Megyn Kelly Slams HBO Max for Temporarily Pulling Gone with the Wind: 'Where Does this End?'
Megyn Kelly has a strong opinion on HBO Max's recent decision to temporality remove Gone with the Wind from its catalog.
On Tuesday, the HBO streaming service confirmed that it removed the 1939 film from its library temporarily so that it can add a "discussion of its historical context and a denouncement" of its portrayal of black people and slavery.
"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," a spokesperson for the streaming service said in a statement to PEOPLE. "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."
Responding to the decision, Kelly, 49, shared her disagreement, asking if more content would get revoked when revisited through a modern lens.
"Are we going to pull all of the movies in which women are treated as sex objects too? Guess how many films we’ll have left?Where does this end??" the former Fox News personality tweeted.
Kelly targeted several popular shows and movies — recent releases and decades-old titles — that should, in her eyes, also be pulled, including Friends, Game of Thrones, Woody Allen movies and John Hughes films. "If not," wrote Kelly, "you hate women."
In a series of tweets, Kelly also said Law & Order, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese would, too, have to go: "Totally. Forgot those guys. Let’s keep it going until all we have left is The Queen and Captain America."
"For the record," wrote Kelly, "you can loathe bad cops, racism, sexism, bias against the LGBTQ community, and not censor historical movies, books, music and art that don’t portray those groups perfectly. Ppl understand art reflects life… as we evolve, so do our cultural touchstones."
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In 2018, Kelly faced immense backlash for her controversial remarks about blackface at the time, ultimately leading to the cancelation of her NBC morning show. In addition to weighing in on the Gone with the Wind controversy, she also spoke out about the cancelation of Cops on Tuesday, tweeting "if you don’t like it, don’t watch" in its defense.
HBO Max explained in a statement that Gone with the Wind would not be censored or edited when it is made available to subscribers again.
"[It] will be presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed," said the spokesperson. "If we are to create a more just, equitable and inclusive future, we must first acknowledge and understand our history."
The decision to address Gone with the Wind's historical context came days after the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed by 12 Years a Slave producer John Ridley on Monday, calling on the streaming service to consider removing the film.
Ridley said Gone with the Wind "glorifies the antebellum south" and "romanticizes the Confederacy." He added that "when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color."
"At a moment when we are all considering what more we can do to fight bigotry and intolerance," he wrote, "I would ask that all content providers look at their libraries and make a good-faith effort to separate programming that might be lacking in its representation from that which is blatant in its demonization."
In February, President Donald Trump mocked the Academy Awards for recognizing the Korean film Parasite as the year's Best Picture and said, “Can we get Gone with the Wind back?”
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