Cheryl Dunye on "Gone with the Wind"

In her 2017 interview with The Film Stage, Dunye mentions that the Martha Page character in The Watermelon Woman is based on real-life director Dorothy Arzner (1897 – 1979), a queer of historical note whom I don’t recall ever hearing about before. This pioneering “out” lesbian from Hollywood’s Golden Era maintained a forty-year relationship with Marion Morgan, a dancer and choreographer who was ten years older than Arzner. Even though she tried to keep her private life as private as possible, Arzner was rumored to be linked romantically with a number of actresses, including Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn (Mayer). She never hid her sexual orientation, nor her identity; her clothing was unconventional for a woman of that time, she wore suits or straight dresses (Mayne, 42).

Yet, I still wonder why Dunye couldn’t find a real black actress from this era to profile in her film. We also got the inside scoop on Camille Paglia’s participation in the film. I sort of had the feeling Paglia was taking the piss out of herself, and this interview confirmed that!

In her June 2020 interview with Vanity Fair, Dunye is asked about the removal of Gone With The Wind from Netflix, given the current political climate in the U.S. and the removal of Confederate-era monuments. Dunye’s response is the same as mine: By all means, keep the film out there. It is an undeniable classic! (It is also one of my favorite films, along with another film released the same year about a magical, fantastical place that really doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t stop The Wizard of Oz from being great entertainment either.)

But the film needs to be accompanied by a discussion of its content that places the film in its proper socio-political context. It sounds like this is what Netflix plans to do. But withdrawing the film from distribution outright would totally suck, not the least of which is because, as Dunye notes, “it is a film that our first Oscar came from, right? Hattie McDaniel. Her troubled life—in the sense of dying too soon, in the sense of her place within the African American arts community and the disrespect from that and what she lived for—you’re going to shut down that film? Why not find out more about it? Why don’t we dissect it and think about it a little bit more?” (Desta).

 

Works Cited

Desta, Yohana. “The Watermelon Woman: The Enduring Cool of a Black Lesbian Classic.” Vanity Fair, 19 June 2020, www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/the-watermelon-woman-the-enduring-cool-of-a-black-lesbian-classic.

Mayer, So. “Dorothy Arzner: Queen of Hollywood: Sight & Sound.” British Film Institute, 7 Mar. 2015, www2.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/dorothy-arzner-queen-hollywood.

Mayne, Judith. Directed By Dorothy Arzner (Women Artists in Film). Indiana University Press, 1994. 

Schindel, Daniel. “Cheryl Dunye on Making History with 'The Watermelon Woman,' Representation, and Performance.” The Film Stage, 6 Feb. 2017, thefilmstage.com/cheryl-dunye-on-making-history-with-the-watermelon-woman-representation-and-performance/.