From Glenn R. Geist at MadMikesAmerica:
Once upon a time, I had a beautiful multi-volume, illustrated edition of the works of Shakespeare put out in the early 19th century by Thomas Bowdler. There was a perceived need to shield impressionable minds from the Elizabethan vulgarities to which the Bard was prone and the works were expurgated. References to sex, or “country matters” as such things were called, were expunged for not being in keeping with modern sensibilities and mores.
It takes a lot of gall to laugh at the prudish attitudes of those days. I’ve just read that HBO is removing that iconic 1939 film Gone With the Wind from its library because as a spokesman said: the film is “a product of its time and depicts some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that have, unfortunately, been commonplace in American society.” It does that indeed. It does not illustrate mistreatment or dwell on the institutional injustice and cruelty of slavery itself or how slaves may have acted and felt – or at least not to a degree that satisfies the need to illustrate how we feel now in our more perfect age about the ancestors some of us have. Times they are a-changin’ as we used to sing – and hope for.