How to explain the past in the present

On the example of "Done by the Wind" and "Moscow does not believe in tears"

The HBO online cinema announced that he was shooting from the show The film "Safeed by the Wind". True, not forever, but for a while. The film will be returned this week with a detailed commentary, explaining why a racist, in the opinion of a modern person, a picture of the relationship between planters and slaves at the time of the release of the film seemed acceptable.

“Safeed by the Wind” is a film adaptation of the famous novel by Margaret Mitchell. The book was published in 1936, the film was three years later. He received thirteen Oscar nominations unprecedented at that time.

Those who today are outraged by the “collision” for their favorite picture, they like to mention that one of the awards went to Hatty McDaniel, the performer of the role of Nanny Scarlett O'hara, nicknamed Mom -

This was the first figurine in history to get a person with black skin.

For their opponents, the same reward is an occasion to talk about segregation and racism. The Oscar ceremony was held in a luxurious hotel with the policy "only for the whites." The producer of the film barely managed to break the hotel administration to allow the actress to the ceremony. And she was allowed - they set her a small table against the wall, so she sat in the distance, separately from everyone and, accordingly, separately from the “white” filming group of the film.

It is around the role of Mom, played by McDanile, the main claims against the film and the novel are concentrated. Mom is a happy slave, completely pleased with his position. This image seems to normalize the order in which some people belong to others, like things, if only the owners of these “things” are good and kind.

The image of the mother can be compared with the figure of the former Firce serf lackey in the Chekhovsky "Cherry Garden". They are both loving servants of good gentlemen who remain hostages of their disenfranchised position, feel comfortable in him and want to continue it. But unlike the image of the black nanny, as if declaring that slavery can be “pleasant”, the image of Firce is a heartbreaking example of a person crushed and re -disgusting the order of things, who, in the literal sense of the word, is forever studied from freedom.

There is no firce capture in the mother, and talk about what is happening with people with unnatural relationships “one owns the other” is not superfluous here. This will probably be, among other things, is said in a short lecture before the film when it is returned to the NV platform.

It is funny that in Russian -speaking media (from official to social), the very fact of the appearance of such a comment, if not silent, then at least burned. Basically, they mourn the film as a deceased, as if he had not been removed for a while with only one streaming platform, but he was forever erased from everywhere.

At the same time, the idea of ​​such a “attached” commentary on the artifacts of the past-to novels, films and TV shows (they are generally a blind time and become obsolete especially quickly)-completely sound.

Our school curriculum includes the story “Taras Bulba”, where the heroes that the reader must empathize arrange an incredible Jewish pogrom.

At the same time, there is no in common, always reproduced disclaimer for this text. For schoolchildren, it all depends on what the teacher will be. And it may be different. I remember how-to tears-my son-grader was amazed and outraged, when, without such a warning, he reached this place.

Or let's take another, as if not such a crying example. The movie, our beloved even more than “Gone by the Wind”. I recently watched “Moscow does not believe in tears” with students. Oddly enough, some of them saw the picture for the first time. When the film ended, they were silent for quite some time, but then they started vying: how can this film end like that? How could such a woman stay with a person who literally warns her in direct text, that she will take her freedom to live, as she wants, because it is he who will decide “on the simple basis that he is a man”?

And what kind of person is this one who cannot transfer the fact that a woman is at a higher -paid and important work?

And I began to talk with them about the context of time, about why the main message of this film-the priority of a private (even patriarchal-private) over the public-touched so many people. I do not consider “Moscow” a beautiful film (as, however, I don’t consider it “merged”), but what he saw “from the frost” from today, with today's optics, it seems just completely nonsense - and did he deserve this?

The world is not the first to worry about ethical norms, but perhaps for the first time we have the opportunity to reflect this shift. This is not about consent/non -consent, but about reflection. About an attempt to explain. Fix the change of times. Explain not only the present by the past, but also the past.

Why do we resist this?