoln and alexander steven are all young,o rising whigs who are supporting taylor and working together. it was stevens who was one of co the confederate peace n the commissioners lincoln is dealint with in the end. when we thing of the civil war in military terms, we talk about the mexican war as a precursor,t a prelude, but the congress that lincoln served in has horace greely and alexander stevens and thaddeus stevens lurking on the sidelines waiting to enter.g to this is part of lincoln's storyt it's a preview for him of what t

is to come. you know, i don't imagine that tony kushner or steven spielberd could have worked all this background in somehow to the movie. i'm not complaining they didn't but all this background is important to understand what is really going on. and the details matter. they know the details matter.his if you look back at the lincoln movie, you'll realize the purpose of the scene in the oset kitchen is to give lincoln to credit for changing stevens' lc mind. they have this debate in the kitchen and argue over tactics and talk about compasses and they and stevens is talking about shitting on the people, and a week later, and he's being race baited by democrats about t what would happen after appen abolition, stevens says he only supports equality under the law. that's a powerful scene, and o

mary lincoln points out who ldoe would have thought this old man would have ever come around in that fashion, but the problem with that scene from the historical record is it never e happened. that's all invented. we have a congressional globe and we see the passages from thy debate. that scene isn't there. stevens did say something just like that on january 5th, 1865, after they got the official report of the annual message when they come back from the christmas break and he's lwhen t responding to the debates over e lincoln's prophecy in december e that they would, you know, debate this new amendment, and the republicans on capitol hill are trying to actually, it's complicated, but they're trying uld, to sort of play for a time for a day while they wait for the members show up, and the next m day, ashley is going to an introduce into the record the he abolition amendment, and stevens is race baited on january 5th and he responds all i support is equality under the law. he did that without prompting by lincoln.

ñ&rhero. hero. in the movie, stevens is, you know, an important foil.l. he has more speaking parts thans anybody else but lincoln. team if you go back to team arrivals, there's only four index entries for thaddeus stevens. thadd if you look at mike's book, stevens is there more frequently, but far less frequently than the senate less author or james ashley., but ine of the role. stevens is a marginal figure in that book.alç you know, we all acknowledge his importance, but in the narrative of the movie, he is so central because he's straight out of hollywood central casting. you know, with the wig and the club foot and the crusty demeanor and even the black mistress. you've got it all working. it's perfect. but that's why he's there. and that's why this is there. le you know, i think the kitchen uu scene has another profound trutw

in it.maybe i wanted to point this out and e maybe if someone wants to follow up, we can talk about it more in questions. that you know, the kitchen scene is really about the politics of reconstruction, and i think that that's an underlying theme in the movie that they bury. they can't really address because they're talking about the abolition of slavery.ng tthh that's why the peace negotiations seem so important, although i think of them more as a side show, unimportant to thes final narrative of the war. there are historians who disagree with this, but the reason why i think the abolition amendment is a story of reconstruction is because you have to remember the rules. and this is so important. right?oron in order for an amendment to fr become part of the constitution, of course, it can't just pass both houses of congress by a supermajority. it has to be ratified by the o r states, by three fourths of the state.es there are 36 states at that time. t three fourths of them would be 27.the of course, that's the question,t do you count them all? se

what about the seceded states? what about the confederates? they're not counted in the votee for congress, so should they be counted in the vote for ratification.coln this is what the politics of january 1865 is about because this is where lincoln is pressing his advantage as a party leader where he's building a union party, not just a republican party, for the and p post-war period because he knows that he's going to be able to h take this amendment and press ih down the throats of the radicals on the basis that they have to count all 36 states in the math in order to get it as part of the constitution. as he says in his final speech,n the one on april 11th, 1865, it's the only way this will seem legitimate, if we count the confederate states in the equation. in order to count them, in order

to get the 27 votes they need, they're going to have to have some of those former confederath states restored to the union on his basis, on the lower threshold, speedier process for restoration.or not the wade davis process for restoration, not the higher war threshold, the one stevens was supporting that would punish the south and revolutionize it. puni lincoln is saying to the radicals in effect if you want abolition of slavery to be. g written into this constitution i and irrevocable, we're going ton have to pursue a policy of re gi reconciliation that goes hand and glove with it. now that's party relationship at its most brilliant, and this is what he was fighting over in the final months of the war. the movie doesn't have a chance to convey all of that, and you know, i don't blame them for that and i understand what 'tof hollywood has to do., i don' i think spielberg does, too. again and again, he's been very gracious and modest about pointing out the difference ag between historical fiction and history, right? his work in lincoln is ory, rig historical fiction. sometimes the script writer hasn't been quite as gracious about that.

and there is, you know, an exchange he had after the movie came out with congressman courtney from connecticut over this question of how the congressman from connecticut voted on the amendment. in the movie, one of them votes against and all of them voted cg for it, although one of the lame duck switchers was james english from connecticut, and in the nem sort of exchange over the complaint, courtney wanted a formal apology from the conn filmmakers. horowitz defended the historical accuracy of the movie. he said the 13th amendment passed by a two-vote margin in he house of january 1865 because president lincoln decided to push it through using persuasion and patronage to bec switch the votes of lame duck democrats all the while fending off a serious offer to negotiata peace from the south.er none of the key moments from the story our film tells are altered, none of them, he says.t i guess it depends on what the o

definition of key is. i think there are a lot of key moments that are altered. the roll call is one of them, but the other one is in the ca climactic scene on the floor ofh the house on the day of the he f vote, january 1st, 1865, they have james spader and john hay m running to the white house to es get the note from lincoln. none of that happened.ne of the note, we think, is real, al, though we don't have the original of it.it's a it's a recollection from james ashley, but james spader's character, william bilbo, was in new york at the time, at the st. nicolas hotel. none of the lobbyists were in al washington that day. the lobbyists were in new york in the final weeks of the fight working the press. the race scene is just a hollywood chase scene. it's no different than the e.rport race scene in "argo" ane i have no problem with that, like i said, but key moments in, this story are altered. and they're altered for dramatis reasons.ed.

we need to understand that if ed we're going to teach it and appreciate it.at i call it fiction and i don't mean it as an insult, but i do think people need to appreciate the difference between fiction and the record. the record is far more complicated. i think it's just as interesting, but it is messier. so with that, i wanted to wrap up my presentation and open it up for questions. i know a lot of people have seen this movie. enhope if i didn't cover a topit ve you wanted to talk up, you feel free to raise it now. thank you. [ applause ] >> yes, um, whether you're talking about ken burns and thee civil war or godzilla, movies and television are first and foremost about entertainment. if it's not entertainment, it fails. >> right.te

