I was raised in the South, in Charleston. Obviously GWTW is pretty popular there. I don't understand what everyone else is saying about it not being repeated on TV like "Wizard of Oz" was--where I grew up CBS showed both of them once a year, at least till Ted Turner bought it--in a weird way they were linked in my mind as yearly events growing up. Maybe they didn't show GWTW in the rest of the country.

And the thing is, I always thought that, while on one hand it's a watchable Hollywood epic, and I do have a weakness for those(Lawrence of Arabia would be another, and 1900, which is very similar to GWTW in many respects but has the key difference of being on the side of the oppressed), it also is, at its core, no more defensible than Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation, even in its time, was considered by many to be overtly vile, and it is only the even more vile racist sentiments at the time of its making that made it seem acceptable. (yes, i realize all the excuses that will be made because of its technical place in film history. I also realize Leni Reifenstahl pioneered a lot too. It doesn't change that the substance of what she achieved was in the service of evil. The scientists in Germany were really great at making rockets too) It's easy to look back on it and see it as "other." It celebrates the Klan. Its characters are barely characters at all, more symbols(one of whom is only ever known as "the Little Dear One"). it's silent.

But GWTW has the same characteristics, despite all its color and music and performances and camera flourish. It too presents slavery as idyllic, and slaves as devoted to their masters and disdainful of the post-war free blacks. And carpetbaggers are evil. White trash, we are shown, shouldn't get above their station, and are evil when they do. (the poor white guy who loses his baby at the start, and then ends up in charge of Tara) But, you say, that's silly. GWTW has no night riders attacking and killing blacks.

Oh, yes it does. Everyone always forget that everyone's favorite brooding putz, Ashley Wilkes, goes in with a bunch of guys to a shanty town because Scarlett was attacked, and shooting and violence are done. Ashley gets wounded and they have to hide what he was wearing, some kind of disguise. And Melanie is more than happy to do it and knows why. Whatever he did, the evil Reconstruction authorities want his head for it.

Now tell me what that's all a thinly veiled reference to. Given, too, that by this time the real KKK--partly thanks to Birth of a Nation--had come back into being and was very much a force in the South, it's particularly interesting. And it's Ashley and Melanie, the "pure" ones.

It was always this detail that reminded me what this, and all romanticizing of the Old South, really is. This is coming from someone whose ancestors really did have a plantation and really did own slaves, and one was a Confederate colonel. My ancestors were rich, and powerful, in the Old South, and if anyone should love this crap it's me. And I think it's a big, pretty lie of a movie that softens what should be repulsive.

...will prevent ever having to think about it again. This has been the worst decade I can remember, and I'm 40 this year.

We'll look back on it with amazement once some crazy person kills someone over this garbage.

That's a strange metaphor. In what way was 2001 a "dystopia?" If you're thinking of Hal, he was malfunctioning, and not in charge of human society, so I have no idea what you mean by this. You might as well be saying "Little Women" is a horror novel.

I've never agreed that the humans in 2001 were "dehumanized." They're simply just as quiet, underplayed and dry as Kubrick characters are. The characters in BARRY LYNDON are the same way, but would you say Kubrick is presenting a dehumanized past? Is Jack's job interview in the Shining "dehumanized," or is it just a normal job interview?

Just because they're not overly dramatic and emotional doesn't mean they're not human, and if they're dehumanized, so is everyone working in your average office. They're not unemotional, just calm. And Gary Lockwood isn't even that calm, and they become very easily suspicious of Hal, they don't just accept his word, they check and they look at him as perhaps a very friendly tool, but a tool just the same that should be shut off if it malfunctions. They just sound like normal people acting without melodrama.

You'll probably counter "Heywood Floyd." I would submit that his position prevents him from being loud or emotional, and you do see a buried, veiled aggression in him, both with the Russian and with the people he confers with, and he's about as affectionate as anyone in his position would usually be when he talks to his daughter. He certainly looks very human when trying to figure out the space toilet.

And As for HAL, he may be like a human, but like a very insecure, paranoid and neurotic one, and I don't see how that makes him more human. He is like a human, but only so far as a disgruntled worker is, in a warped way, and HAL is basically a disgruntled workplace killer.

I'm sorry, I just don't buy the idea that 2001 is a dystopia. I think that's a weak point. (and even weaker if you include Clarke's own background and expansion on it, in which Floyd is hardly unemotional) There just isn't very much of an oppressive quality to it, and just because HAL is crazy doesn't mean it's a whole future gone wrong. You might as well say my computer crashing would be a symbol of the evil of the modern world.