I watched about 3/4s of Gone With the Wind last night. Scarlett O'Hara BEATS A HORSE TO DEATH. OK, she beats it so it will continue to pull her cart, containing her sister-in-law and the s-i-l's newborn child, from Atlanta through a dangerous countryside to her rural family home, Tara. But as she arrives, she beats the horse savagely and it collapses, dead. And doesn't bat an eye.

And this is the heroine of the film, the person you're supposed to identify with.

Then, she discovers that her mother has died, her father is mentally ill, her sisters are sick, and there's no food. If torturing the horse to death was acceptable, why isn't butchering it for meat even suggested? They're living on radishes. EAT THE HORSE you just KILLED.

I don't remember any of this from watching as a child.