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The Lost Cause in the Movie Gone With the Wind
The term lost cause describes a situation in which a person is destined to fail regardless of how powerful he or she is. The term is not a modern invention but was used by southerners immediately after the Civil War. Many scholars attribute the term to the Virginia journalist Edward A. Pollard and his postwar books, including The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866). The concept of lost cause supplied a heroic interpretation of the war so that southerners could maintain their sense of honor (Williams). In this proposal, I plan to discuss the lost cause in the movie Gone With the Wind. I want to find some examples about the lost cause in the movie and then analyze them.
The tentative title of this project is, “The Lost Cause of Southern Society Promoted by Title Cards in Gone With the Wind.” Title cards are the screens with words written on them that separate the scenes. As the movie Gone With the Wind is very long, it has many title cards. The movie depicts the huge changes in southern society from the Civil War to the Reconstruction era by telling the story of the main character Scarlett’s love and growth. These title cards help the audience to better understand the shift of the plots. The contrasting plots before and after title cards are actually depicting lost causes.
The purpose of this project is to state the importance of history. Though people cannot change things that have already happened, they can learn from these things and do well in the future. The movie Gone With the Wind depicts a history and the lost cause of the south, a past thing we should learn from history.
Through this project, the questions “what are the lost causes in the movie” and “what can we learn from the lost cause” will be answered. To answer these questions, the Civil War must be mentioned. One of the main factors that contributed to the Civil War is slavery. The Civil War started after several southern slave states declared to quit the Union and formed the Confederacy. The Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy, or between the north and south, is one of the important themes in the movie Gone With the Wind. (Suponitskaya) The main character Scarlett is an arrogant and selfish girl who was born in a rich southern family. She seems to be the girl who is born with luck. Her family owns a plantation along with slaves and due to her beauty and wealth many men find themselves pursuing her. Unfortunately, no matter how wealthy and gorgeous she was, her life changed dramatically after the advent of the Civil War. The situation that Scarlett found herself in was a lost cause, and she had no hope of escaping it.
The changes that occurred at Twelve Oaks also illustrate the lost cause in the movie. The first scene in the movie Gone With the Wind depicts the luxurious banquet held in Twelve Oaks, which reflected the affluent living conditions of southerners. At the banquet, men were gathered together, talking about the upcoming war with confidence and arrogance because southern society was gentile, civil, beautiful, and lavish. They despised northerners whom they believed were not traditional but barbaric. However, the south lost in the war in the end: Twelve Oaks was burned down by northern soldiers and those men with great ambitions died valiantly on the battlefield (Stokes). These are two examples of the lost cause that I will use in my project.
The reasons that the south lost in the Civil War are what we can learn from the lost cause. The south lacked factories for manufacturing weapons, whereas the north had plenty of factories and collieries. The south was arrogant. The south’s social system was backward and the south secluded advanced technology and science. As a result, the south didn’t realize its lost cause until the war ended. (Hillyer)
The tentative organization of this project is to give the definition of the lost cause first, and then find the examples of lost cause within the movie Gone With the Wind and analyze them. Title cards in the movie are a very useful tool in analyzing the lost cause and they help the audience better understand the transition of the plots. Finally, I want to examine what contributed to the lost cause in the whole southern society, or the reasons that the south lost in the Civil War. I will then state the importance of history. No one can prevent the years from turning into centuries. Time itself is irreversible and so is history. The only thing the human race can do is to remember the past and reflect upon the mistakes we’ve made, thus the south’s loss remained an important reminder of the inevitable defeat the south faced.
In conclusion, the concept of the lost cause in the movie Gone With the Wind is what I want to analyze in my project. By clarifying my topic I will explain the terminology and find examples within the movie. In addition to, using the title cards in the movie and discuss the Civil War is also important to approaching my topic and to help me reach the purpose of this project, which is to understand the importance of history.
The term lost cause describes a situation in which a person is destined to fail regardless of how powerful he or she is. The term is not a modern invention but was used by southerners immediately after the Civil War. Many scholars attribute the term to the Virginia journalist Edward A. Pollard and his postwar books, including The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (1866). The concept of lost cause supplied a heroic interpretation of the war so that southerners could maintain their sense of honor (Williams). In this proposal, I plan to discuss the lost cause in the movie Gone With the Wind. I want to find some examples about the lost cause in the movie and then analyze them.
The tentative title of this project is, “The Lost Cause of Southern Society Promoted by Title Cards in Gone With the Wind.” Title cards are the screens with words written on them that separate the scenes. As the movie Gone With the Wind is very long, it has many title cards. The movie depicts the huge changes in southern society from the Civil War to the Reconstruction era by telling the story of the main character Scarlett’s love and growth. These title cards help the audience to better understand the shift of the plots. The contrasting plots before and after title cards are actually depicting lost causes.
The purpose of this project is to state the importance of history. Though people cannot change things that have already happened, they can learn from these things and do well in the future. The movie Gone With the Wind depicts a history and the lost cause of the south, a past thing we should learn from history.
Through this project, the questions “what are the lost causes in the movie” and “what can we learn from the lost cause” will be answered. To answer these questions, the Civil War must be mentioned. One of the main factors that contributed to the Civil War is slavery. The Civil War started after several southern slave states declared to quit the Union and formed the Confederacy. The Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy, or between the north and south, is one of the important themes in the movie Gone With the Wind. (Suponitskaya) The main character Scarlett is an arrogant and selfish girl who was born in a rich southern family. She seems to be the girl who is born with luck. Her family owns a plantation along with slaves and due to her beauty and wealth many men find themselves pursuing her. Unfortunately, no matter how wealthy and gorgeous she was, her life changed dramatically after the advent of the Civil War. The situation that Scarlett found herself in was a lost cause, and she had no hope of escaping it.
