News Flash: A Young Woman’s Life is More Important than a Movie. This is what we should ‘give a damn’ about
“Can’t nobody silence me” — Oluwatoyin “Toyin” Salau
Throughout the course of her all too brief existence, Black Lives Matter activist Toyin Salou made her voice heard — and it was a powerful one. It resounded at rallies as this articulate young woman — also a licensed cosmetologist — vowed to fight for justice in a world gone mad.
Then the world went madder still, when this young warrior was sexually assaulted and murdered.
In the aftermath of an atrocity, people are up in arms and they are furious. Specifically, because a movie was removed from HBO MAX for a period of one month.
In response to a thought-provoking essay from 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley, which noted the manner in which the film glamorized the Confederate South and perpetuated stereotypes of Black people, the streaming service HBO Max withdrew the motion picture Gone With the Wind on a temporary basis; just long enough to record an introduction from Black scholar and TCM host Jacqueline Stewart, that will lend the film context through a modern lens.
This is not unprecedented. In 1977, actress Talia Shire filmed a new introduction for The Godfather series, explaining that the crime family portrayed in the film series did not reflect the true character of Italian-Americans as a whole.
See what she did there, Folks? She added context to what some may seem as an offensive and problematic film. This is all that HBO Max plans to do in regards to Gone With the Wind, a movie that defines the very phrase, offensive and problematic.
Yes, as many have pointed out, the film features the first Oscar-winning performance by a Black actress, the legend known as Hattie McDaniel.
The costumes and cinematography are incredible, and Scarlett O’Hara is an iron-willed survivor — although I would fall well short of calling her a feminist, as she slaps her young Black maid and her own sister, and spends most of the film trying to steal her best friend’s husband. Lead actors Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh are talented thespians as well as inordinately hot — which makes the film’s 18,000-hour running time a bit more bearable.
Unbearable is the fact that the film does indeed glamorize a people and a culture that owned, enslaved and abused African-Americans. The film also glamorizes marital rape and domestic violence. Can you believe that they actually made a damned Christmas ornament of the scene in which Rhett carries a kicking, screaming Scarlett up the stairs, with the obvious intent of raping her? The film may be a tale of its time, but does it tell the truth of its time?
In the wake of Gone With the Wind’s removal from HBO Max, which happened within a day or so of Toyin Salou’s murder, I logged onto YouTube and counted the videos that people had made in Toyin’s honor, crying out for justice in the wake of her death. I counted about 20. Then I counted the number of videos that people had made in honor of Gone With the Wind, crying out for the restoration of a film you can still see on about a bazillion other streaming services. I stopped counting at 40.
Gone With the Wind will be back in about a month. Toyin won’t be.
Priorities, People. Priorities.
To make Toyin and women like her a priority, please sign this petition
