Tara Incognito

"Disputed Territories" at the Atlanta History Center

THE most curious thing about the Atlanta History Center's new exhibit "Disputed Territories: Gone With the Wind and Southern Myths" is the attention it's received from the national press. "Tearing down Tara," declares a headline in U.S. News and World Report. "Museum's exhibit debunks the myths of 'Gone With the Wind,'" gasps The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Even allowing for the natural excesses of journalists jockeying for an angle, it's hard to see how this modest, cautious exhibit could inspire the kind of mouth-agape response as though instead of a little bit of reasonable history, we're actually witnessing sex in the sacristy.

Sure, GWTW has the status of holy writ for many people, and granted, it has done more than any other single work to shape popular perceptions of the Old South, but questioning the historical veracity of the book and the movie is not just another P.C.-come-lately gesture by revisionary multiculturalists. Slagging GWTW is nothing new. When the book was first published, the critic Malcolm Cowley passed summary judgment on it, writing, "'Gone With the Wind' is an encyclopedia of the plantation legend ... false in part and silly in part and vicious in its general effect on southern life today."

That was 58 years ago, and "Disputed Territories" doesn't even go half as far as Mr. Cowley. Instead, rather than lecturing the public with statements about right and wrong, the exhibit designers have taken their lead from "Jeopardy" and judiciously phrased their answers in the form of a question.

"Disputed Territories" is made up of three sections. The first section asks "Where's Tara?" That is perhaps the out-of-town visitor's most frequently asked question other than 'Where's the bathroom?" Tara has come to stand for the whole myth of the Old South, and like the myth, Tara exists in the public imagination as a mongrel fantasy -- not only is the movie version of Tara an inaccurate version of the book's Tara, but so too is the public's remembered Tara often confused with the movie's more glorious Twelve Oaks. Tara, of course, is a fictional place, so instead of trying to locate (or dislocate) Scarlett O'Hara's homeplace on a North Georgia map, "Disputed Territories" simply presents the various representations of Tara and lets you, the visitor, take what you want.

"Disputed Territories" doesn't declare any version to be true or false, but instead presents Mitchell's description of Tara -- a "clumsy, sprawling building ... built according to no architectural plan whatever" --- the movie's version -- back-lit in tattered elegance -- and photos of actual ante-bellum homes from the area. Considering the simple fact that this part of north and western Georgia had only been open for settlement 30 years before the Civil War began, it's not surprising that the real homes were closer to Mitchell's original Tara -- raw, ramshackle and inglorious -- and a far cry from the white-columned plantation homes usually associated with the word "ante-bellum." And in addition, how can the exhibit be accused of "debunking" Gone With the Wind, when Margaret Mitchell herself regularly railed against the faux splendor of Selznick's paper mache mansions and the cloying, inauthentic Cavalier legends.

"Disputed Territories" follows this technique throughout the exhibit: questions are asked and information is presented. You can buy the myth, find fault with the historical record, or wax indignant over the popular delusions -- whatever -- the conclusion is up to you. That's the virtue of the exhibit.

The second section asks, "Was Scarlett a Lady?" This section presents information regarding the expectations and codes of behavior for southern ladies, who were expected to be vaporous, weak, devoted, and pale. But not all women were ladies, and the exhibit displays pages from Atlanta city directories listing some of the many activities of many women as dressmakers, cigar makers, boarding house operators, editors and prostitutes. It's in this section that an informed visitor senses to what degree the exhibit designers pulled their punches. We see the binding corsets and read quotes from guidebooks of decorum, but nowhere do we see how the myth of southern womanhood was used as ideological justification for white supremacy.

The third section asks "How True to Life Were the Slaves in GWTW?" the exhibit presents excerpts from city statutes, bills of sale and WPA slave narratives to contrast the complex diversity of experience among slaves with not only Mitchell's depiction of happy, loyal Mammy, but also with the equally inaccurate generalization that all slaves were beaten and brutalized. The historical materials presented depict the range of experiences, from the violence and cruel separation of families, to the relative freedom of black craftsmen who kept families and controlled the disposal of their own labor.

The Atlanta History Center's use of this Socratic method in "Disputed Territories" is good to see. This display technique introduces the public to some of the challenges faced by historians: What sources of historical information are reliable? How do you evaluate the historical record? How can one decide between conflicting truth claims? This type of exhibit requires more effort on the part of the viewer, and although the jury is still out on how many people are willing to do the work, any exercise of critical thinking is valuable. The presentation of the historical materials allows the visitors to evaluate legends, measure them according to the facts as they see them, and open up the space between fact and fiction where culture operates to manufacture myths.

Myths are created for reasons, and this way of analyzing them gives visitors not only facts, but method -- a critical approach that is necessary in everyday life, where myths happen in short steps, in newspapers and on TV, and at least this way we can remain aware of the processes that operate in society and culture.

PUBLISHED IN CREATIVE LOAFING, JUNE 11, 1994