The changes that occurred at Twelve Oaks also illustrate the lost cause in the movie. The first scene in the movie Gone With the Wind depicts the luxurious banquet held in Twelve Oaks, which reflected the affluent living conditions of southerners. At the banquet, men were gathered together, talking about the upcoming war with confidence and arrogance because southern society was gentile, civil, beautiful, and lavish. They despised northerners whom they believed were not traditional but barbaric. However, the south lost in the war in the end: Twelve Oaks was burned down by northern soldiers and those men with great ambitions died valiantly on the battlefield (Stokes). These are two examples of the lost cause that I will use in my project.
The reasons that the south lost in the Civil War are what we can learn from the lost cause. The south lacked factories for manufacturing weapons, whereas the north had plenty of factories and collieries. The south was arrogant. The south’s social system was backward and the south secluded advanced technology and science. As a result, the south didn’t realize its lost cause until the war ended. (Hillyer)
The tentative organization of this project is to give the definition of the lost cause first, and then find the examples of lost cause within the movie Gone With the Wind and analyze them. Title cards in the movie are a very useful tool in analyzing the lost cause and they help the audience better understand the transition of the plots. Finally, I want to examine what contributed to the lost cause in the whole southern society, or the reasons that the south lost in the Civil War. I will then state the importance of history. No one can prevent the years from turning into centuries. Time itself is irreversible and so is history. The only thing the human race can do is to remember the past and reflect upon the mistakes we’ve made, thus the south’s loss remained an important reminder of the inevitable defeat the south faced.
In conclusion, the concept of the lost cause in the movie Gone With the Wind is what I want to analyze in my project. By clarifying my topic I will explain the terminology and find examples within the movie. In addition to, using the title cards in the movie and discuss the Civil War is also important to approaching my topic and to help me reach the purpose of this project, which is to understand the importance of history.
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Bibliographical Annotations
Gone With the Wind. Dir. Vector Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood. Perf. Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable. 1939. Film.
The movie Gone With the Wind provides several examples about the concept of lost cause. By analyzing the lost cause in the movie, I can tell the big changes that southern society had experienced before and after the Civil War. By analyzing these changes, I can reach the purpose of my project, which is to state the importance of history.
Stokes, Melvyn. American History through Hollywood Film: From the Revolution to the 1960s. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Print.
This book explains the relationship between American history and some Hollywood Film in the time period from Revolution to the 1960s. Several films are mentioned in this book, including Gone With the Wind. The author mentioned how movie Gone With the Wind relates to the Civil War and how the movie depicts the Civil War.
Suponitskaya, Irina M. "The American South As Depicted in Gone With the Wind: A Russian Historian's Observations." The Georgia Historical Quarterly 76 (1992): 876-90.JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40582762>.
This source offers information about the South in the Civil War and the image of the south in the movie Gone With the Wind. This journal is written by an Russian historian, a bystander, so the points made in this journal are pretty impartial.
Hillyer, Reiko. "Relics of Reconciliation: The Confederate Museum and Civil War Memory in the New South." The Public Historian 33 (2011): 35-62. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2011.33.4.35>.
“The Confederate Museum and Civil War Memory in the New South” is one of the articles in the journal The Public Historian. In this article, the author talked about the Civil War and the reconstruction of the south. In my project, I want to mention the background of the movie Gone With the Wind, which is the Civil War, so I want to use this article as my source.
Williams, David S. "Lost Cause Religion." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 08 August 2013. Web. 01 October 2013.
This article gives me the original definition of the lost cause and states the meaning of the lost cause to southern society. I use this source because I want to definite the term lost cause first. Based on this definition, I can explore the various contents in which the lost cause is used.
Gone With the Wind. Dir. Vector Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood. Perf. Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable. 1939. Film.
The movie Gone With the Wind provides several examples about the concept of lost cause. By analyzing the lost cause in the movie, I can tell the big changes that southern society had experienced before and after the Civil War. By analyzing these changes, I can reach the purpose of my project, which is to state the importance of history.
Stokes, Melvyn. American History through Hollywood Film: From the Revolution to the 1960s. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Print.
This book explains the relationship between American history and some Hollywood Film in the time period from Revolution to the 1960s. Several films are mentioned in this book, including Gone With the Wind. The author mentioned how movie Gone With the Wind relates to the Civil War and how the movie depicts the Civil War.
Suponitskaya, Irina M. "The American South As Depicted in Gone With the Wind: A Russian Historian's Observations." The Georgia Historical Quarterly 76 (1992): 876-90.JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40582762>.
This source offers information about the South in the Civil War and the image of the south in the movie Gone With the Wind. This journal is written by an Russian historian, a bystander, so the points made in this journal are pretty impartial.
Hillyer, Reiko. "Relics of Reconciliation: The Confederate Museum and Civil War Memory in the New South." The Public Historian 33 (2011): 35-62. JSTOR. Web. 15 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2011.33.4.35>.
“The Confederate Museum and Civil War Memory in the New South” is one of the articles in the journal The Public Historian. In this article, the author talked about the Civil War and the reconstruction of the south. In my project, I want to mention the background of the movie Gone With the Wind, which is the Civil War, so I want to use this article as my source.
Williams, David S. "Lost Cause Religion." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 08 August 2013. Web. 01 October 2013.
This article gives me the original definition of the lost cause and states the meaning of the lost cause to southern society. I use this source because I want to definite the term lost cause first. Based on this definition, I can explore the various contents in which the lost cause is used.