Doesn’t the fact that Gone With The Winds is considered to be a masterpiece in America ( & elsewhere) make you uncomfortable ? I mean, the book is as blatant a pro-slavery piece of literature as can be.

It pisses me off, certainly. As scholars like Gary Gallagher and Bruce Chadwick have pointed out, Gone With the Wind played a non-trivial role in keeping the Lost Cause part of the mainstream discourse – you’ve got the whole Moonlight and Magnolia/Land of Chivalry thing, the movie uses the South Was Doomed variant (think Brett’s speech about Northern industrial might), there’s the loyal slaves vs. the evil carpetbaggers, etc. etc.