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.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
“A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” Harper’s, vol. 341, no. 2045, Oct. 2020, p. 3. https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/, 7 July 2020. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
“A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” The Objective, 10 July 2020, https://www.objectivejournalism.org/p/a-more-specific-letter-on-justice. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Arnn, Larry P. “Orwell’s 1984 and Today.” Imprimis, vol. 49, no. 12, Dec. 2020, pp. 1–7.
Bailey, Jason. “‘Gone with the Wind’ Returns to HBO Max With a Few Additions.” New York Times, 25 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/movies/gone-with-the-wind-hbo-max.html?searchResultPosition=2. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Beers, Laura. “What Josh Hawley doesn’t get about George Orwell.” CNN Opinion, 15 Jan. 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/15/opinions/trump-and-allies-invoke-george-orwell-orwellian-beers/index.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Court of Appeals, (n.d.) Eleventh Circuit. Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin. 268 F. 3d.
Flaherty, Colleen. “‘In a Hurricane.’” Inside Higher Ed, 15 Aug. 2014, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/08/15/cary-nelson-faces-backlash-over-his-views-controversial-scholar. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Fung, Brian. “Twitter bans President Trump permanently.” CNN Business, 8 Jan. 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/tech/trump-twitter-ban/index.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Gay, Roxane. “Why I’ve Taken My Podcast Off Spotify.” New York Times, 4 Feb. 2022. A21.
Gessner, David. “Taking Down Teddy.” American Scholar, 10 Sept. 2020, https://theamericanscholar.org/taking-down-teddy/. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Harvey, Josephine. “GOP Lawmaker Mocked for Wearing ‘CENSORED’ Mask … on National Television.” Huffington Post, 13 January 2021, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/marjorie-taylor-greene-censored-mask_n_5fff5f1fc5b6c77d85ec85bc. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Hawley, Josh. Twitter, https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1347327743004995585. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Hayes, Dade. “Pulling ‘Gone With The Wind’ Was A ‘No-Brainer,’ But It Will Return To HBO Max Because ‘We Can’t Censor’ It, WarnerMedia’s Bob Greenblatt Tells SiriusXM.” Deadline, 12 June 2020, https://deadline.com/2020/06/pulling-gone-with-the-wind-was-a-no-brainer-but-it-will-return-to-hbo-max-because-we-cant-censor-it-warnermedias-bob-greenblatt-tells-siriusxm-1202957806/. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Hollyfield, Jerod Ra’Del. “‘We Need More Input!’: John Hughes’s Weird Science (1985) and Scandals from the Red Scare to the Twitter Mob.” The Scandal of Adaptation. Edited by Thomas Leitch, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 99–118.
Hornaday, Ann. “HBO Max isn’t censoring ‘Gone with the Wind.’ It’s reframing it.” Washington Post, 10 June 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hbo-max-isnt-censoring-gone-with-the-wind-its-reframing-it/2020/06/10/d78544ec-ab3e-11ea-94d2-d7bc43b26bf9_story.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Hotter, Parry. Comment on “A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” The Objective, 11 July 2020, https://www.objectivejournalism.org/p/a-more-specific-letter-on-justice/comments. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
“Index Librorum Prohibitorum.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Kelly, Megyn. Twitter, https://twitter.com/megynkelly/status/1270680902943858689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1270680902943858689%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.yahoo.com%2Fentertainment%2Fmegyn-kelly-rails-against-censorship-amid-gone-with-the-wind-being-pulled-161742326.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Lyons, Martyn. Books: A Living History. Los Angeles: Getty, 2011.
Murphy, Barbara S. “The Wind Done Gone: Parody or Piracy? A Comment on Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Company.” Georgia State University Law Review, vol. 19, no. 2, 2002, pp. 567–601. https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2301&context=gsulr. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Ridley, John. “Op-Ed: Hey, HBO, ‘Gone with the Wind’ romanticizes the horrors of slavery. Take it off your platform for now.” Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2020, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-08/hbo-max-racism-gone-with-the-wind-movie. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Schickel, Richard. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. Revised ed., Pavilion, 1986.
Schur, Richard. “The Wind Done Gone Controversy: American Studies, Copyright Law, and the Imaginary Domain.” American Studies, vol. 44, no. 1/2, Spring/Summer 2003, pp. 5–33.
Silverstein, Jake. “Why We Published The 1619 Project.” New York Times Magazine, 20 Dec. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/20/magazine/1619-intro.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission. The 1776 Report, Jan. 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Presidents-Advisory-1776-Commission-Final-Report.pdf. Accessed 16 Jan. 2021; since removed.
Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump at South Dakota’s 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration | Keystone, South Dakota,” 4 July 2020, Perma.cc. https://perma.cc/NWP5-TECB. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Trump, Donald, Jr. Twitter. https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1347697226466828288. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Williams, Caroline Randall. “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument.” New York Times Magazine, 26 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/opinion/confederate-monuments-racism.html. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Wise, Alana. “Trump Announces ‘Patriotic Education’ Commission, A Largely Political Move.” NPR, 17 Sept. 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/09/17/914127266/trump-announces-patriotic-education-commission-a-largely-political-move. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Zhang, Alex. “Damnatio Memoriae and Black Lives Matter.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 73, Sept. 2020, https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/damnatio-memoriae-and-black-lives-matter. Accessed 25 Jan. 2021.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
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
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14153-9_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-14152-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-14153-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)