Gone, and Some of Us Might Be Sad

Potential Wise Saying for the Day: “This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.” John McEnroe

As a homeschool instructor, I employ the best educational methods available to draw, engage, and brainwash, enlighten my student so as to develop in her the best income generator for my old age possible person she can be. Amongst my pedagogical tools at hand are many excellent DVDs, which are employed to more fully illustrate the experience of a people struggling to survive in a bygone era.

For example, Monty Python’s Holy Grail can be a superb resource to explore the Middle Ages. I’m not kidding about this…

Using this incredible logic, we not only watched Ken Burns’ most excellent Civil War series, to study the, um…Civil War, but also turned to David O. Selznick’s dramatically lengthy Gone with the Wind starring Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable to add to our body of American History Knowledge. We watched all 288 minutes of it. In one sitting. And I must admit--although this confession will not make me many friends--it felt like we experienced the Civil War in real time. Ken Burns’ 660 minutes-worth of documentary was no match for the extending droning of Scarlett and her boys. After watching the best Hollywood could muster to exemplify what the two generations before them endured, the South deserved to lose, that’s all I’m saying.

Plot-wise, it was, like, watching a Shakespearian tragedy except that no one dies—well OK, a LOT of people died in Gone with the Wind, but not the right people. Well, OK: Not the right feminine-type person, to be more specific-ish. And that spineless Ashley…that’s the kind of powerful example of emotional faithfulness I want for my daughter, I’m telling you!

Technically, this epic—and the word is used here in the absolute literal sense of being “of great length”—was amazing, considering it was done during the painfully lacking Great Depression and without Industrial Light and Magic in Selznick’s back pocket. Even after witnessing how they did the scene of the dead and dying in Atlanta’s streets and the burning of Atlanta as Scarlett escaped in the “behind the scenes,” it was still awesome to see.

On an emotional level, the thing that struck me most…the thought that haunts me over 24-hours later…is not how this film beat out such incredible specimen like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, and the immortal The Wizard of Oz…for Oscar fame (although this thought stuns me) it's that I saw in myself the image of that selfish, conniving shrew Scarlett O’Hara. She never got it, did she? She didn’t realize, until it was too late, who loved her the most and where she really fit in this world. And deep down, I’m afraid that I’m not getting it…that because I keep looking for something more, something “special” (read: something that can’t possibly exist), something perfect, that I’m missing the love that surrounds me daily. I hope I’m wrong and that I really am grateful and aware, but something tells me that my gut is right.

SIGH.

I can’t think about that now. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

Right now it’s time for Literature Class…and The Delightful Daughter and I must watch Curious George.