Prompt: Prepare a detailed outline of an adaptation of Gone with the Wind set in 2023
From ChatGPT4:
Adapting “Gone with the Wind” to a contemporary setting of 2023 requires thoughtful reimagining while maintaining the essence of the original story. Here’s a detailed outline for such an adaptation:
Title: “Gone with the Wind: 2023”
Setting
- Location: Atlanta, Georgia, and surrounding areas, with a modern urban and suburban backdrop.
- Time: Present day, focusing on the social, economic, and political dynamics of 2023.
Characters
- Scarlett O’Hara: A young, ambitious entrepreneur in the tech industry, known for her beauty, intelligence, and relentless drive.
- Rhett Butler: A charismatic venture capitalist with a mysterious past and a knack for risk-taking in both business and personal life.
- Ashley Wilkes: An idealistic environmental activist and Scarlett’s long-time crush, who struggles to balance his ideals with practicality.
- Melanie Hamilton: A compassionate, understanding social worker, married to Ashley, and a close friend to Scarlett.
Plot Overview
- Introduction:
- Scarlett’s World: Introduce Scarlett’s life in modern Atlanta, her tech startup, and her unrequited love for Ashley.
- Social Context: Touch on contemporary issues such as climate change, economic inequality, and technological advancements.
- Rising Tensions:
- Business and Romance: Scarlett’s company faces financial difficulties. She meets Rhett at a fundraising event, sparking a complicated relationship.
- Ashley’s Dilemma: Ashley is torn between his environmental activism and the pressures to conform to a more traditional career path.
- Climax:
- Business Crisis: Scarlett’s company is on the brink of collapse. She turns to Rhett for help, leading to a controversial business deal.
- Romantic Conflicts: Scarlett’s feelings for Ashley resurface, causing tension with Rhett and Melanie.
- Falling Action:
- Personal Growth: Scarlett starts to realize the importance of balancing ambition with ethics and compassion.
- Relationship Strains: Rhett feels neglected by Scarlett’s obsession with Ashley and her career.
- Conclusion:
- Resolution: Scarlett makes a significant decision about her professional and personal life, choosing her own path over her longstanding pursuit of Ashley.
- Rhett’s Departure: Rhett decides to leave Scarlett, leading to her famous realization of self-reliance and determination to rebuild her life.
Themes
- Modern Feminism: Exploration of a woman’s role in a high-powered, male-dominated business world.
- Technology vs. Environment: The clash between technological advancement and environmental conservation.
- Personal vs. Professional Life: The struggle to maintain personal relationships while pursuing ambitious career goals.
- Adaptation and Resilience: How characters adapt to the rapidly changing world around them.
Visual Style
- Cinematography: A mix of sleek, modern cityscapes and lush, natural landscapes to contrast the worlds of technology and environmentalism.
- Costume Design: Contemporary fashion, reflecting the status and personalities of characters in a modern setting.
Soundtrack
- A blend of modern and classical music, capturing the emotional depth and complexities of the story in a contemporary context.
This adaptation maintains the core narrative of “Gone with the Wind” while updating its setting and themes to reflect modern societal and cultural issues.
End of ChatGPT4
PG will allow visitors to determine if the outline shows a useful amount of creativity or not.
If he had tasked himself to produce a similar document, PG admits he would not have considered the Soundtrack.
The notion of not just (as Ms Myers all too accurately/acutely notes) the wrenching from the overt context is not the only fundamental FAIL of this “adaptation.” It’s not an “adaptation” if — notwithstanding any substitute offered for the absence of the Second War of American Secession not just in the background, but as a non-human character present in every scene and informing every conversation — it gets divorced from the Lost Cause attitude on the part of both the characters and the source work’s narrator.
One of the reasons I despised GWTW from my first encounter with it (some time around 12–13 years old, after hearing a teacher’s incessant praise for the movie I went and borrowed the book from the library in those long-before-TCM days — actually, long-before-home-video-recording-systems days) was that virtually everything accepts both the political and economic rationales distilled-for-marketing-purposes into the Lost Cause not just in the “is” but in the “rightfully is.” Absent an actual cultural, political, economic, and legal acceptance of overt slavery, this isn’t an “adaptation” — it’s at best an “inspired by” in much the same way as some of the worst Jane Austen fanfic.
Oh, dear, that’s a really disturbing corollary: ChatGPT as an obsessed fan. If your ChatGPT session demands to be addressed as Douglas, lock your doors and cut off all of your internet connections…
The notion that a remake of a novel whose central setting is the destruction caused by war can be done without an equivalent central issue is absurd. It reduces the existential scope of the original to a feeble Romance novel.
Scarlett may be a strong independent female somewhat in the modern taste (with dubious morals, also modern), but without the setting and its crises (which are universal, not just relevant to her businesses), most of the broad human applicability of the original dissolves away, leaving the story centered on the female issues of Romance, a very different genre.
That was my reaction.
It needs a background of social unrest at a minimum or a postapocalyptic scenario. (Something like JERICHO?)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series)
Gone with the wind is a story about social breakdown at its core. Scarlet is a creature of a collapsing social order struggling to survive the transition to a new one and her story is just a guide through the real story.
Take that and you might as well add a laugh track.
I agree with both of you. The shift of the main theme from a universal struggle to cliched popular activism completely undermines the novel’s purpose. Gone with the Wind was never about romance, and it was never about superficial and meaningless causes. Margaret Mitchell is turning over in her grave right now.