>> this obviously didn't fail. my question, though, has to do with what do you think about daniel day-lewis' portrayal of lincoln as a person, not necessarily historically accurate words, but his ricarate portrayal?i th i think that's why the movie is called abraham lincoln and not the fight for the 13th amendment. spielberg wanted to give us g ncoln. did hewa?nt >> well, i was mesmerized. i have studied lincoln for over 20 years and for me, the movie l felt like five minutes.ears a you know, so that's hollywood magic. that's what it does. i cannot do that in my books. can mike wrote a great book about the 13th amendment. it's not as magical as ent. spielberg's lincoln, and he knows it and i know it, and there's magic involved. what i tried to do today is show you behind the curtain, magic involves deception. there's deception in daniel day-lewis' performance and there's a lot of assumptions or' premiseses that are wrong or s a shaky, and people who watch the movie and don't realize that might be confused.ch i don't think daniel day-lewis'z

lincoln is a real lincoln, but i think it's a really powerful be lincoln.think it >> i thought it was the best filmed lincoln i had seen, but l the man himself despite all i hi have read, still remains in man key ways a mystery.l so i do have two brief questions. t the first is, thaddeus stevens who well into the 1960s was the image, if you had an image at all, was this man who whatever o his moderate origins was traumatized by the burning of o his factory and filled with a hatred of the south and buried in a black cemetery. this may be cut out of whole ths cloth, that is even more clot fictitious than the movie, but the other is i have heard other talks about this and there was a scene with lincoln slapping robert, his son, and someone at said this could never happen. the movie presented it as the vr exception toes something that h

obviously never happened beforeh andin would never happen again.i my larger question is isn't any historian, however objective he or she may aspire to be, should they not have their own internao spielberg that leaves scenes out that do not conform with their d image of their character just at some of jefferson's biographers until quite recently dismissed any notion of a liaison with sally hemings because this is not something their thomas jefferson would ever do >> we all make mistakes and we m all interpret. however, we have footnotes and we hold ourselves accountable and there's a transparency to our work that i don't always think script writers or screenwriters like tony kushner acknowledge. whether or not they acknowledgei it, too many of my students geth confused. it seems so real. i guarantee you, they're going o to remember abraham lincoln saying he is selling himself cheap about that congressman tt

more than anything else, or that scene in the white house right e before the vote where he says, o am the president of the united states. clothed in immense power. that's probably something he ntn never said. it comes from a recollection from a congressman.tion he certainly didn't say it before those people in that from moment in that way. moment script, they say he rises to what seemed like 8 feet tally i'm studying him and rises appreciating him as a party eemd leader, boss lincoln. i understand he has a gritty ary side, but that depiction to me t seems off note. you know, historians have off notes, too. but i think the difference is that we at least try to be transparent about how we got ast there. >> i just want to add one footnote to all of your wonderful work and you've done all of us an enormous favor by giving us this paper, but next o time you give it, there is the

scene where the lobbyists drop c the money on the floor. having spent eight years in albany, new york, i can promisel you the fixers from albany never dropped the money on the k floor. >> well, i'll yield to paul finkelman as the expert on corruption. you know, there's so many so details like that that are hardh to convey, but all of those lobbying scenes, every single one of them, that's all fiction. none of that comes from the e record. there are accounts of bribery. none of those accounts are in the movie. every single one of those scenee is pure invention from tony of horowitz. i think that's legitimate i thin artistic license to a degree, but people need to realize what it is.kas >> hey, matt. as a teacher, i mean, we have an important duty to our students. and it's movies like lincoln ans

gettysburg that draw that desire to learn more. and for us the teachers, we hav. to give them the tools. >> right .th >> to help them depict what is i fact and what is not fact. but i think lincoln will have ac better -- i think it's more of - positive in that it will hopefully draw people to want to learn more about lincoln. >> sure, but you agree with me,b right? at the heart of the movie, there is this depiction of bribery moi that lincoln is not only aware of but he condoned.ibery >> true. >> yeah. >> that's pretty dark.dark. >> i know, it's very dark, and i you compare it to modern-day o politics where, you know, you have congress that's been doing insider trading for years. >> yeah.r >> and all of these other things that lends to support what this movie unfortunately is saying.fn >> your response actually puts your finger right on it because everyone including tony horowitz and steven spielberg are sa comparing this to modern-day politics.owit

it's a lesson more about modern day politics in some ways than 19th century politics. l 19th century politics were corrupt, but it was different.ry there's a scene on the day of the vote where fernando wood is waving papers saying i have affidavits. that's straight out of angels in america and the mccarthy era. that's not 19th century congress. that's what you realize when you see a movie like lincoln.t yo or think about mr. smith goes t. washington, almost all of what we think we know about past , ao politics comes from movies.e and popular culture, and we absorb it so much, we think it', real. that's why it's so important to try to sort it out. i don't want to be one of thoset scholar squirrels that gore vidal used to make fun of, but g that's what i have been doing, f digging around in the script ant pointing out the small differences, but ultimately, do they matter.po as much as i think you're righti the lincoln movie will produce n good things, when we teach it, teachers need to be aware of ho

it departs from what we know about the record. greg. how you need to wait for the microphone. for >> sorry, how does it skew in terms of younger audiences? it because my experience, which te could be -- which is only s? anecdotal, when i poll my question classes. many more have seen django and vampire hunter than lincoln.en they see lincoln as a movie for not even their parents, for d r their grandparents. that could be peculiarities of who i teach. did young people see it?no >> my line about the vampire hunter is, it's not all true. i went to see the lincoln movien in the theater three times, and each time i was the youngest on in the room, which i think proves your point, but i do think that even if the kids didn't see it in the theaters, n don't know what the demographics are of the audience, but they're going to see it in the classroom for a generation if not two.s,ee

it's going to be powerful and ky they're going to get it that nt way.!v i teach it and i'm going to continue to teach it and many others will and it's really gog important that we focus on how they perceive it in the ue tat e classroom more than anything else. one more question, paul? okay. >> if i were you, i would be chomping at the bit to try to get the early drafts of the at script to see how it developed.f i don't think you'll get it bute it would be really interesting d because i bet you anything thatu those scenes that are less historically accurate were the i ones that evolved most. >> you're probably right. you' you know, there's no doubt that the script evolved.e's no according to all the reports wel have, it started out as a orts e sweeping narrative of the whole war and i think it was spielbera who said we have to focus on

this moment. that's why he's such a great story teller.hy he i'll be honest, in my classes, i have had a tendency in the past to pass over the 13th amendment narrative and focus more on thee emancipation proclamation.pation now because of the movie and because of other works, you know, i feel like i'm aware in r way that i wasn't of the oce dramatic potential of the story, even as i note the discrepancies between the record and the film, but that's what great story di tellers do, they show you drama, and moments some of us miss ory because we don't have those skills.erd m that's another thing hollywood got right about the 13th amendment, even as they got some things wrong. so thank you very much. [ applause ] >> this week, special prime time program on the c span networks,

tonight from c span, from glasgow. wednesday night the principal of harvard connecticut's school.

on tuesday, the epd of world war ii and atomic bomb. wednesday night, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. thursday a look at how americansed attitudes about world war i changed through the course of the war. on friday, a nasa documentary about the 1969 moon landing. next, university of mary washington professor jeffrey mcclurken evaluates "gone with the with wind" looking at how it became the source on southern culture during the civil war and reconstruction in light of the depression era in which it was

createded. this is part of a course on u.s. history in film at the university of mary washington in fredricksburg, virginia. it's an hour, 20 minutes. >> good morning. as we prepared to talk about the classic 1939 movie, gone with the wind, i will review the discussion from last time and talk about the making of the film and then we will turn to your comments and questions that you posted to the class. again, remember the goal is to evaluate gone with the wind as a secondary source about the past and primary source about the time in which it was made. so our last class, we talked about the historical context in which the film operates. we will talk about the old south or the antebellum south which despite a fair amount of diversity and agricultural crops was dominating politically by elite southern planters with slave-grown cotton.

