Toppling Scarlett's Red Dress

"For more than 150 years, the exaltation and defense of Confederate memory have been maintained with remarkable persistence in everything from town square monuments and state flags to seminal expressions of American culture like the films The Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind."

--"In Monument Debate, Calls for an Overdue Reckoning on Race and Southern Identity", New York Times, Aug 18, 2017

Every time I've mentioned Gone with the Wind on this blog, I've pointed out that it's racist: it romanticizes slavery and the Confederate cause. [I always liked my post comparing Star Wars' Jar Jar Binks to GWTW's Prissy, contending they are both doing the "subversive shuffle"--pretending to be dopey while undermining the Empire.] 

But in one post from October 2008, I'd mostly raved about the amazing red dress the protagonist, Scarlett (Vivien Leigh), wears to a party, and I included screencaps and behind-the-scenes images of the costume.

After what happened in Charlottesville, VA, this week [white nationalists rallying in support of Confederate monuments attack and murder counterprotestors], I've deleted that post. 
I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner. 
I confess to wanting it both ways---to being able to point out the racism while admiring its trappings. 
I wrote it during Obama's presidency, when though it was clear we were far from post-race, it seemed such things might just start to be possible.... Sadly, not.

The post got a ton of hits over the years from people searching for the dress. While I point out that the dress is sign of power at all costs, I know that political analysis is not what people came for nor what they take away.

What I'd written in the red-dress post:

Scarlett? Sure she's racist. The only white character in GWTW who suggests slavery is wrong is Ashley Wilkes, and he's shown up at the end as a boob, a useless intellectual. Even the characters who are slaves, like Mammy, are presented as if they approve of their lot at the hands of Scarlett O'Hara's family, grateful to be owned by "good" white masters.

Ashley and his gracious world view will not survive.
Scarlett and hers will.
She doesn't care who she screws or who she exploits--race is only part of it. The only thing she respects is strength.
She is a pure American industrialist, the ancestor of Dick Cheney. 

GWTW is billed as a romance.

It is one, but not primarily about the famous passion between Scarlett and Rhett. She doesn't even want him until the very end, after he rapes her (i.e. finally proves he's stronger than her). Gone with the Wind is about the love of power (represented by land and money) and the security it brings, and the length people will go to get and keep it.

Americans worship success, and we're suckers for glamor.

I suggest we love GWTW because it is success garbed in red velvet. Or green velvet, if you prefer the dress Scarlett makes out of drapes. Or rather, as an astute reader points out, that Mammy makes--a character who doesn't even have a name of her own.

The red dress is too effective, too seductive. Some people can't see past it to the movie's racism--it's part of what sells Scarlett's world view (white supremacy). It's like one of those beautiful monuments of Confederate heroes that Donald Trump laments the loss of. 

Why do some people love Gone with the Wind? I'd asked in an earlier post.
And a commenter had replied:

"The costumes! Scarlett in her red velvet party dress, wearing too much rouge, Melanie in her gray watered silk gown with a cerise sash, Scarlett's voluminous white batiste with embroidered emerald silk leaves scattered across the skirt. Not to mention the memorable Drapery Dress!"

So, down it comes.
There are plenty of fantastic costumes in the world that aren't clothing an infectious corpse. 

______
P.S. Interesting article in the Washington Post, "Why We Should Keep Reading GWTW" (July 2015):

"Gone With The Wind is a rich, complicated book. And while we can and should argue about a story that’s achieved such a hold on the American imagination, I’m struck anew every time I read it by a basic idea that drives the story from start to finish: Romanticizing the South has a deforming influence on its characters’ lives."