Friday, March 29, AD 2024 4:21am

Gone With the Wind and Proud Contemporary Ignorance

Apparently some of the young, in addition to not reading, can’t even be bothered to watch a classic film, even when they purport to have an interest in films.  John Nolte at Breitbart gives us the grim details:

 

 

Monday we learned that a 25 year-old taking graduate-level journalism classes at New York University had no idea what an editorial was. Today we learn that “most” of the students taking a film class at Georgetown University have never seen “Gone with the Wind.”

[W]hen I asked 13 students in a Georgetown University film class if they’d seen it, most either hadn’t seen the film or had seen only parts of it. These students are serious about movies. But a lot of them sided with Mike Minahan, 20, who said when it comes to Gone with the Wind — frankly, he doesn’t give a damn.

“Everything I’ve seen about it says it, like, glorifies the slave era … and I dunno, what’s the point of that? I don’t see that as a good time in history … like, oh, sweet, a love story of people who own slaves.”

The students had two issues with Gone with the Wind: race and rape.

What a relief it is to know that the next generation of film reviewers, writers, and makers will be politically correct, uneducated, narrow-minded provincials completely out of touch with the real world. You know, just like the current crop of film reviewers, writers and makers.

A poll released Monday shows that 73% of Americans consider “Gone with the Wind” one of the best movies ever.

Not only are these close-minded students missing one of the grandest pieces of entertainment ever released in any medium, but a piece of cinema history that will live on long past any of us. In 1939, GWTW was an epic technical achievement. Seventy-five years later, in this age of CGI, producer David O. Selznick’s masterpiece is even more impressive.

Moreover, the idea that GWTW glorifies rape is laughable. Leftists are supposed to be Captains of Nuance and yet they seem incapable of understanding that this so-called rape is in reality the end result of a complicated dance of seduction between Rhett and Scarlett. As far as the film’s backwards portrayal of slaves and blacks, if you’re going to discount and dismiss any art based on current mores and values, you’re nothing more than a modern day Production Code.

Go here to read the rest.  All of us are children of our times, which shape how we view the world.  One of the major purposes of education used to be to expose students to the thoughts of those who lived in other times and places.  Only by being exposed to this knowledge could someone claim to be truly educated.  Today, education seems to consist largely in indoctrination in the liberal political pieties of the chattering classes of our society.  Anything outside of this narrow provincialism is jammed down the memory hole.  Thus we produce students who are ignorant and revel in that ignorance, their intellectual curiousity near nil.  They are to be pitied, but even more to be pitied is the society that expects anything of them except ignorance, groupthink and the rote repetition of the political slogans they learned in school.

 

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, October 1, AD 2014 8:01am

They remove the Classics so as to facilitate the indoctrination (“children of our times”) not education of students.

Post-modern academia/journalism/scholarship derives conclusions based on ideology and not data, facts, logic. It relies on anecdotes and stereotypes incorporated in mental, emotional filters.
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The post-modern academy is venal. Its purpose is to advance the nightmare narrative and provide continual propaganda for the progressive program. It seamlessly imbeds fabrications into facts. It sees reading as arbitrary and personal. A theory cannot be proven only disproven. Post-modern also called Behavioral) academics invent facts, deny/ignore errors, display arrogance and execrate anybody that provides opposing evidence. For those liars, truth, facts, realities, and history do not exist. They are clay in their hands. They use them to make a point. Whatever they need to twist or omit is justified by their purity of intentions – and they always have the purest of intentions.

TomD
TomD
Wednesday, October 1, AD 2014 9:10am

Gone With the Wind is one of the few movies that I have seen in a different light with each viewing, Dr. Strangelove being another. Yes, I’ve come away after seeing it with the same feelings expressed by Mike Minahan (more than once, actually), but other times I’ve have different – though never opposite – reactions. A good movie will go that.

My son is covering Roman history right now, and he asked me about the First Triumvirate last night. I suggested that we watch Spartacus this weekend, since it is a mostly accurate account of those days. He’s resisting with the excuse that movies are too long to sit through anymore. Sigh.

Pat
Pat
Wednesday, October 1, AD 2014 7:44pm

Civilization, cultures, manners, humanity, love and art lost and debased in cerebral activity that doesn’t percolate to achieve understanding beyond the bonds of skin color and sexual activity. Last night, I indulged in the four hour movie with musical accompaniment to actual Introduction, Intermission ( Entr’Acte to boot), and Conclusion – and enjoyed a full spectrum expression of human dignity and love.
” The students had two issues with Gone with the Wind: race and rape. ” Homogenized minds.

Mrs. Zummo
Mrs. Zummo
Thursday, October 2, AD 2014 7:11am

I watched part of (it’s crazy long) Birth of Nation for a film class in college. It makes Gone with the Wind look like a Spike Lee movie. How precious are these kids that they can’t watch some classic films in context? Grow up.

TomD
TomD
Thursday, October 2, AD 2014 11:33am

Thanks Don for the link to your 2010 Spartacusreview. Yep, my “mostly accurate” comment was an attempt to balance “howlers” and “atmosphere”. One major howler was the crucifixion of a young Roman soldier by orders of Spartacus. Inclusion of that in the film would have ruined the ‘noble slave’ theme, no?

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Saturday, October 4, AD 2014 1:18pm

[…] Nicholas Senz, Cthlc Stand Fr. Benedict Groeschel Once Read My Soul, RIP – Tlr. Marshall PhD Gone With the Wind & Proud Contemporary Ignorance – D. McClarey Secularists & the Exercise of Authority – Fr. Z’s Blog Morality […]

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