we talked about how most southern whites didn't own slaveds slaves, but how all were invested in a system of racially based slavery that placed whites above blacks. a system that reduced to some extent the social tensions that existed between slave holders nonslave holding whites in the south. we talked about violence and the threat of violence that was inherent in slavery. many southern whites in this context believe slavery was some kind of reciprocal relationships between whites and blacks. a concept discussed often as paternalism. we were surprised to find out slave holders were surprised that african-americans didn't feel the same way. we talk about the conflict that they engaged millions of men and women on those sides. the war killed hundreds of thousands, 750,000 according to a new study done by j. david

hacker and wounded or otherwise damaged likely millions. we talked about thes that women -- important roles that women played and important varied roles running farms and businesses and making more supplies and uniforms. teaching, nursing and fighting. we talked about the battle for atlanta and sherman's march and the ways that affected union war effort and the way it guaranteed the election for abraham lincoln and the way it impacted southern civilians. we looked at the struggles between black and white southerners about what post emancipation would emerge. we explored the ways in which former slaves worked to establish themselves as members of society and efforts to separate themselves from whites while earning a living in the emerging system of share cropping. we talked about the consequences on southern white society of the deaths of nearly 20% of white

men of military age and and the physical or psychological consequences of war for so many more including the undering of southern white men's independence and everydays by southern white women to rebuild them. we examined the resurgence in the 1870s and 1880s to retake control in association with violent white supremacist groups such as the kkk and the knights of the white camillia. beginning with the competitors, -- former confederates themselves they rewrite the history of the war into a version known as the lost cause. finally we introduce margaret mitchell's book, gone with the wind in 1936 and the run away popularity that became the basis for the movie. as we talk about the movie itself, it's not a stretch to argue that gone with the wind is the most popular historical film ever made. polls conducted by afi by the

american film institute in the 1990s, indicated that gone with the wind was the favorite film of most americans. afi itself in the top 100 films ranked it as fourth overall. until recently gone with the wind ranked in the top 20 of all time and by some estimates would be first if inflation was taken into account. "avatar," $2.8 billion with actual money as opposed to inflated money. it opened in the second week of december 1939 and by january 1st sold over a million dollars worth of tickets and in the midst of the great depression. it received 13 act award nominations and eight oscars. it began running in london in 1940 and played for 232 consecutive weeks there. with 110 million viewers, it's 1946 that the premier was the highest rated program ever

broadcast to that point. by one late 20th century estimate, 90% of americans had seen the movie at least once. the historian noted it became a worldwide phenomenon as well. the book was banned and the french resistant saw a representation of strength amid occupation. the movie was one of two films requested by the leaders after the conflict as part of the cultural exchange between the u.s. and vietnam. anyone know what the other film they asked for was? king kong. in japan, the movie was turned into a successful all female musical. the movie is probably the single most influential interpretation of the war in popular culture. it premiered in atlanta. thousands of fans came to see it. margaret mitchell herself who praised the film for the grand

things they have done. mitchell was killed by a drunk driver in august of 1949, leaving her next book unfinished. that was not a sequel. she refused to write and comment on whether rhett and scarlet would get back together. when her estate approved the writing of a sequel, scarlet, both the sequel and gone with the wind were bestsellers. the book sold tens of millions of copies and never out of print. yet the movie reached millions more people than the book. as a movie, gone with the wind was meant to unify two genres. of hollywood films. the male oriented war film and the women's picture. what do people call them today? chick flicks. it was intended to unify and by combining the role of rhett butler and the passionate intense story of scarlet o harrah.

/ken did/butler/hamilton, the producer created the most popular movies of all time. it was the most expensive film made to this point. they paid $60,000 for the screen rights. the cast had nearly 60 leading or supporting roles and had 2,000 extras. they built 90 sets that consumed a million board feet of lumber. production and advertising costs exceeded 4 million dollars adjusted and $62 million the initial cut was six hours long. be grateful. lots of money was spent to make sure the film reached the details of mitchell's books. she paid attention and tried to research what the weather was like when sherman invaded.

incredibly it got many of the details right, not all of them. as we'll talk about. it wanted to pay attention to the details and the sets and the costumes. in part because many of them would have read the book. many of them would have read margaret mitchell's book and partly because they were standing right there watching as they did this. she insisted on authenticity from the film. he himself stated over and over again he wanted complete historical accuracy for gone with the wind at least in some areas. he hired a southern dialogue coach, etiquette adviser and expert on architecture and art. the designer spent time in atlanta museums, collecting pieces of cloth that he then had duplicated by a textile mill. ultimately the women's costumes cost $100,000 to make and another $10,000 to wash during the filming.

it's amazing the movie got made. it had three directors. two of them working on the project at the same time. it had 17 different screen writers, even an elderly f scott fitzgerald pitched in. conflicts between everyone on set including vivian and clark gable. the two lead actors who really hated each other. it also faced a great deal of pressure from roy wilkins on the outside and daniel who played mamie and butterfly mcqueen who played prissy on the characterizations of the figures on the film. the movie that emerged is lightly less racist and less classist and feminist than the book written. most reviewers loved the film but bruce chadwick noted that even then a few of the reviewerers had problems with the historical portrayals. one said it is an overinflated

example of the usually false movie approach to history . sounds like my kind of guy. the film does have some issues as a secondary source about the civil war. let's begin there and start a discussion there with what the film gets wrong. as a number of you commented, the thing that stands out, the portrayal of race relations in general and african-americans in particular. as usual, i've gone and highlighted particular parts of your comments as a way to help frame our discussion of the film. a number of you talked about the way that people addressed and the way particular african-americans are portrayed and in general the way african-americans are portrayed. why don't we start and we will talk about the character of prissy.

sighs, frustration, groans. right? what bothered you about the portrayal of prissy in this movies? -- movie? >> yes. >> yes, okay. the entire portrayal. fair enough. >> it was a caricature of every stereotype of what a black woman was like. >> okay. >> hysterical. her voice. >> very high pitched and squeaky. right. it is not. >> also i thought that they said that the actress that portrayed her was voicing concerns? >> she was. butterfly mcqueen expressed a number of concerns about the way her character was portrayed. >> why did she do it? >> that's a good question. it was a good paying job at the time when most african-american actors and actresses were not

given those roles. we're not that far away from birth of a nation. in fact, many of the black actors were white. there was thought that part of what they were doing was workin were doing was working within to try to make it better than it was. i understand your skepticism. yeah. yeah? >> with her voice, with it being hysterical, it was also very simple-minded, like she couldn't understand a lot of what was going on. >> okay. certainly played as a fool, really. yeah, sam. >> i think, yeah, she and a lot of the other actual black actors and actresses in this film were almost portrayed as comedic relief at times, really sarcastic. thwart >> okay, so that is one potential explanation that we might see as not so bad, right? they're being used in a particular way, right?

i think we still have problems with that, but i think -- >> [ inaudible ] >> right, right. other comments about prissy? yeah. >> she said that she knows how to rear a child, when she knows nothing about it. and she says, i have gone and talked to this person, when she hasn't. it's kind of silly. >> right, so i don't know nothing about birthing no babies is this famous line, when it comes out that she doesn't actually know anything. all right. what about -- so we've got -- what about big sam, right? a number of you commented on big sam. especially that scene where big sam and a number of other conscripted slaves are going to the lines, right, to dig ditches effectively, to create the confederate fortifications. yeah? >> they played into that whole paternalist mentality. big sam is almost, like you said, concerned about scarlet's

wellbeing, almost paternal toward her in lack of her father being there. and very much like, oh, big sam. like i'm so concerned for you. it's like, really, they're sending him to the front lines. it's dangerous. you know? >> right. okay. other comments about big sam? yeah, jeremy. >> they were all awfully happy to be going. >> they were exceedingly happy. they were thrilled to being good to the lines. >> almost like a musical, marching in unison. it remind e-at me of the "blind side" when big sam would talk to the other characters, where you have portrayal of a character who was just grateful to be there when that's not really the way it was at all. i thought it was interesting because you said the movie was a little less racist than the book was. >> hard to believe, i know. yeah, no, so i mean, we'll talk about this a little more later, but in some ways the book, there are ways that the book is much more explicit in its terms and its terminology, so the book

fairly extensively used the "n" word, right? the decision was made to take that out of the film. but, yeah, no, it's still slightly less racist, still racist. right. okay. so we've got big sam, and we've got prissy, right? by the way, there was a study done in which people were asked basically about how they felt about scarlet smacking prissy, and the vast majority of people said that was completely appropriate and warranted. right? it made her such an annoying character that that seemed somehow appropriate. okay. what about mamie? right? because i think mamie complicates our notion of these stereotypes a little bit, all right? how does she complicate our notion of the stereotyping of african-americans here?

