Gone with the Wind returns to HBO Max, with a prologue about how the film "denies the horrors of slavery"

TVLine

African-American film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, the first-ever Black host in Turner Classic Movies history, explains in the four-and-a-half minute prologue that 1939 Best Picture winner "was not universally praised,” seeing as it “paints the picture of the antebellum South as a ‘romantic, idyllic setting that’s tragically been lost to the past," according to TVLine. “Gone With the Wind, with its landmark production values, signature scenes and iconic characters has shaped the way generations have pictured slavery and the reconstruction period that followed,” she adds. “It is not only a major document of Hollywood’s racist practices of the past, but also an enduring work of popular culture that speaks directly to the racial inequalities that persist in media and society today.”