‘Gone with the Wind’ removed from HBO Max after protests

Gone with the Wind was removed from the HBO Max streaming platform on Tuesday, as mass protests against racism and police brutality prompt television networks to reassess their offerings.

The multiple Oscar-winning US Civil War epic, released in 1939, remains the highestgrossing movie of all time adjusted for inflation, but its depiction of contented slaves and heroic slaveholders has garnered criticism.

“Gone With The Wind is a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society,” an HBO

Max spokesperson said in a statement.

“These racist depictions were wrong then and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and a denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible.”

Demonstrations have swept the US since the May 25 killing of George Floyd while in police custody, with calls growing for police reform and the broader removal of symbols of a racist legacy, including monuments to the slaveholding Confederacy.

Floyd died on May 25 as a white Minneapolis officer pressed a knee into his neck for more than eight minutes. The officer has been charged with second-degree murder.

The film will return to the recently launched streaming platform at a later date, along with a discussion of its historical context, the company said.

No edits will be made, “because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed”.