>> she stayed forever. >> okay. all right, so she is incredibly loyal. she's always there. right? you would never know that emancipation happened. right? there's no sense of that. and you know, even big sam comes back, right? pork sticks around, prissy is still there. right? they're still around, but mamie is a constant presence. how else does mamie complicate our notion? yeah? >> no, no, you have to eat. she gave her so much. and i feel like in reality, they probably wouldn't have cared. >> okay. all right. >> i think the respect that scarlet gave back to her was interesting because scarlet would listen to her and value her input, and sort of be like whatever and ignoring her. >> all right. so mamie occupies an unusual role because she is listened to,

right? she's seen in some ways as a positive influence on scarlet. yeah? >> i think the film made more of an effort to portray her as a little more of a three-dimensional character than some of the other african-american characters. rhett said she's one person whose opinion he values. >> she stands out. she is -- i think you're right. i think that's well put. three-dimensional character in what are mostly two or even one-dimensional characters. right? okay. so -- mamie in some ways represents, i think, a larger, a larger nuance to southern white understandings of african-americans, right? because the name mamie was not an incidental one, right? the name mamie that was chosen by margaret mitchell in part

because many elite southern antebellum families had a black woman who took care of the children and cared for the children and was integrated into the family, right? but i think we have to be careful about how necessarily those women would have seen it. did they care about these white children? they may have. right? but it was still a relationship of a power relationship. it was still a relationship in which any sort of infraction could result in punishment. it was a relationship in which there was a long-term, langestanding threat of violence is something went wrong. i guess i want to -- rachel raises a question here about the notion that this is an almost

equal relationship, right? and i'm curious because does it come across that way as an almost equal relationship between mamie and scarlet and mamie and rhett? yeah? >> my initial impulse is to say no because she does take into account mamie's opinion, she doesn't always listen to her, and she's kind of nasty to her, but sar health is ind of nakind to everyone. >> i would say at the very least, it comes off as reciprocate. >> you get closer to that perhaps ideal of a southern white perspective of how these relationships worked, right? okay. jeremy? >> it's almost in a way mother and child because you don't always listen to your mom when she talks to you, and mamie seemed to have like a really good, i'm looking out for your best interests here. she got to yell at the entire family, she could give people funny looks throughout the film and people were like, that's just mamie. you know? to me, the almost equal

relationship i think is absolutely correct. whether it's a food one and why i question her getting an academy award for that sort of thing makes me question the hollywood academy, but i think it is almost equal because she could get away with so much more than anyone else personified in the film. >> yeah? >> i think the scene where scarlet is putting on the dress to go to the party at 12 oaks and mamie is like, you can't wear that, you can't wear that until 4:00, and scarlet is pulling the tress down and mamie is pulling it back up, that's a good scene to show mamie is saying, no, you have these rules, you have to follow these. scarlet is not -- they're struggling. mamie has some power and scarlet has some power and scarlet's not really a child anymore, so mamie is not so much a mother figure as maybe she has been. it's a very complicated dynamic that i think would have been hard to portray, especially during this time period. >> yeah, jason? >> on tuesday, you mentioned that the structure of race and

how it played and how even the poorest white person would have been seen as better than any black person, and mamie gets away with saying white trash this, white trash that, and she's not punished for it or anything like that. >> yeah. >> i think mamie represents that comfort of the old life especially after scarlet's mother dies and i feel like scarlet looks to mamie as that image she can hold on to, what she's comfortable with. >> a surrogate for ellen o'hary, so she continues to play that role. and representative of her mother, and representative of the antebellum world that's lost, right, mamie gets to be that point of continuity for tara and for scarlet. okay? okay. so we don't really -- we don't really talk much about the fact that we know that something like 25% of all slaves run away to union lines during the war and

that afterwards almost everybody else leaves as well. you don't get much sense of that. that's not surprising, i think. right? given the type of movie this is and the goals of the movie, but it is something that the movie misses out on. now, i mean, there's certainly more slaves at tara than there are free blacks at tara after the war, right? they just sort of this appear, right? brooke brought up three points here that i think are worth talking about. one is about the mamie image that is still around us today, right? that that concept of the mamie, right, is an incredibly powerful advertising concept, right? and even someone like aunt jerks mima who you can see e evolving over the years was until recently looked an awful

lot like mamie in this film, right? that i think is one important point. the or thing that -- the other two things brooke brings up is she challenges our ability to critique this movie because it's not based on history, it's based on a book of romantic fiction, right? and she challenges the notion that the black characters in this are not smart, right? so let's take each of those things in turn. do you agree with her contention that the movie isn't based on history? and the second part of that is, if it's not based on history, does that matter in our evaluating it? >> amanda, go ahead. >> i thought it was, like, because they tried to make it so historically accurate, they are trying to make an historical film. if they had just taken it as a romantic fiction story and not tried to get all of the facts right, you might say, oh, that's fantasy, but because they tried

to make it so historically accurate, they have a responsibility to then be accurate, and they're not. >> okay. all right, mary quinn? >> i would argue that the film is attempting to base itself on history because even in the film, it's explicit about attempting to sketch this image of a dying age. it's extremely romanticized, but they're pretty obvious about what it is they're trying to do. >> right. okay. yeah. carrie? >> they opened the entire movie with a story of the old south, so they really set themselves up from the beginning to play what you were saying, the moonlight magnolias image, but they took pains to be accurate. even though they're basing it off fiction based off history, they clearly made an attempt, so they tid have a certain amount of responsibility. it's a complicated character, too, complicated representation.

>> right. yeah, sarah? >> i think unlike the patriot, it's a family story set against the backdrop of the american revolution, the proximity of time in which this was made in comparison to the actual event makes it much more historically relevant and important that they are attentive to historical accuracy than the patriot, which was what, 230 years later? 225 years later? >> all right, jeremy. >> i think brooke made a good point, based on a romantic fiction but based on the memory of the south. that to me is important because it's a very nostalgic picture. so it's kind of complicated. it's based on a memory so you have different ideas of what's going on. that's like the most important part of it because it is a memory of a time long ago that we're nostalgic about that we remember in a very specific way. >> okay. all right. brooke? >> back to my point, because it is so close to the time that

it's portraying that it is a warped sense of the south i guess is what i was trying to get, because they do remember the south. they can't accurately portray it how we would do it now. we don't have that memory. we don't talk to our grandfathers. >> they're looking at it emotionally and from firsthand memories as opposed to academic reconstruction. >> yeah. >> that's a good point. >> okay. >> paige? >> we're going back to the opening text of the movie, they kind of set this whole public memory thing up because they say how it's a land of knights and cavalierness. civilization that was gone with the wind. >> it reminds me of the discussion of the birth of the nation at the very beginning how they were basing it on -- they thought they were making a historically accurate film, or wilson said it was, anyway. >> right. >> it was still playing toward the prejudices of theqq] time h i'm sure we'll get to soon.

so, i mean, it's what they had >> okay. all right. to some extent, this was the general belief of at least the people who were in power, making decisions about these things. this f the general sense of how things actually were, right? brooke's point about not being far enough away from it, this was something that southern whites in some ways were still living in and with, is a really important one. it's difficult to get that distance here. >> not just the southern whites. >> right. >> i've read that patty, was that her name? mamie was a daughter of a slave. >> right, so it has a particular resonance to her, right? which is part of why, perhaps, you can imagine why she would be frustrated with a particular characterization. yeah, mary quinn? >> speaking of like the individuals, i believe civil war veterans were alive at the time.

