Gone With the Wind has done far more to erase historical memory than any marching band could ever possibly do

gonna do a quick couple of tweets so I can use my History degree

Gone With the Wind is a product of the Lost Cause movement. The Lost Cause movement is a white supremacist neo-confederate project seeking to create the idea that the Southern cause in the civil war was just and noble.

The southern cause was NOT just and noble. It was to protect slavery. The "state's rights" thing you heard about? That's part of the Lost Cause: it sought to justify the war by post-hoc creating a more "palatable" justification for the war.

The problem with the Lost Cause isn't just that it infected southern memory of the war. It caused a lot of other people to remember the war the wrong way too: for example, the Hollywood that made made Gone with the Wind, and the even more vile Birth of a Nation.

You don't need to watch all 18 hours of Gone with the Wind to know why Lost Causers love it, it has all the tenants of Lost Cause ideology: the plantation life is presented as idyllic, the violence that characterized slavery isn't depicted at all, and the the north is the villain

This isn't what antebellum life is like. It immense wealth built upon the brutality of slavery. The big problem with Gone with the Wind depicting slavery wrong is that GWTW is BY far the most widely-seen piece of art that depicts the antebellum south.

Which is a shame, because there's plenty from the south that's worth celebrating. We're the region of the blues and jazz, R.E.M., Carson McCullers, the Allman Brothers, Outkast. So much great stuff that hasn't caused the world to have a distorted view of history.

What's erasing history in the south? It's the neo-confederate project to distort historical memory of our original sin.

Every time a teacher in Georgia tells their class the civil war was about "state's rights" is erasing history. Every time a class watches Gone with the Wind rather than read 12 Years a Slave, we're erasing history.

Is UGA erasing history by nixing Tara? Of course it isn't. Tara's Theme was erasing history long before it was ever played at Sanford stadium.

Interested in the Lost Cause? I highly recommend Tony Horowitz's Confederates in the Attic, which is probably the best popular text about the Lost Cause movement. It includes stories about Japanese tourists coming to GA to "find Tara."

How do we combat the Lost Cause memory? We read history! And, when we watch fiction about history we contextualize it.

If you're interested in civil war history: James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and Eric Foner's Reconstruction are great starts.

and if you're interested in the depiction of slavery as it was rather than Gone with the Wind's appalling cover-up, Solomon Northrop's 12 Years a Slave is a great place to begin.

Northup, excuse me.