What does it mean to remove Gone with the Wind?

Today Warner removed Gone with the wind from HBO MAX for streaming. What does it really mean? Is it Warner taking a stand to help reduce racial equality? Is it a media stunt to garner support and attention to their new streaming service HBO MAX? Is it a reactionary move based on a society that has become to sensitive to world around it? On the surface it could look like a combination of all of it. With multiple reports coming out that the launch of HBO MAX was less than what Warner Bros wanted, it could easily be a move to garner attention to the service. It could be that Warner Bros is actually taking a stand to reduce the amount of racial inequality by removing a movie that depicts the civil war and the use of slaves. Of course there are some that believe the world has become to sensitive. The removal of this movie could simply be a reaction to that.

It easily could be anyone one of those reason, and it could be several more reasons. The real question is what impact does it have, by removing it. Does this mean suddenly we have less racism? Far from it. In reality the move is minimal in the "Black Lives Matter" movement. Where it does matter is when we look forward. Is the removal of Gone with the Wind the first move in removing some of our crucial historical entertainment? Though the movie inhabits the time of the civil war with depictions of slavery, there is also a historical piece to it. It shows a time that we could easily be living in, had it not been for Union Soldiers. Now Union Soldiers were not perfect, neither are we, but it moved us in a direction that has led us here.

When scientist tell us that we are not capable of time travel, they forget that we can delete our own past by removing the pieces that remind us of it. By removing Gone with the Wind we start down a path that leads us to remove other pieces. Are we going to remove Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? What about Disney animated films like Pocahontas, Dumbo, and Fantasia? What about to kill a mockingbird? When we start removing pieces of entertainment that depicts, we are essentially going back in time to try to change our present.

George Santayana gave us the famous quote; "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." By removing works of entertainment, regardless of how entertaining they may or may not be, is us trying to selectively forget our past. We need these reminders to show where we were and where we have come from. The whole premise of the Black Lives Matter movement is that we move forward towards equality. Not the separate but equal, not "they are equal" but not really, but equal in every sense. This includes being able to show the history of what we as a society did wrong.

We can't let fear lead us to be forgetful of our past. Our Country has always been one that makes mistakes and then learns from them. In order to do this we have to acknowledge our past. We must be able to point to moments, these pieces of entertainment, and say "yes, this is what we are working to move away from." I'm afraid that if we do remove these pieces that we forget what has happened, what a Civil War was fought over, and what really we as a Nation claim to be.