i remember correctly, confederate veterans were actually present at the premiere of the film. >> very old, but yes. >> it was still a memory when the film was released. >> okay. and then what about the second contention here, or at least the third contention here, was that african-american characters in this film are smarter and more sensible than many of the whites? and the second part of that, which is that's on purpose, right? that's intentional. okay. what do you think about that? is that -- >> i kind of bring up spike lee's point, the magical negro who comes in, tells all the white characters how wise we are, but then never really does anything with themselves. they kind are of passive observers of the white characters who will do things and go and get married and do anything else, and the black characters are all static. they don't do anything with their lives.

even if you're wiser in a way, they don't have any kind of -- >> mamie spasespecially i thinks that role, right? you see that role in lots of other films as well. okay. other comments on that, on that idea? i think again, mamie is the complicating factor here, right? it's hard -- i don't think anyone would make the case that prissy is smarter, right? so she's not just being played that way. certainly big sam not being played that way. again, mamie is that complicating factor. okay. are there -- i think -- what are some other examples of caricatures of african-americans and of slavery in this film? >> the little girl -- >> absolutely. right?

these young slave girls, big fans fanning the daughters of slave holders when they take their beauty rest in the afternoon, right? can't stay up for the whole picnic, right? yes? >> there's like black politicians coming in after the war oppressing the white people. taking all the power. wearing suits. being superior to everyone else. >> right. so there's that scene right after the war where you have joan us wilkerson who gets fired at the beginning riding in this carriage with this very well-dressed black man e an there's sort of implications as they go by all these veterans, right, these confederate veterans who are sort of staggering home. what else? other stereotypes? caricatures. certainly talked about the happy slaves going off to fight the yankees, right? what about that moment where pork gets the watch of gerald

o'herra, right, this ties the black family and white family together. i can't take that, i can't take that, right? or the moment in atlanta, right, where, you know, you have these former slaves sounding foolish, sounding ignorant. almost minstral like in the language they're using, being easily manipulated by that slimily carpet bagger's promise of 40 acres and a mule, if you vote as your friends do. again, this troupe of manipulation. the movie doesn't address any of the real problems of slavery or racial reconstruction or the development of share cropping. right? instead we see african-americans as infant lized. and loyal to southern whites

unless they had been corrupted by northern whites. right? certainly it's different than the images of african-americans as near animals as we saw in d.w. griffith's "birth of a nation." it's not necessarily better. right? other stereotyped white characters? yeah? >> anthony. >> hysterical, white southern -- >> completely useless, right? yeah. okay. others? yeah, hannah. >> there's ashley. the true gentleman. live for honor. >> okay. don't disgrace your family kind of person. >> yeah. in some ways ashley is almost one dimensional, right? there's not a whole lot to him. what about bell watting, all right? [ inaudible ] that's right. this is a troupe we see in

others. julia roberts made her career on that stereo type. "pretty womb," that notion of the prostitute with the heart of gold is this incredibly powerful but stock character. >> i felt like it was trying to expose some hypocrisy in the white community as well. there's all of these useless wealthy white elderly women floating around the film as well. i felt like it definitely was not trying to make the white characters look good. >> plenty of useless white males. >> right. right. absolutely. carr carrie? >> they didn't seem to have any poor whites, like, at all. >> right. >> they talk about what's her face at the beginning who's the

white trash, but you never see her until she turns up after the war and has married way up. the overseer is sort of middle class. >> he's actually a northerner. he's played as a northerner who comes down. >> right. so it's like, there's no real portrayal of anything except the rich, you know, plantation owning elite. even bell watting, though she's not necessarily reputable, she's very rich. >> right. >> so you don't get that sense of a diversity of white economi classes there. okay. jason? >> before the war, you don't see anybody struggling. it's because of the northern aggression and everything they've done. they've ruined everything and now people are making clothes out of drapes and stuff like that. >> rigt right. yeah? >> the slaves in the movie were like the poor white people because how much they're oppressed. the blacks always called them

white trash. they actively push them away and the blacks are actually higher than that. >> in some ways you see mamie get away with talking about white trash the way that she does. you do have some of that sense which is a turn yaabout of way t that would have worked in southern society. okay. what about mel lanie hamilton wilkes? a one-dimensional character, a three-dimensional character? yeah. >> i think she's there to be loyal to scarlet. she's too good to be true. there's no personal live that could forgive the stuff she does. i think it's just -- i think she's a literary device for scarlet. >> okay. she's just -- yeah -- >> just a foil. >> anybody else? >> i kind of disagree because there are times in the movie

where she frustrated me because i was like you can't be that happy all the time but at the same time i think she was a strong character because she changed the way that red thought about things and then she also -- at the end when melanie was dying and scarlet was crying, i felt like some of that might have been real but then i feel like even though she had the same perspective throughout the whole movie she did a lot more other characters so i think she was a little bit more than just, like, there. >> kendra? >> to me she was the strength cause. she was always behind it and they had to be strong for it where scarlet hated it but melanie was the one -- the justness of it. that sort of thing. >> margaret mitchell, herself, said melanie was the real

heroine. she was the real romanticized southern bell. she's the old symbol of herself in doing so she plays a foil for scarlet. scarlet is very much a product of the new south. right? i want to talk a little bit later about how we think that works out for her, and what the implications of that are. are there -- i want to talk a little bit about gender relations. i want to raise the question about mr. o'herra because he doesn't seem to be the one in charge of the plantation, right? you know, why do you think that is? how does he come across? is he -- what does this say about masculinity and male authority during this time period?

>> it's hard to decide -- being portrayed as masculine but it's hard because after his wife died he kind of loses it. >> right. >> so it's kind of different in that way. i wish we could have seen another type of male figure like him portrayed so i could decide like, how -- >> we see him -- i mean, yeah. before he snaps like we only see a little bit of him. right? yeah? >> even in that snap, he didn't have the authority. it was his wife walking up to him saying fire this man because of something he had done. you know, so he really didn't have the authority. it was his wife. >> okay. >> and so maybe that was how scarlet saw that households were run, but he really never had authority. >> okay. but just think about what you just said, right? >> yeah. >> his wife went to him and told him to fire someone, right?

she couldn't fire the overseer, right? he had to do that. >> he had to do that but it's still his wife -- >> no, no, but i'm not trying to take away from that, but i think that's important ultimately it is still a society in which the father, the husband, is the one to make that ultimate decision. he could have said no. it might have been very unpleasant for him if he did, but he could have said no. right? kendall? >> we talked about in class the other day where women were in charge of the household. they had a lot of power themselves as far as taking care of the household and the slaves and in charge of it. i didn't see it as that much of a stretch that she would go to him and tell him that if it was part of how the household is being run and affecting that. >> right. >> and what particularly are the grounds by which she is having him fired? >> she goes to deliver the

mistress' baby who we get is a lower class person, so i thought her role was in the social aspects, not in the actual running of the plantation, itself. >> all right. so in this case it's about morality, right? she's making this decision on moral grounds. that's something that women would have absolutely had a superior role in. yeah? >> doesn't he also repeatedly say we're going to wait for mrs. o'herra? he says it beforehand, too. >> ellen o'herra is a very strong woman, right? i want talk about her in a little bit. yeah, there's no question that she stands out. let let's come back to that. okay. there is -- what about the nursing scenes, right? brooke brings up that how the nursing scenes didn't necessarily fit what we learned

