Or "Cabaret", which I just finished watching not 20 minutes ago. The rendition of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" is chilling.

You may no longer imagine what it is like to be someone else. Children should not pretend to be cowboys and indians or soldiers or firemen or super heroes. Adults may only strictly play roles in dramas corresponding to their own race/nationality/religion--unless of course we are demanding placing more black soldiers in the movie Dunkirk (where they were not) or other places that turn historical dramas upside down. You may only write about yourself. Only black authors can have black characters in their books--though of course writing a book full of only white characters is racist.

Scarlett was known for breaking rules, not following them.

More on Scarlett (I wrote this elsewhere, last August):

...a graduate school instructor(?) who said, in effect, that that "relatable" is a fairly recent term, but it's also an overrated concept in fiction, these days.

To wit: She said that one of her very brightest students had to read "Anna Karenina" - and complained that she couldn't "relate" to the main character! The professor also said that "likeable" characters are overrated, IIRC - that this is just readers' narcissism rearing its head again. (Not to mention readers' constant demand for happy endings long after the readers become adults - but she didn't mention that.)

Granted, it wasn't clear whether the student meant she didn't like the main character or whether she couldn't understand her motives. There's a difference, after all!

Example: Anyone can argue that Scarlett O'Hara is not "likeable" and not someone anyone would want as a friend or a spouse, since she's too selfish to do anything for anyone unless there's something in it for her, but if YOU were on the losing side of a war and facing starvation, how hard would she be to understand/relate to, as a character?

I.e., would you really rather be Melanie under those circumstances? I wouldn't. Melanie only survives as long as she does because of Scarlett; even her loving relatives wouldn't have been enough to keep her fed when she was recovering from childbirth. As Rhett said: "She hasn't your strength. She's never had any strength. She's never had anything but heart." Or, as Scarlett said about her late mother Ellen:

..."Nothing, no, nothing, she taught me is of any help to me! What good will kindness do me now? What value is gentleness? Better that I'd learned to plow or chop cotton like a darky. Oh, Mother, you were wrong!" She did not stop to think that Ellen's ordered world was gone, and a brutal world had taken its place a world wherein every standard, every value had changed. She only saw, or thought she saw, that her mother had been wrong, and she changed swiftly to meet this new world for which she was not prepared...

(end of excerpt)

And, from a May obituary for Richard Wayne Peck, Newbery Medalist and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for "Are You in the House Alone?":

...“I’m a writer because I never had a teacher who said, ‘Write what you know,’” Mr. Peck said in a speech to the Library of Congress Book Festival in 2013. “If I’d been limited to writing what I know, I would have produced one unpublishable haiku.”

He added: “Beatrix Potter was never a rabbit. J. K. Rowling did not attend Hogwarts School.”

"The professor also said that "likeable" characters are overrated, IIRC - that this is just readers' narcissism rearing its head again. (Not to mention readers' constant demand for happy endings long after the readers become adults - but she didn't mention that.)"

For me this depends on the objective. If you are in a college class and the goal is to widen your experiences that is one thing. But pulp fictions have their popularity for a reason. I will admit is was a bit odd to see my father reading Harry Potter or Eragon in his 40s. But if he wanted to read something serious he would read the latest papers on multivariat full wave inversion in inelastic mediums. When he read Harry Potter he was looking for something simple and stupid to relax with. The serious stuff was already covered.

And the hysterical left continues in its fanatical march to create non-things.

Silence is violence! (It's not.) Not all violence is physical. (Yes, it is.) Cultural genocide is genocide. Morning after regret is rape. Drunken consent is rape.

Savage was right. Liberalism is a mental disorder.

Are you kidding? I want Scarlett as a friend. Yeah she will talk smack about me and roll her eyes at my annoying ways and hit on my man, but she'll deliver my child, charm a friend into stealing a wagon to hightail it out of a burning city, and bust her ass feeding me, as god is my witness she will lie, steal and kill to make sure you don't starve if you're any of her folks.

"if he wanted to read something serious he would read the latest papers on multivariat full wave inversion in inelastic mediums"

Bleh. They're always shoving that 'Earth-first' nonsense down our throats.

If you don't hit the earth first then what are you going to hit? When your multi-ton truck jumps on a person that just isn't seismography.

But I will admit if I never hear another Eigen I'll be happy. He can keep his values and his vectors to himself for all I care.

NicoleK, aside from the fact that she was taking care of Melanie only out of "love" for Ashley - and the hope that she could steal him someday - I had the impression that she would have sold her whiny, useless SISTERS down the river if it had been legal to do so.

My point is that there are plenty of people - mostly men? - who like the story but have no sympathy for Scarlett's ruthlessness - and applaud Rhett's action at the end.