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Adaptation and Censorship

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The Scandal of Adaptation

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture ((PSADVC))

Abstract

This chapter examines the controversy surrounding HBO Max’s decision to temporarily withdraw Gone with the Wind from its streaming platform before returning it with new framing material that sought to respond to outcries against the film’s racism. Although all parties to the controversy insisted that they were against censorship, a problematic activity they ascribed only to other people, this chapter argues that adaptation is a mode of censorship audiences and analysts find acceptable because it does not feel like censorship, even though it is “a mode of reframing or recontextualizing that chooses certain textual details to emphasize and systematically suppresses other details,” raising hard questions about what Americans want their history to say and how they want this history, or histories, to be inscribed.

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Correspondence to Thomas Leitch .

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Leitch, T. (2023). Adaptation and Censorship. In: Leitch, T. (eds) The Scandal of Adaptation. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14153-9_11

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