in class. what is the role between the interactions of women and men in those hospitals? yeah. >> i think brooke put in her comment, too, the women weren't really around the men, changing bandages. scarlet was all up in there. she's was literally watching what was going on. i gegs guess we saz women were usually removed from that because they're too pure for that kind of thing. she was a stereotypical war nurse, but that's not what it was really like. >> yeah, paige? >> another thing to think about is that all of the hospital scenes that are portrayed are in the south at the end of the war so there are very few men around to help as nurses, anyway. so there was a greater chance that women would take up these roles as acting as nurses whether or not they would do it in full garb in their large hoop skirts to do it is an entirely different matter, but it was certainly possible to have women filling those roles in those hospitals. >> right. there is certainly, in the

south, it was more likely to see this in extreme circumstances where women would step in. anybody else? okay. what about scarlet owning a mill, running a mill and galavanting, right? does that stand outside of our understanding of gender norms at this time period? >> i think after the war it would have been a little bit more acceptable because of some of the things that i've read post-war for women. they did have a little more control in finding jobs. maybe not running the mill and owning the mill. that's a little stretch. probably have a little bit more say. i'm surprised her husband didn't have more power in that. >> yeah? >> she married -- i don't remember his last name. >> kennedy. >> she married him first to get his money and used his money in

order to build this sort of lumber empire that she has, but she has to marry him in order to get his money to use it, so it does still belong to him to some extent. and i get the feeling that legally his name is on the papers and things but she's the up wielding all the power, again, in sort of a social relationship as that's how she gets her business power. >> part of what we're getting to here is the difference between the law and daily practice, right? there's no question, right, it's absolutely the case that frank kennedy owns that mill. right? now, frank kennedy is not running that mill. scarlet is running that mill. but that certainly -- it's unusual that she would have been so dominant in that way, but not completely unthinkable. so i think you're right to sort of keep these, keep in mind what we see is not necessarily what would have been the legal situation. yeah? >> would it have transferred to rhett when kennedy died?

>> depends on the specifics of inheritance law at that time and whether there was anything -- depends on what frank kennedy's will said, but, yeah, so scarlet likely would have inharted it because they didn't have any children. would have inherited it, then, yeah, when he married her, it would have gone to him. you know, there's another aspect of gender relations that i just want to mention because i think that there's a promotion of a particular kind of gender violence in this film. yeah? you want to -- >> yeah. you know, all along i thought they were all kind of rude to each other, but the scene where they are living in their really nice house at the end and both scarlet and r her, tt are drinking and getting into their arguments and wraps her upstairs and rapes her and wakes up all happy and perky in the morning.

thanks, 1930s. >> there's no question. domestic violence certainly existed at this time but the way this gets filmed. you're absolutely right. her waking up with a big smile on her face the next morning has all kinds of problematic implications for what it says about rape and consent and an appropriate marriage. okay. let's talk a little bit about costuming and sets. right? and i'm going to allow laura michael and mary quinn to talk about why they are so annoyed, and carrie, why they are so annoyed by especially one particular scene. so what scene was most traumatic for you? >> well, the wildly famous scene where scarlet is lacing her

corset and mamie is tugging away at her is, if i were being really kind and forgiving i would argue that she's trying to look pretty. it represents an extremely fashionable ideal. most women did not lace their corsets tightly like this on a day-to-day basis because it's just not practical. >> right. because you need to breathe. >> yes, you need to breathe. it was just simply a fashionable ideal. i think this scene in particular has contributed to the misunderstanding that a lot people have about 19th century fashion and it was this very restricting, like, sexist impractical kind of thing which it really wasn't. i mean, i'm not saying it's not an uncomfortable garment to wear, but it's not nearly as bad as it's made out to be in this film. >> do you want to comment about costuming? >> well, scarlet was always, had this little tiny waist, and you can see in the scenes a lot of times, like, she had her dress sort of unbuttoned and you can

see, like, there's just skin. there's no, you know, i mean, these are pretty large undergarments that they're wearing and the silhouettes she has in the scenes where she's taking her nap and just wearing her, you know, corset and drawers and stuff, is very different from the silhouette that you see when she's, like, at parties and things. you can't wear a corset, a period-correct corset and look the way that she does. and they did some things that were -- like, they had a lot of trim that started on the shoulders and came into the waist which makes your shoulders look broader and your waist look smaller in comparison, but there are also, like, little things that they didn't do, the setting of the sleeves, for instance, the shoulder seams during this time were very far down. it helped to widen your shoulders to help your waists look smaller. they had lots of modern shoulder seams up here that have narrow shoulders which are much more characteristic of the 30s iss

ideal. >> part of what we see going on is an idealization not of the fashion of the 1850s through '70s but of a 1930s version of the '50s through 7 '70s. paige? >> especially in movies that are made in this period of time, in the early mid '90s, a lot of the accessories, a lot of some of the articles clothing that these women are wearing and even the plusmusketts and c cante canteens, some of those are probably original. from a preservation standpoint and every time because the morning broach that scarlet wore was most certainly they would have just bought an original somewhere rather than making it with the hair and everything. just seeing that from a preservation standpoint makes me want to, like, break the tv. >> carrie, did you want to -- >> what they were saying, you know, they did sort of fudge a lot of the period undergarments.

you know, she wasn't wearing that corset properly, i'm sorry, you would have passed out. they warrant designed to squish you in. it doesn't change your waist size but the way you carry yourself of it's designed to make you hold your shoulders back. when it wasn't convenient they didn't bother. the scene where scarlet shoots the yankee in the house and she takes it off. if you look carefully you see she's wearing a 1930s bra under the nightshirt. so they clearly are like no one is going to notice. i will just wear a bra, no big deal. >> at this point people couldn't pause the movie while they were watching it. right? this is before. so they can get away with things that they can't get away with today. a couple of other things with the sets. tara, entirely too big to be a country georgia house. those columns on the front were a sort of great controversy during the forming. finally, as was just said, this

is the way i want it, make it up. right? 12 oaks is oddly styled for an upcountry georgia plantation. architects say it looks more like something in virginia during this time period. all of this may be wouldn't matter accept that he said he wanted historical accuracy and claimed he used a number of historical consultants. the film implies a sort of historical authenticity with the various dates and letters and orders that they use as transitions between scenes. but the history really isn't all that great, and we see that from the very beginning, as historian catherine clinton has pointed out. in the film's opening scene, the slaves are out in the fields picking cotton. the problem with that is that we know it's april of 1861 because the news of ft. sumter arrives, right? you don't pick cotton in april because it's very early in the

growing process. right? all right. let's talk about the readings that you all did. in what way did the readings that we did this week, and we looked at, you know, we looked at articles and army orders and letters, we looked at items written by former slaves like harriet jacobs, journals of southern white elite women like chestnut, northern observers like carl sures and the mayor of atlanta and general sherman. having read all of that how does the movie align or disagree with these readings from the era? what do the readings add to our understanding of the time period that the movie doesn't? jeremy? >> in the film slaves are very happy and obedient and loyal. the way the families were treated on the plantations.

that's a juxtaposition. it's just wrong. >> right. we see that in harriet jacobs' stuff. we get a sense of a very different experience. right? how about -- yeah, go ahead. >> in the reading, i forget if it's harry jacobs or james stuart but when the girl was raped every day and she said she couldn't tell her grandmother because she'd be looked down upon. that really surprised me. later on in the reading, the grandmother suspected it, she hit puberty and was maturing. something would happen to her from the master so they surprised me when she was actually pregnant from being raped. the grandma looked down upon her. it kind of confused me because since the grandmother expected it because she knew this was

sadly the norm and the fact that she -- it just really surprised me. >> this is harriet jacobs' story. the story is a very incredible account and gets at some of the complexities within the african-american community in the south about how to deal with these assaults by whites on blacks. mary chestnut's diary talks a little bit, brings up the possibility, the excerpt you read brings up the possibility about slavery, that slavery isn't such a good thing, right? calls it a monstrous system. okay? and so you do get some sense, but there's no questioning of slavery that occurs in the film. right? none at all. okay. let's move on and talk about the movie as a primary source about the time and people who made it. how does the great depression affect this film? how is it reflected in this film? amanda?

