slaytonf

Yes, she has multiple facets to her personality, which can be contradictory. This is after all, human. It is her irrational preoccupations which damage her life.

Perhaps for families, read family's.

How did you try and get in touch with them? Did you call during business hours and actually talk to someone? Let me suggest two stations I listen to. One is KSDS, out of San Diego City College. The other is Kjazz, or KKJZ, out of Long Beach State University. Be ready to supply a recording of the singer, or where people can go to hear the song. Becoming a member of these public radio stations might be a help in getting a response.

O don't make me think you're as weak willed as Ashley Wilkes, Dargo. A supreme disillusionment. As for the reference, can't say I know it. But I think I can figure it out. It doesn't look good for someone.

Ah, well, now that's your first mistake. All I know is what I see on the movie screen. That can be taken two ways. It is either a framing device, reflecting the common (erroneous) conceptions, which are debunked by later events, or it serves as an ironic counterpoint to it. I can't claim credit for being the only one to interpret it this way, though I did come up with it on my own. Even a quick search on the internet can turn up similar views. It's not surprising that I either didn't think of it till now, or that I did at all. Social indoctrination can blind you to many obvious things. There are a lot of things we are conditioned to accept unthinkingly. But if you look at them with an objective eye, you may find the conventional story about things ain't necessarily so. Regarding Miss Mitchell, I may not have been clear in my op. She personifies the south in Scarlett O'Hara. What she experiences represents what happened on a larger scale. I didn't mean to say she put any amount of herself into Scarlett. If she did, I couldn't say how much. I would guess she made use of her personal experiences for material as much as any other author.

It's not surprising Margaret Mitchell chose a woman as the central character of Gone With the Wind to personify the destruction and rebuilding of the south during and after the Civil War. Not many authors have done a good job depicting the internal workings of the opposite sex. Not having read the book, I will have to take it as a given David Selznick faithfully translated Miss Mitchell's work to the screen. So what can we see she was saying through the person of Scarlett O'Hara? She is a strong-willed and determined person. She knows what she wants, and is clear-headed going about getting it. Practical, and unsentimental, even to the point of being mercenary, she doesn't hesitate using any tactic to accomplish her goals. It's understandable, the hardships she faced drove her to make fearsome resolutions. Scarlett's progress represents the destruction and revival of the southern economy, its agriculture, commerce, and industry. She's quite a busy person, managing Tara, then becoming a retail queen, and building a lumber empire. Her marriage to Rhett Butler rounds out the picture with trade. But combined with that is a curious and contradictory irrational obsession with Ashley Wilkes. He is the old order, destroyed in the war, that stood for slavery, nobility, honor. He was the flower of the social order, its full realization, but also weak, attenuated. He's a dead end, but in this instance, she blinds herself to reality--out of pride, or conceit, or something, until she realizes (only too late) how misguided she was. Her preoccupation with him ruins her relationship with the one she ought to hanker after, Rhett Butler, as the south preoccupied with the past hurts its recovery. He's the future, practical, sensible like Scarlett, unhindered by outmoded ideals, or nostalgia for what's lost. He's obviously presented as an alternative to the enervated Wilkes. At the end however, Scarlett remains as she was, a combination of realistic, and irrational. She rightly recognizes her source of strength is Tara. But her freedom from her obsession with Ashley Wilkes, alas, is only replaced with another futile hope, getting Butler back. Margaret Mitchell's efforts to appraise people of the dangers of worshipping the dead past went unheeded, dragging down states, and hindering peoples' advancement for too many decades. To the contrary, her work is even now not looked on as a cautionary tale, but as a celebration of what she argued should be left behind. A prime example of people seeing what they want to see, and not what is there.

Never even started watching that one, if it's the one I think it is.

There are all kinds of teases.

There was this movie where the people in it were all dead and they didn't know it, only it was on a ship, not a plane, and it was black and white, and it wasn't just men, and they didn't play baseball. I think John Garfield was in it, and Barbara Stanwyck, too--no, that was a different movie. Anyway it was all different kinds of people, and they all had different kinds of things going on with them, and all those things had a meaning, and everything they said was symbolic, only you didn't know it was symbolic, 'cause you didn't know they were dead only I figured out they were dead after like twelve minutes so it was boring and everything they said now sounded symbolic and that made it worse, and I didn't end up watching the whole movie 'cause I knew what was going to happen to them, or most of them. So I think this is the movie and everyone is misremembering it, and it's a case of mass psychosis, or mass something, I forget which, and that explains why everyone misremembers it the same. So that's what I think it is, only I don't remember the movie.

There is a response to this. It's crude, so I don't thing the TCM Inquisitors would allow it. Though I don't know why. If the front cleavage of a woman is permissible, so should the rear cleavage of a man.

*snore* Huh--whuh?--oh, is there a thread here?

So I guess it's not Sole Survivor.

It's available on watch TCM on demand.

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. No I didn't. I don't know if I set my DVR to record it. But I'm away from home now, and it'll have to wait until I get back. If I didn't I'll have to wait until it re-airs. I don't see it on watch TCM

Never underestimate the power of Hollywood to make something bad even worse.

It looked like Saturday night was John Payne night. But he's not in Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). In any case, I thought I'd give a shout out for him. He had a varied movie career, but his biggest success came in musicals opposite stars like Betty Grable. He also mined a tough guy vein in movies like Kansas City Confidential (1952), and one I'd like to draw people's attention to The Crooked Way (1949). His imposing presence on screen was well suited for transmitting a sense of danger and violence that the rolls called for.

The thread has been revived. But if you still want to play here go ahead.

More better.

So now they're going to do something even worse than before, take it seriously.

So how do I p.m. a moderator?

But it was active until a couple of days ago!

I know it didn't always stay precisely on topic. But I think a Thread about cars in movies is a valid thread. I can't see what the motivation was for ending it! Was it that I was starting to site cars from television shows? Was that Beyond The Pale?

You kidder!

I suppose I'll have to watch the movie again, because I don't recall the details you cite. As for Amy's retrograde actions, one need not have been raised in a tradition to have powerful allegiance to it. The reverse is also true. The fact remains she commits the act which about the most damaging a Quaker can do, whatever the justification. The movie's being an allegory for the political witch hunting by Congress going on is commonly known. I don't think it's a good one. On the surface it tells the tale of standing up to tyranny--to read demagoguery, but it really sends all the wrong messages.

If he were a competent lawman, a circumstance like the one in the movie would not have caused him existential fear, and made him take the unprofessional actions he did. He would have known what to do, and if he knew he could not cope by himself, would have known where to go for the resources he needed. As I said before, I don't see the motivation for the plot. If it was truly a circumstance where he was at risk, and needed to overcome his fears against great peril, then he had no business being a lawman in the first place. His actions do not amount to courage in the face of mortal danger, but irresponsible recklessness.