>> talked about how scarlet's story is similar to what people went through in the great depression. she's wealthy or at least well off and then because of the north, all her wealth is taken away, and i kind of connected that to, like, new york city being the stock market and so people could blame them. even if you weren't wealthy you had a lifestyle and then you became poor and then it showed when she finally gets au s all money, there's, like, hope for when it maybe ends. >> those parallels create a resonance between those people who saw it during the great depression and that time period that it's being depicted. nate, did you want to talk about your own -- >> i just made the comment in my post that the story has paral l parallels with stories i used to hear from my grandfather because he grew up -- he was the youngest of i believe eight and he grew up during the great depression, and i found many parallels watching the movie as with his stories.

>> right. i think many people would have felt that, seen that parallel. scarlet's line as god as my witness i will never be hungry again, right, would have resonated in deep meaningful ways with the depression-era audience. right? all right. what does the film have to say about land? what does the film have to say about land? yeah? >> that it's the most important thing and the only thing that can't be taken away from you. >> right. >> you see i quoted when he was talking to scarlet at the beginning about what tara should mean to her. >> right. so do you mean to tell me -- i almost want to do the irish accent. i'm not going to. i'm not going to. do you mean to tell me scarlet o'hare that tara land doesn't mean anything to you, land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth dying

for because it's the only thing that lasts. just before the intermission when she falls on her knees in the dirt before tara, and swears, god as my witness, i will never two hungry again. that's very much tied to location and the very end she says, tara, home, i will go home. right? so that's going to fix it. that's an incredibly powerful sense. yeah? >> i think this adds an element that these people weren't fighting so they could keep people in subjugation. you know, like, they just wanted their land and their farms and this is where they'd grown up and they had a right to fight for their homes and it makes them very much more like crusaders than what, you know, an alternate view of them which is that they just wanted to, you know, keep black people working for them so they could sip their

tea on their porches. >> this version is a much more palatable story to tell nationally, part of the lost cause myth. right? okay. okay. what are some of the other ways that we see the time period affecting this particular version of history? right? so paige points out that when the premiere emerges, there's actually all kinds of confederate flags, confederate veterans show up at the premiere. right? it is very explicitly about a celebration of the confederacy and of confederate heritage. right? there's no question that that's part of it. both hannah and jeremy talk about the sort of portrayal of the north in this. how much do you think the portrayal of the north fits into its being made at the time period that it was?

hannah? >> apparently during the 1930s that's what historians thought of the civil war. war against the northern aggression, and it's very portrayed in the film. >> right. very clear sort of notion of that this is the north's fault. right? yeah. >> there's also the idea at the time that the south never really caught up afterward. i read this book by -- saying they're still finding bodies in 1992 in the south from the civil war. i think the reference made earlier is that the north caused the great depression in some people's minds because they crashed the stock market and no one else was doing this sort of nonsense. and, you know, when you look at the film and look at the locations that are very hard hit that are still trying to recover from the civil war, it's a very

good parallel. >> right. okay. what about gender relations. i want to return to this notion of scarlet in terms of how she fits within the gender relations of the time and kendall suggests that scarlet is a ruthless money loving woman who defies traditional gender roles, right? what is the moral of this story? what are women supposed to take from "gone with the wind"? kendall? >> the way i saw it was that you had scarlet who was never going to go hungry again so she will do what she can he to make it so when she does depend on men she manipulates them like kennedy and runs the business and all that. she eventually marries rhett for the money. he makes her a deal. that's why she marries him. then there's melanie who, you

know, follows the marrying ashley then has a kid and then supports the cause and everyone loves her. but everyone hates scarlet so you have the ruthless almost mannish scarlet who everyone hates but the melanie who fits into the gender roles and everyone loves her. so -- >> so what are people supposed to -- what are women supposed to take from this? mary quinn? >> i always thought that scarlet was portrayed very much as a survivor. like, she survives the war and clearly lives to see another day. melanie dies at the end of the movie. so, i mean, i'm not sure what to take away from it to be honest. >> it's complicated, right? fair enough. jeremy? >> she's very much i'm going to manipulate to get whatever i want. but every time that slick rhett guy shows up, she literally swoons with him and begs him to

stay so it's this huge conflict of you're very independent and try to get what you want or you really need a man in your life which both are very bad things so -- >> right. yeah. paige? >> in portions of the movie you kind of get a sense that you need a man to get what you want because if scarlet didn't marry -- i can't remember his name but the lumber baron, kennedy, then she wouldn't have the money to start her lumber business and get what she wanted with that. >> there's no question it would be very difficult for a single won or widow to survive in this environment entirely on their own, so -- anybody else on this particular issue? yeah? >> she was widowed twice in the film? >> yes. >> would people have stopped marring her after a while? >> not rhett. >> well, i think, you know, i don't know of anything -- i mean, you might say there's bad luck. you might say that there's something going on but i don't know of anything that would have

prevented someone from marring someone with her amount of wealth. right? there would have always been somebody willing to take a chance. right? okay. one last thing about why it was so popular in the '30s and '40s. why do they sell a million dollars worth of tickets? right? in two weeks. yeah? >> it's this beautiful, romantic image of a time that never really was. it's something beautiful and romantic and exciting and get away from how much their lives absolutely suck. >> that's why the movie industry does incredibly well during the great depression for exactly that reason. okay. okay. so we are to the point where we talk about the movie does right.

12 minutes left. i mean, how does the movie measure up historically speaking when dealing with some of the elite white characters and their lives? better, worse than they deal with african-americans? hard to be worse than the treatment of african-americans, okay. so then better. okay. so laura michael and brooke at the beginning talk about, i think, sort of overall southern white perceptions of race. you know, and brooke makes the argument, actually both of them make the argument that this is an accurate depiction of the way that whites perceived the way things went or the way whites perceived the way that slavery existed. accurate portrayal of the south's memory of that time, at that time.

and so, again, to that extent, you know, not bad for capturing that particular moment in time. i think laura michael's second sentence is a right to critique that. what about some of the individuals? scarlet's parents. how historically accurate do you think those two were? >> he was irish. he was, like, really irish. >> really irish. >> new to the south. the irish especially in the north were seen as being, like, the lowest of the low, just above african-americans. how likely would it have been for him to own that huge plantation? >> he's too rich, but there are a number of scotts and irish immigrants who go to the upcountry part of the south, backcountry part of the south, and are able to get land, some

cases are able to attain slaves. he's too rich. yeah, carrie? >> i thought i read somewhere that he actually had won tara in a bet? >> in the book, i think that's the case. yeah. >> that might explain a little bit. >> in the book, both he and, both gerald and ellen o'herra fleshed out a lot more. in the book, he has to flee ireland actually because he's killed somebody. there's a whole different narrative that fwogoes on that don't see in the film. what about ellen? we talked about how she tells her husband what to do. what's her role in this? we don't see much of her actually at all in the movie. what's her role? kendall? >> she's pious. she's, like, the caretaker. she's what scarlet's not. she's, like, motherly. >> right.

>> it's kind of, i guess, she could also be kind of the foil to scarlet, like the southern model for womanhood. >> she's the idealized plantation mistress. he's t she's the model that everyone's supposed to follow. melanie is her spiritual daughter in the film, not scarlet. she's everywhere. takes care of the sick, supervises the slaves and family members. helps out with the ill in the neighborhood. she holds the family in the plantation to a higher level of morality. right? that's what plantation mistresses are supposed to do. one problem with this characterization, most elite women couldn't handle all the things and spent most of their lives exhausted and fainting and sort of gave up on it and didn't do it. she may have depicted the ideal but she probably didn't depict the reality. i think the general wartime experience of the o'herras is

not that out of the realm of possibility. the way that ellen dies of disease and forces scarlet to take on new responsibilities. all of these things are completely believable in the context of the civil war. we talk a little bit about scarlet stepping outside of the boundaries of gender roles at the time. but there's -- it is possible that she could have transformed from southern bell to overpowering dominant female force. it happened. not often, but it happened. certainly the idea of being forced into business, or forced into marriages they weren't interested in or wouldn't have seen as ideal before the war, absolutely that happens after the civil war. we haven't talked much about rhett butler, right, other than to talk about how slick he is, right? somewhat intimidating but alluring i think was another phrase, right? smooth. right? how historically accurate do you think butler's character is?

what? >> he's clark gable. >> he does play a good clark gable. but how -- i mean, that person, right? i take brooke's point which is that gable is such a presence, anyway, because he's in so many other things that he sort of overpowers the historical role. i think that's a fair point. yeah. >> too good to be true. like, having a character who wasn't super patriotic and wasn't like, i'm going to two o off and join the cause for four years and wasn't in it for his own profit, that was kind of a nice touch. >> i was mad when he went to the war. that was so random. i'm going to leave you on the road to tara. >> that's one of the times i felt bad for scarlet, right? i didn't see that coming, either. hannah? >> it seems not realistic. the south doesn't have any

factories. how are you supposed to win this? you think it's a gentleman's war but they have more stuff than we do. i thought test the realism factor. >> there aren't many southern moderates but he does a good job of channeling their complaints. >> was he also an idealistic man. i will say that rett shows up in this suit immediately for us and i call him slick because he lit rally slithers in at the best moments and disappears for a couple years. is he an idea of a gentleman -- >> i think he's a romanticize notion. i think ashley is supposed to be the ideal, right? full of honor. right? the problem is especially the post-war period, ashley's pretty useless. he suffers from appears to be a kind of post-traumatic stress or depression, right? not apathy that we talked about.

rhett is the successful new south. right? who, the sort of roguish new south. >> how is ashley suppose to be honorable one? the entire time he can't make up his time between scarlet and melanie though he's technically true to melanie the entire time. >> but he doesn't actually act on those things and scarlet would clearly happily do so. >> didn't he kiss her -- yeah, didn't he kiss her a couple of times? >> he tripped and kissed her. right? i think those things happen sometimes. so, no, i don't, right. i think it's problematic. he's supposed to be this -- he's supposed to be this honorable guy. he's supposed to be, right? and part of the movie does sort of put him in an awkward position. where is an honorable guy in the post-war south? right? he doesn't succeed. he doesn't do well. he's put in awkward situations. right? yeah. >> in the beginning we think that he's like -- he's like the

bad guy, but, you know, no one really wants him, so he's forcing his way into scarlet's life and everything. melanie saw good in him. also at the end, he loves his daughter. i know i adored this man, like, he loved his daughter. in the beginning i didn't like him. toward the end, oh my god, he loves his daughter. he truly loves scarlet, want to take care of her and all this stuff. he has his little flaws, whatever. i think that also goes with someone commented on how this appeals to the women, the romantic version, romantic side of the movie. this brings in a lot more people and everything. yeah, it has to do with the new south, but the cinematics draws women in as well. >> where does all this leave us, right? we're almost out of time. in some ways rhett and scarlet are the most accurate

characters. bears little resemblance to the actual civil war south. they're appealing figures both individually and together. rhett's late conversion to cause of honor and sacrifice to defend a particular

>> this is not true of the mo e movie. it overindulges. it wallows in lost cause row machbticcism. now, to be fair, mitchell's book talks about the kkk and protectors of the poor, rich white people. but the film's prologue text takes mitchell's cause to a whole new level. there was a land called the old south. here in this pretty world gallantry. the prologue sets the viewer up

for a theme of row manticcism. a theme of a lost camelot. that theme is the real problem with this movie as a secondary source about the ant bell line up south. the history here to her is largely a backdrop. it's an idealized portrait of the elite, white south. this movie depicts that idealized portrait, the lost cause, as if it were reality. where white southerners loved their slaves and their slaves loved them and they were loyal to each other. where the repatience north began

the war. but this is especially problem lematic to the roles of blacks and whites. the picture is really a product of the pervasive writings. most notably, the argment that the south was full of kind masters who had the loyalty of their happy slaves. now, to be fair, it was a view that was dominated. that dom nated the study of american history during the first half of the 20th century. it's a view that's been thoroughly and completely je rejected by am demices.

they had shown great interest on ethics like k"birth of a nation" so that was a primary source for what both whites, both immigrant and native born, wanted to believe about slavery and slave society. it's not surprising that there are no atectempts to include th free slaves. no attempts to the historical challenge. the first fr an african american couldn't attend the film's first georgia premier. why not? segregation laws prevented her from being there. in fact, part of the movie's popularity came from a

racialized desire from a time when race relations were supposedly simpler. that was a time that never existed. and it doesn't because it's a movie that wholly takes on the perspective of elite southern whites who lost they're world and remembered it more fondly than it actually was. the mile veal is an homage. honestly, if it wasn't so popular still, this wouldn't be such a problem. we could just leave it as a relic of its time. but that's not the case. and as long as it continues to be so important to some people, it is going to continue to cause anger and discomfort in others.

include current historians of the south. as it subjects new generations to its racist messages. do i think most people who like the movie will care what i think? frankly my dear, i doubt they'll give a damn. thank you. >> american history tv in prime time tonight features lectures in history. beginning at 8:00 eastern, melvin ealy compares reconstruction and civil rights. at 9:15, remembering the civil war. robert wolf of central connecticut state university

examines how the memory of that conflict has changed from the 50 and 100 year anniversaries to present day. and at 10:30, the war on poverty, as oregon state university profes southerly discusses programs that arose from president johnson's initiative. that's all coming up tonight on american history tv here on c-span3. this week, special prime time programming on the c-span kneltworks. tonight, from c-span, a debate on scottish independence. and then on tuesday, issue spotlight. wednesday night, the principal of hartford connecticut on educating children from disadvantaged backgrounds. friday night, native american history.

c-span2, book tv and prime tim. tuesday night at 8:00, write ere john hope bryant on his book how the poor can save capitalism. on friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, in-depth with former congressman ron paul. on american history c-span3, the reconstruction era. on tuesday, the end of world war ii and the atomic bomt. wednesday night, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. thursday, a look at american's altitudes at how world war i changed the course of the war. and a massive documentary about the 1969 apollo moon landing.

let us know what you think about the programs you're waping. e-mail us at comments at c-span.org. it's been 150 years since the u.s. civil war. and a number of events are underway this year and next to mark the occasion. over the next few hours, we're going to take a look at hollywood's per sepgts of the issues. now, a panel of history professors travels the evolution of slavery as depicted in film from the 1930s. this hour and a half is from zifrl xx yans in baltimore. >> in the past two years, feature films whose american slavery have been released to positive and often glowing reviews. and all of them were profitable.

jengo unchained made $160 million. lincoln made $182 million. 12 years a slave only made 56 million, but it only cost 20 million to make. so it made twice as much of its budget, which is ruffly the same. so this sort of mini up surge has provoked a lot of debate and discussion. and then also in youtube shorts and different series. we are continuing that conversation today. all of our panelists have written about, reviewed, taught